Don't Just Live. Shine.
Marshfield Clinic Website
Visual Design · UX · Web Development
About
Marshfield Labs is one of the largest full-service private practice laboratory systems in the nation and a leader in laboratory medicine. As part of the Marshfield Clinic Health System, the labs benefit from the infrastructure, expertise and reputation of a large, multi-specialty group practice and premier research organization. The Marshfield Labs offer multiple lab locations throughout the Midwest with Veterinary, Research and Toxicology testing to clients nationwide.
Project
The redesign of the Lab's web presence had bit of a rocky past riddled with project management oversight, budget restraints and prior differences between leadership and marketing. Needless to say, the design team as well as developers were wary of the road ahead. For this project, I was afforded a unique and daunting opportunity to act as both designer and project manager as a learning experience.
Knowing the challenging relationship that our stakeholders had with the team, the project managed though very formalized standards with project management guidance from my UX Team Lead. The completed redesign moved the client onto Sharepoint 2013 with an updated visual design and responsive experience that focuses on delivering needs for the new (and returning) customer.
Key Decisions
Content-first approach puts key business objectives first (Access account, Go to test reference manuals, Contact labs, Lab services, Latest news.) It’s about YOU, not Us.
Detail of landing page with information about veterinary lab services.
snapshot of internal keyword searches
The Marshfield Labs staff expressed concern that their site was not appearing on popular search engines. We researched competitors keyword strategy and common queries using Google trends to properly name and tag each page and unify the language seen in buttons and titles to better rank in search.
The results present searches for key terms "clinical labs" "veterinary labs" and "laboratory Wisconsin" in the top 5 results of listings across Google, Bing and Yahoo as of February 2016. They are also outranking results of nearest competitors. Overall lift to the site from search engines has been increasing at a rate of 3% per cycle.
The existing branding and visual design of the labs was outdated and no longer aligned with the guidelines set forth by the Marshfield Clinic Health System. Using cues from existing branding and color theory, a new visual language was created that was intended to be easy, valuable, and genuine.
Our team spent extensive time before launch and at regular follow-up sessions to educate the Labs staff on how to maintain their content pages which are now managed by the Sharepoint 2013 CMS.
Deployed Adobe analytics integration on the site to learn more about what their visitor behavior in order to better inform future business decisions.
Case Study: Portal Access
Problem
The majority of existing labs customers use the website as a launching point for accessing a vast array of test reference manuals. It was established early in the project that these manuals would not be included in the redesign but the team wanted to make the sign-in process simple and understandable.
Goal
Allow existing customers to login to portal accounts from any site page. Improve reach for new customers by unifying naming conventions and leveraging SEO keywords to make clinical reference services more prominent as a service.
Solution
In addition to being the overall project manager, I lead the UI design for the reference manuals and portal access points. I relied on existing patterns and fixed the portal login options at the top of the header and included drop-down options for appropriate audiences.
I sketched and presented each interaction to the web team and oversaw the development of these elements for consistency and a suitable interaction from mobile devices up to standard desktops.
The new design featured a fixed login button with options for veterinary and clinical technicians to self-identify with their primary business needs. Additional messaging helps answer the purpose of the services that a portal account provides as the main way to access tests and data as a Marshfield Labs customer.
This project was created while working at Marshfield Clinic | View Project
UI Design/Front End Development: Melissa Easker, John Tracy
Visual Design: Melissa Easker, Allison Luetschwager, Christina Oertel, Erik Borreson, Heather Murkowski
Web Team Lead: John Tracy
Creative Manager: Todd Stensberg
Developer: Bill Hogg M.D., Andy Knect
Web Analyst: Dan Burish
Web Team Lead: John Tracy
Creative Manager: Todd Stensberg
Developer: Bill Hogg M.D., Andy Knect
Web Analyst: Dan Burish
Content Contribution provided by Marshfield Labs staff
