Factors of Excellence and Enhanced Survivability

18Factors of Excellence and Enhanced Survivability

18.1Searching For the Factors that Affect the Global Rank of the Medical Websites

The 315 medical websites of the sample were ranked according to their “Global Rank” variable measure, since this is estimated based on the traffic flow of the website which is considered to be a good indicator of the success of the website. The “Google Rank” measurement could be used also for this purpose, but the Global Rank” variable measure was considered more appropriate since is a more analytical number scale ranged from #1 to a couple of millions with the best websites a having lower number as rank, compared to the “Global rank” that is a scale with values between zero and ten, with the better performing websites being ranked closer to the #10 value.

After the medical websites were ranked based on their “Global rank” value, the 100 websites with the lowest value (better rank) and the 100 medical websites with the highest value (lowest ranking) were chosen and their metrics were compared to each other in order to identify the factors that have greater influence and impact on the popularity, traffic and success of the website. As the analysis progresses these factors will be used to rank again the websites and end up to a final classification of the most and less successful medical websites based on both the global rank and the factors that can affect it for more accuracy, validity and generalisation of the final results (Figure 17).

Step 1: Ranking the web websites According to their Global rank value

Global Rank

Lower ranked websites

Global Rank

Lower ranked websites

Higher ranked websites

Comparison


Figure : Ranking of the medical websites website according to the “Global rank” value

By comparing the metrics among the highest and lowest ranked medical websites, having as ranking criterion the value of the “Global Rank” variable, it is observed that most of the higher ranked websites have content related to “General Health/ Wellbeing” issues while the greater percentage of the lower ranked websites have content related to “Specific Health issues” and “Medical Resources”.

The medical websites with more general content are expected to attract a greater portion of the users since they cover various issues in one source/search place. On the other hand, medical websites referring to specific health conditions or specific medical material don’t have such great traffic flow since they attract only a small portion from the pool of the medical website users.

Moreover, significant differences among the metrics of the higher and lower ranked medical websites are observed in the case of the structure/nature of the organizations that provide/support the websites. A quite high percentage of the lower ranked websites (45%) are supported by profit organizations in contrast to 25% of the higher ranked websites. Furthermore, 21% of the higher ranked medical websites are under governmental influence compared to only 3% of the lower ranked websites.

Furthermore, by comparing the kind of the medical web-based services /services offered by the higher and lower ranked medical websites, it is observed that 18% of the highest ranked websites are offering drug identifying applications and/ or symptom checkers, compared to only 4% of websites belonging to the other classification. This implies that the users are more attracted to simple-to-use medical applications that can provide an initial self-diagnosed assessment.

In addition, the highest ranked medical websites exhibit greater participation in social networks, like Facebook and Twitter and are more likely to find financial support from governmental and university funding. On the other hand, the lower ranked medical websites have a large number of websites earning income from promoting products and sustaining online shops. Furthermore, the higher ranked websites present greater survivability and their users tend to spent, on average, more time on them, they have 150 times more unique visits on average, a higher percentage of visits referred to from search engines and higher average number of websites that are linked with them compared to the lower ranked websites. This implies that the higher ranked medical websites manage to engage more the pool of the medical websites users in their operations by providing to them services and content according to their needs and that is the main reason that the average reputation measurement of these websites is almost 245 times higher than the reputation of the lower ranked medical websites and engage in interaction almost 14 times more users in their social networks’ profiles.

The same methodological steps were followed in order to identify the factors that affect the survivability, the web presence of the medical websites in the search engines, and the time that the users tend to spend on them.