How to Create a Personalized Web Experience Without Getting Creepy

// By Melanie Graham //

When talking about healthcare provider websites, the word “personalization” will give most people pause. With today’s heightened awareness around patient privacy and HIPAA, how can a healthcare provider effectively personalize a website without going too far?

This was a question Main Line Health faced in 2015-2016 when it took on a website redesign project. The Philadelphia-based health system wanted to find a better way to get visitor information they needed quickly. But Main Line had to approach the personalization carefully and avoid anything that resembled the kind of personalization most Amazon users experience, with recommended products plastered all over a page.

Jenn Blazejewski, chief strategy officer, Velir

“Personalization is about reducing friction and helping people find what they need without adding to stress they’re already facing,” says Jenn Blazejewski, chief strategy officer with Velir, a digital marketing agency that worked with Main Line Health for the personalization project. “It’s about being helpful, not invasive.”

Blazejewski joined Andy Gradel, at the time Main Line Health’s system director for digital marketing, for a presentation at the 2018 Healthcare Internet Conference (HCIC), “Getting Personal Without Getting Creepy.” The presentation focused on Main Line’s subtle but effective approach to personalization on its website.

“Personalization was baked in from the start of the website redesign project,” Gradel says. “It was one of the key solutions for improving the user experience as well as solving a few internal challenges with which locations and services we’d feature on certain pages.”

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