This is What a Great Clinical Trial Website Looks Like

Patient recruitment marketing starts with a compelling clinical trial website. It's the mothership for conveying your study methodology, site locations, patient eligibility, partner links and what subjects can expect. Executed correctly, it also conveys empathy and encourages web visitors to reach out and engage with you and share the site with others. So what makes a clinical trial landing page successful? Trial AMPlify, a leading patient recruitment agency located in Boston, MA breaks down the elements of great messaging, imagery, search engine optimization (SEO), compliance, layout and what to look for in a digital marketing agency partner.

A Clinical Trial Patients' Journey
Martha was diagnosed with a rare disease that if left unchecked, would cause her complications as she got older. Her family and friends instantly sprang into action and scoured the Internet for possible treatments. Drugs, gene-therapy, herbal remedies; nothing was dismissed out of hand. Every Google search result was scrutinized and checked against other blogs and patient testimonials.

Soon, a list of options emerged when suddenly, a family member found there was a specific clinical trial available for Martha's specific disease. The website described Martha's condition, conveyed the exciting new science approach, and provided an FAQ section and next steps for Martha to explore eligibility. Within days she was accepted and started treatment. In the end, the therapy protocol saved her life. The life science firm went on to become FDA approved. Market access and reimbursement codes were approved and the company was listed on NASDAQ soon after based on their new gene therapy platform and exciting pipeline. This is a true client story!

The importance of the compelling and purposeful clinical trial website cannot be understated as it was responsible for ramping up subject recruitment quickly, and enabling the biotech to gather enough patient data and reveal its findings. Similar studies by other biotech firms were underway, but the other biotech's relied solely on the clinicaltrials.gov website to promote their studies. The old saying "who gets there first wins" is a classic example for this success story.

ELEMENTS OF A GREAT CLINICAL TRIAL LANDING PAGE

Design - Web design is like music during a movie. You don't notice it, but it gives you a feeling. Clinical trial website design follows certain conventions to walk a web visitor through a user experience which ultimately leads them to taking action. e.g., sharing the site with their doctor, contact a clinical trial site, etc. Web design can be metaphorical or literal depending on the messaging and the target audience. Look for a healthcare centric web marketing agency that offers a 100% homepage design guarantee or your money back. This is a sign they have the experience and the talent to deliver a remarkable web presence. This also takes whether you'll love your new website design off the table.

Messaging - From the headline and sub-headline to the calls to action, messaging is paramount to pulling a web visitor in, and leading them down the path you desire. Many biotech firms use headline messaging that is either too long or too broad. Ideal headline messaging can state something clever, but it must immediately follow it up with very specific information relating to their clinical study. "Curing Disease For a Healthier World" sounds like a nice website headline, but it does not crystalize the intent of the study. "Targeted Gene Therapy to Treat XXXX Disease in Young Children," is an example of a headline that cuts through and clarifies exactly what the study is focused on.

Website Layout and Formatting - Big paragraph chunks of text are hard to read. Based on heat map eye tracking studies, web visitors tend to scan content as opposed to reading every word. Good formatting should break text up into "smaller bite size" pieces of information. The use of dashes and bullets can also help shake up the reading experience, and keep the web visitor engaged. Don't forget to ensure the font size is big enough and just right for older eyes. If you're working with a patient recruitment digital marketing agency, ensure they show you how your new clinical trial website renders on all devices: not just desktops. Site images and text can appear differently on mobile and tablet devices. Make sure your digital agency provides a thorough QA of your site ahead of launch.

Audience Personas - It goes without saying that a patient facing a possible life-threatening disease or condition is highly motivated to find answers. Based on heat-map eye tracking studies, most folks scan headlines and text rather than reading. Is the web page "scannable," or too text heavy. Are too may technical terms being used in the beginning of the visitor journey? Considering the UX experience is an important step to review for a patient recruitment campaign and clinical trial website. Testing outside of the client team is an important step with regard to Usability. Does the information hierarchy make sense to the layman? 

Also, allowing web visitors to "self identify" on a landing page is a clever way to convey the right messaging and information to individual audiences. An upfront Patient or Doctor choice on a web page is an excellent way to send someone down the correct funnel.

Eligibility - Conveying clinical trial eligibility is another critical component of a patient trial study landing page. Instead of simply listing certain criteria, well designed icons should also be used to reinforce these areas. This helps to illustrate subject eligibility and further compliments the design on the web pages.

Subject Diversification - One of the challenges for all clinical trials is finding enough subject diversity. Women and different ethnic groups have traditionally been under represented.  A recent analysis showed that although men and women have an equal risk of stroke, only 37% of participants in clinical trials of stroke treatments are female. Another study found that although black adults are two times more likely to develop hypertension by middle age than white adults, only about 5 percent of hypertension clinical trials in recent years have explicitly focused on black participants. View Trial AMPlify's blog post on "How to Increase Diversity Within a Clinical Trial Study" here >>

SEO - A great looking clinical trial website cannot serve you well unless the essential search engine optimization (SEO) best practices are implemented. Doing so enables your new clinical trial landing page to show up for the keywords that matter to your study. Websites that neglect proper metadata, alt tags, H1 titles and interlinking are unlikely to rank for Google page # 1 positions. Tip: Look beyond "PR and web design-only" agencies as their talent is only skin deep. A full-service biotech centric web marketing agency is usually your best bet to ensure remarkable design and back-end SEO skills meet.

Compliance - Most general web design and PR firms lack the experience needed to ensure clinical trial websites are HIPAA compliant and follow GDPR rules when clinical study patient recruitment studies run outside the US. Learning as you go opens you up to serious fines and can delay your pipeline. Working with a patient recruitment digital marketing agency with the HIPAA, GDPR and locked down site security is par for the course. Avoiding open CMS platforms like WordPress is another hazard life science firms need to be aware of. WordPress is the most hacked CMS platform in the world and the third-party plugins used to make the sites function are rarely vetted for compliance. Learn why smart life science firms are avoiding WordPress for their corporate website and clinical trial landing pages here >>

Look for digital agencies who use closed CMS platforms. This will not only spare you from compliance issues down the road, but it will also eliminate the exploitation of web design agencies looking to lock you into expensive yearly maintenance plans to keep your site up and running.  Outside of an annual hosting, security and back up fee (usually under $500), your yearly website maintenance costs should be zero. Now more than ever, biotech and life science firms need to find a digital agency partner who will not push them to the financial limit.

About Trial AMPlify

Trial AMPlify is a leading patient recruitment marketing agency located in Boston, MA. Our dedicated team of professional web marketing strategists, SEO, copywriters, Google certified individuals and award-winning designers have worked with the largest names in biopharma including Pfizer, Moderna, Harvard Medical School, Charles River Labs and countless other life science, biotech and medical device companies. See what makes our life science-centric patient recruitment advertising agency different.

Contact us to discuss your new corporate website design, trial study website or patient recruitment marketing needs. You'll be in good company.