Projects / Maryland Hospital Association

Improved Website Experience Boosts Account Registration by 270%

PROJECT SCOPE

Website design
WordPress development
Website management
Members-only user migration

The Client

Each year, Maryland hospitals care for more than 5 million patients. Many of these hospitals turn to the Maryland Hospital Association (MHA) for the support they need to serve patients and communities more effectively.

MHA serves Maryland’s hospitals through collective action to shape policies, practices, financing, and performance. From addressing community health challenges to advancing equitable health policies, MHA empowers its members to provide the highest standard of care.

Healthy hospitals contribute to healthy communities. As President and CEO Melony G. Griffith shared, “Our commitment to excellence not only transforms health care but serves as the foundation for building healthy communities for generations to come.”

The Challenge

MHA supports its members with educational resources through its website. But the site’s last iteration made it challenging for the team to share timely information and keep members engaged.

To start, the website’s content management system was hard to use. MHA’s Marketing Manager, Anne Zukowski, described the old system as “one-dimensional and wonky,” noting how difficult it was to make changes or add content.

The platform also restricted the team from using videos, visuals, dynamic components, and other interactive elements that would improve the experience for members.

The team had little opportunity to use their creativity when expanding the site.

At the same time, the old system had opportunities for improvement on the user end. With over 10,000 PDFs hosted on the site, MHA had a great volume of helpful information — but their members couldn’t find much of it.

The static PDFs served as one-stop destinations rather than gateways to more information. Visitors would land on PDFs from referral links and bounce off the site, as no pathways existed to explore related content or take further action.

Layered onto these challenges, MHA’s website hosted outdated pandemic-era content, more than 500 images without proper metadata, and disorganized URLs. The team decided to restructure it all and start fresh, with the goal of improving sitewide user experience and SEO.

"Most of all, we liked how Digital Ink focuses on telling the story of their clients."

ANNE ZUKOWSKI

MARKETING MANAGER, MARYLAND HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION

Project Highlights

Modernized the website’s design and user experience
Expanded opportunities to create engaging and interactive content
Improved content management with user-friendly components
Helped declutter and reorganize over 10,000 pieces of content
Integrated custom members-only functionality

The Solution

MHA approached Digital Ink to update their website with a fresh, modern design and migrate them to a platform that was more user-friendly for both the organization’s internal staff and visitors. Part of the challenge included preserving the current site’s membership-based functionality.

Why Digital Ink? “We liked that they were local to Maryland, so they were familiar with our members,” Zukowski said. “They were also very adaptable and open to working out the details of the Salesforce integration we needed.”

“But most of all, we liked how Digital Ink focuses on telling the story of their clients. People forget that most of us are born in a hospital and that we go back to hospitals throughout our lives. Hospitals care for people 24/7, 365 days of the year, even on holidays or during a storm.”

MHA showcases the contributions of hospitals across the state and the dedicated staff behind them. They knew Digital Ink would be the right partner to help tell those stories.

The redesign began with a strategic sweep of existing content, including a plan for redirecting URLs.

“Digital Ink reformatted the navigation, then helped us audit the PDFs and turn some into blog content. To avoid 404 errors, they used Google Analytics to track user behavior and redirect most of the URLs to more recent or related content,” Zukowski shared.

With a new design and navigation in place, Digital Ink built out reusable components that empowered MHA’s internal team to take control. Now, the team can duplicate page layouts and use a custom collection of design modules to quickly create new pages for events, careers, press releases, and more.

Post-launch, the partnership continues. Digital Ink supports MHA with ongoing site management and by building new resources, like an interactive map that shows member hospitals across the state.

MHA showcases the contributions of hospitals across the state and the dedicated staff behind them. They knew Digital Ink would be the right partner to help tell those stories.

Results

MHA’s website redesign brought their branding to life and improved the experience for both site visitors and the internal team.

The team saw improvements in page views, user sessions, time on page, and bounce rates. Moreover, MHA more than tripled the number of registered members on the site. But the impact of this redesign goes beyond the analytics.

Almost immediately after launch, the new WordPress platform proved its value. When Hurricane Helene struck North Carolina in September 2024, it nearly shut down the distribution center that supplies 60% of the country’s IV fluids. MHA’s new platform meant they were able to quickly and easily inform their members of the crisis and keep them updated until it was resolved.

With their new, streamlined website, MHA is better positioned than ever to share the stories that define Maryland’s hospitals and support the communities who depend on them every day.

INCREASE IN MEMBERS

INCREASE IN PAGE VIEWS

AVG. INCREASE IN TIME SPENT ON PAGE

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