Key tasks of the website redesign:
- Migrate the website from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7.
- Migrate all the website content.
- Improve UX/UI.
- Integrate the website with the Intranet tools of the Health Center.
- Touch up an intuitive admin dashboard.
Statistics:
- the average number of appointments booked through the site per month increased from 193 to 1,623;
- 24,117 active website users since January 20, 2021;
- the total number of users increased from 28,600 to 63,100.
Case Study Overview
The 16 and Under Children's Health Center contacted us in 2016. Their website was running on an unsupported Drupal version, and its design did not provide our new clients with features that the competitors’ websites did. We offered the Center assistance in creating a convenient tool that would allow doctors to focus on their work and let clients make appointments easily and check service prices and test results quickly.
The old website was built on the Drupal 6 CMS. In 2016, this version was not supported by the Drupal community anymore and was not receiving security updates. The platform had to be migrated to the more recent Drupal 7.
UX/UI improvements
Home page
We kept the page structure and the Health Center's brand colors but redesigned the look of the home page. We made it neater and airier, replaced the old-fashioned clipart icons with minimalistic ones, and diluted the green and orange palette with new shades.
Our web designer created the UI kit — an excellent guide for front-end developers. In it, she specified all typography elements (fonts for the body, headings, links), UI elements (buttons, menus in the sidebar), etc. With its help, front-end developers revamped the overall look of the website pages without any back-end work.
Mobile-friendly design
The old website did not have an adaptive design. Since the number of mobile users is growing, we have closed that gap.
User roles
Registered users have a personal account where they can make a doctor’s appointment, download their children’s test results as a JPEG or PDF, browse the history of visits, and check their card balance. Unregistered users can book an online consultation and view test results by entering their phone and medical record numbers if they have visited this Health Center before.
Booking an online consultation
Now users fill out four smaller forms step by step instead of one long appointment form.
The process of booking an online consultation: choosing a specialist — filling out personal data — verification — payment transaction.
User account
The personal account has been improved so that website users can:
- add and edit personal information,
- add and edit their children’s information,
- view test results online,
- view the history of visits,
- check the balance of a gift card,
- subscribe to the news feed,
- apply for a tax return,
- pay for the annual medical care program.
Annual health care program
The Health Center authorities saw the opportunity to offer clients one-year healthcare packages for children of different age groups. The previous design did not promote this service well.
We made it more attractive and informative. This is a high-gain task that the client believes in and the ADCI Solutions team is actively working on. One of its final stages is to create a separate page for this section and add a link to it to the main menu.
Along with the annual program, users can now pay for additional services on the website. The feature was introduced in June 2022, and by December it was used more than 100 times.
Web development
Price calculator
Drupal does not allow you to calculate the total cost of services of medical professionals from different fields. The previous development team wrote this tool using jQuery, but we rewrote it in Angular 4.x for further extension and support.
Migration from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7
We reproduced the structure of the old site on the new core. While the migration to Drupal 7 itself wasn’t anything special, content migration was a more delicate process. The thing is, when we started working, the website had about 30 000 active users. We had to use a special module to transfer all the data and save their logins, passwords, test results, etc.
Now we are planning the website migration to Drupal 8, 9, or 10. Further migration is complicated by these versions’ incompatibility with the information system of the Health Center. The Center's database runs on the Microsoft SQL database management system. Its current version does not work with PHP 8 and 8.1 which are necessary for Drupal 9 and 10. The client and we are looking for a quick and budget-friendly way to upgrade the architecture.
Integrating the website with the internal information system of the Center
The information system of the Health Center is built on Microsoft SQL and stores electronic medical records and doctors' schedules. The site database is built on MySQL. These two databases should exchange data with each other, but they did not do that correctly due to the difference in transfer control systems. We wrote a layer in PHP to make communication possible.
Results
- the average number of appointments booked through the site per month increased from 193 to 1,623;
- 24,117 active website users since January 20, 2021;
- the total number of users increased from 28,600 to 63,100.
We keep in touch with the client and continue improving the website.
Artyom Zenkovets
Alexander Kuznetsov
Tatiana Shulgina
