Why A/B Testing Is So Important for Brand Engagement in Healthcare

By Mike Fradkin

October 29, 2024

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Patient retention plays a major role in the success of healthcare organizations, but it’s also a metric that many struggle to improve. With 40% of patients switching providers and looking elsewhere for future health services, healthcare organizations need to introduce more ways to boost brand engagement.

Helping patients remain engaged and connected with health products and services is part of the recipe for long-term success, especially as expectations around the quality of digital services continue to increase.

Want to know more about why brand engagement is such an important metric in the healthcare industry? Keep reading to understand how advanced A/B testing can support better brand engagement for your organization.

The Importance of Brand Engagement in Healthcare

Earning Patient Trust and Loyalty

Across the healthcare industry, good care, trust, and privacy are intended to be the foundation of patient-provider relationships. To help patients feel they are receiving competent, confidential care, your organization must rely on high-quality services as well as brand familiarity, easy-to-navigate experiences, and proof points of trust and reliability.

Your brand image also influences how your patients feel about their experiences, so taking the time to cultivate brand engagement will only grow their trust and loyalty. Healthcare organizations that use experimentation to find what really increases brand engagement for their audiences—whether it’s trust signals, easier navigation, or direct messaging with their care providers—will have all the tools they need to develop long-term patient relationships.

Consistency Across Touchpoints

With digital experiences following up physical ones now more than ever, delivering a consistent level of support across every interaction matters. As patients interact with their healthcare providers and your broader brand, whether online, through a mobile app, or in person, consistency across these touchpoints strengthens their perception of elements such as your communication levels, accessibility, and personalization.

A consistent experience builds trust and demonstrates that your organization is responsive and cares about patient needs. This consistency drives higher brand engagement by improving overall perceptions of care quality.

How Advanced A/B Testing Supports Brand Engagement

Tailoring Content to Patient Preferences

Advanced A/B testing is possible with a tool like SiteSpect, which offers the full spectrum of testing capabilities, such as hybrid experimentation, mobile app testing, and client-side and server-side feature flagging functionality all in one platform.

There are several advantages to having a full suite of tools in one place. Multiple teams can experiment with messaging, content, and features in much greater detail without disrupting the user experience. You can also make updates without waiting for major code release schedules.

By more precisely testing different versions of web pages, apps, and patient communications, healthcare organizations can customize digital experiences to the most optimized alignment with patient preferences. The end result? Higher levels of brand engagement.

Here are a few specific examples of how healthcare organizations can use advanced A/B testing:

  • Digital Health Dashboards: Experiment with different layouts and features on patient portals for components such as ease of navigation or customized health data views. Identify which designs increase patient engagement and product or service usage.
  • Patient Education Content: A/B test different formats of educational resources. One way to do this is to provide videos and text-based articles to different audiences to determine which drives greater improvements in the metrics you care about—including brand engagement.
  • Interface Design: If you offer telehealth platforms for bill pay, appointment booking, or assistance with finding a provider, test different user interface designs to see which version leads to more efficient processes and improved patient satisfaction.

The changes you make could directly improve patient engagement with both your services and brand as a whole.

💡 SiteSpect’s testing platform allows users to run tests just as easily in authenticated parts of your website or app as in the public areas. 

Tips for Mastering Advanced A/B Testing in Healthcare

Choose Meaningful Metrics

Some companies prioritize click-through rates or pageviews, but for healthcare brands, those metrics might not be as helpful. We recommend focusing on the metrics that directly impact patient satisfaction and brand engagement. 

Primary metrics might include patient retention rates or follow-up appointment scheduling rates, which provide a clearer picture of how well patients are engaging with the brand.

Test Across Touchpoints

For brand engagement efforts to pay off, they need to span all patient interactions. This means testing your website, kiosks, and mobile apps. Consistency in the patient experience across these channels helps them build a seamless connection to the brand no matter where they interact with it.

Support Consistency and Repeatability

A/B testing offers healthcare organizations a way to refine their offerings systematically and use data to justify key product and business decisions. Successful tests should show clear statistical significance and lead to tangible improvements in the patient experience or other metrics, such as customer lifetime value and revenue, as brand engagement increases.

Brand Engagement Benefits for Patients and Healthcare Organizations

Benefits for Patients

When healthcare organizations employ A/B testing to create more personalized, responsive, and accessible digital experiences, the effect is that patients receive better care.

While an acute focus on better margins for your organization is paramount, the benefits for your patients present wins for your experimentation program at both the organizational level and the patient level. Patients can access health information, schedule appointments online, and engage with services more easily through intuitive digital touchpoints. With more approachable, patient-centered healthcare, your patients are more likely to return and continue building loyalty with your brand.

Benefits for Healthcare Organizations

It makes sense for healthcare organizations to care about the experience they provide. Increasing brand engagement leads to higher patient retention rates, which then opens the door for more consistent revenue.

Want to see better patient satisfaction scores and adherence to treatment plans? Prioritize engaging digital experiences, and you’re more likely to gain a competitive edge.

Final Thoughts

As health technology changes, A/B testing emerges as the most effective strategy for meeting patient needs in any setting.

With the advanced A/B testing tools provided by SiteSpect, you can fine-tune your digital experiences to improve brand engagement, build stronger patient relationships, increase customer self-service, reduce operational costs, and improve quality of care. You’ll also improve metrics like retention and revenue at the same time.

Want to learn more about how SiteSpect can help your healthcare organization drive brand engagement? Request a demo today.

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Mike Fradkin

Mike Fradkin

Mike Fradkin is the Director of Product Marketing at SiteSpect. His experience ranges from smaller series-A startup companies to large multinational corporations such as AT&T and IBM. With a technology career that began with several customer-facing leadership roles, Mike never loses sight of the connection between technology value and the real people it can positively affect. He enjoys the challenge of identifying trends and market drivers, truly understanding the problems of customers within their specific industries, cultures, and reporting structures, and leveraging those insights to deliver more impactful results.

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