Website Review: St. Joseph Regional Medical Center

As a volunteer for the St. Joseph Regional Medical Center I thought it would be fun to critique their website a little bit.  Their url http://www.sjmed.com is nothing too clever but it is easily searchable in google.  When looking at a website the first thing i look at is the aesthetic aspects.  When you first open the page the colors used are very pleasing and not too harsh on the eyes.  The site incorporates different hues of grays and blues and contrasts them with yellow.  The fonts are very simple, times new roman, and are emphasized in bold where necessary.  Small pictures accompany the text to give a better appeal to the different stories and topics presented.  The top title bar incorporates flash that is simple and to the point giving visual appeal while allowing the site to load quickly.  The layout of the home page is pretty well organized.  however, it seems like it could be two separate pages between the top portion and the bottom portion.  A small amount of rearrangement of the old news and upcoming events may make it seem a little more cohesive.

 

The content presented on the site is in accordance with what the Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center does; educate its users about the medical center and any quesitons that may arise when looking into a hospital.  The site is aimed to help various types of people.  In the top tabs alone it helps people looking for a doctor, people looking to donate, patients, families, people taking classes, people looking for employment, and people living within various regions of the area.  The amount of content spread throughout the site is incredible.  The site map alone has over 100 links to choose from in the first column alone! Although this is effective at showing everything the site has to offer right up front on one page, it may take the user an hour to find out how to volunteer (this link is located at the very bottom of the site map page) using the site map.  

 

Luckily, the homepage is not as crowded as the site map and allows the user more navigation options.  There are tow navigation bars.  The first is located in the top right corner.  This navigation bar repeats throughout the site and allows the user to move from the home page, contact us page, the driving & directions page, and the site map with ease.  The second navigation bar located under the title bar has ten tabs that allow each different user to find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently.  Each of these tabs has a drop down menu that allows the user one-click access to most of the areas of the site.  This is very convenient for let's say the volunteer who before was looking through hundreds of links on the site map and can now just scroll over the "ways to give" tab and click once to receive all information about volunteering the hospital has to offer.  Many of the pages off of the homepage are also consistent with the previous navigation from the drop down lists.  They use a side navigation bar to allow the user the most practical pathways through each topic, making the site very functional. 

 

Even with all this great navigation and content there are a few problems that arise with the site.  First off, as a website for a community and hospital you would think that there would be an option for the visual or hearing impaired.  However, looking through the site no such option was found, some of the text was fairly small and even I had a hard time trying to read with my slight near-sightedness. This is a huge problem for the usability of the site.  If everyone can't use it then how is the vision impaired person going to receive the information about the Eye Surgery Center in Edison Lakes.  Another big problem I saw was that when the user clicked on the home page link in the top navigation bar it first went to an old homepage from 2007.  Even though this only lasted about three seconds before redirecting itself to the current up-to-date version this should be looked at and fixed.

 

As a whole the website is very functional and user friendly.  It allows each different user easy ways to access as much information about a particular topic as fast as possible.  The aesthetic aspects of color, symmetry, and making effective use of text, photos, animations, and videos allows the suer to immediately enjoy looking for information.  Even though there is a lot of information presented on the homepage it is to the point, easy to navigate, and presented in a logical way. With only a few small problems this website overall is pretty assessable and maintained well.  i would give this website a 3.5 stars out of 4.