Hill-Rom's Web site puts customer service and support first, marketing and sales second - Brief Article

Hill-Rom Inc.'s Web site, www.hill-rom.com, smacks first-time visitors between the eyes with this strong message: "Charting a course towards YOUR support solution. Learn, Sales Support, Service Support, Hill-Rom Worldwide, Parts Online."

Those navigation tools leap off the screen. They are saying that Hill-Rom is using its Web site to, first, serve and retain existing customers, and, second, to sell products.

Customer support sells

And, of course, when a prospect sees such a strong customer service and product support emphasis on a Web site, that becomes an effective sales tool in itself.

These important links sit in the middle column of the home page. The type is big enough to dominate the page. Your eyes go directly to these tools. Then you look for product information. Three big product sectors are highlighted on the right side of the page: "Hospitals", "Long-Term Care" and "Home Care".

Under each of these icons is an obvious pull-down menu. For "Hospitals", the choices are: "Beds, Procedural, Furniture, Communications, Architecture, Medical Gas Products, Accessories, Ultrasound, Service, Surfaces, Operating Room, Infant Care Products."

For "Long-Term Care" and "Home Care", the choices are similar and appropriate for those markets.

When a user goes under the "Hospitals" icon and pull-down menu and clicks on "Operating Room", a new list of links appears: "Critical Care, Emergency Room, Labor and Delivery, Medical Surgical, Newborn Intensive Care, Operating Room, Post-anesthesia, Transport."

This is where you discover this Web site is a work in progress. All but two of the pages listed under "Hospitals" give the message: "There are no products to display." And the two that have products, "Labor and Delivery" and "Operating Room" show a picture of only one product, the Prima[TM] procedural light.

Read product specs and features online

Under "Labor and Delivery," the Prima[TM] procedural light page shows a picture of the light, provides an outline of benefits and features and offers a brochure and a specification sheet, both of which can be down loaded in PDF format and read and printed out in Acrobat Reader.

Readers are given another way to find products, the "Product Catalog."

Click on beds, Hill-Rom's core business, and a full range of products is shown.

The TotalCare[R] Bed System, a high end system, not only lists four major features but also offers three studies that users can download in PDF format.

FAQ explains what you can do on the Web site

Hill-Rom's Web site also serves as an effective marketing and sales tool. Take a look at the FAQ, or frequently asked questions, page. This is where you learn that:

* You can download product brochures or have colored ones mailed to you.

* Service manuals can be downloaded by registered users from the "Parts" pages.

* Registration allows users to track UPS shipments of parts.

* Users can click on "Sales Support" on any page to find the salesperson in your area.

* Customers can submit a question by clicking on "Talk Back" and, "A Hill-Rom customer support person will contact you within one business day."

PDFs allow use of existing brochures

The PDF format allows the company to use existing brochures and white papers on its Web site. All the Webmaster has to do is convert the document file used to produce a printed brochure to PDF format and put it on the Web site. And, if there are no existing brochures, they can be created for the Web site exclusively or for both the Web and a printed document. The nice thing about publishing on the Web is that content can be updated instantly and easily, if someone is available to do the writing and editing.

Also, a Web site can be produced on the fly. Many companies waste months completing a Web site before they publish it. What Hill-Rom is doing makes more sense. It has produced the most important elements of the site and published them. As additional materials become available, they, too will be published.

By publishing links to empty pages, it is telling users that the information is to come and that it has products in the categories that aren't yet fully documented. The alternative is to list links to pages only after there is content available for those pages. It's a judgment call.

What's important is to get the information to customers as quickly as possible and sell.

Donald E. L. Johnson is Chairman and CEO of The Business Word Inc., publishers of Health Industry Today, Hospital Materials Management, Health Care Strategic Management, Profiles in Healthcare Marketing, Healthcare Advertising Review, Financial Advertising Review, TWINS magazine, www.TWINSMagazine.com, www.TWINS.net and www.BusinessWord.com.

COPYRIGHT 2001 J.B. Lippincott Company
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group