Web presence of an integrated delivery system at year one: lessons learned

The log analysis of a web site can be used to guide performance improvement. Log analysis identifies which resources on a website are often accessed and those that are not. A log analysis can provide cost justification for a corporate web presence. We describe the log analysis of a large integrated delivery system in New York City from its launch May 1, 2001, through April 30, 2002. During this first year there were 428753 sessions with 1322153 page views. An analysis of page views, exclusive of the default home page, revealed that the pages most frequently visited were related to job opportunities (22.4%, 120086 of 428753), general information ('About') (8.5%, 45355), St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan (8.3%, 44630), graduate medical education and allied health (8.1%, 43317), facilities (7.2%, 38677), web site search (6.4%, 34322), and physician finder (4.3%, 22910). The web site facilitated 1,980 online job applications. Health information received 15356 page views from 1793 visits. The re-design of the site for year 2 promoted the more frequently selected links, flattened the navigational architecture, and enabled access to all web pages within two to three mouse clicks of the home page. Lessons learned in the process of developing and maintaing a health care organization web site are shared in the case study.