Growing the #1 health information site in the U.S. through site migrations, SEO optimizations, subscriptions, sponsorships, and revenue diversification while giving users the health information they’re looking for.
The evolution of the platform
It started with Healthline.com. In 2017, the engineering team re-platformed the site. I collaborated with the creative director on a phase 1 rebrand, defined new breakpoints, set up the style guide, and worked with engineering to implement the new designs.
Shortly after that we acquired Authority Nutrition and migrated their content on to Healthline.com within the Healthline brand as a nutrition category, while keeping some hints of their brand since they had a following.
In 2019, we acquired Greatist.com and migrated it to our platform while keeping their strong visual branding as much as possible. This happened to be right at the same time we were launching our phase 2 rebrand of Healthline.com which included a new logo (designed by the creative director.)
Then later in 2019, we migrated Medical News Today (MNT) on to the platform. They didn’t have a strong brand presence, so we took an MVP approach to styles and tweaked just enough to make it look different from Healthline.
In 2020, Healthline.com became the #1 health information site in the U.S (surpassing WebMD in unique monthly visitors according to Comscore).
The last site (so far!) was Psych Central, which we acquired and migrated on to our platform at the end of 2020, with a full visual rebrand. I supported two other designers with the rebrand and led the organization and execution with engineering.
In my six years at Healthline, I’ve worked on many optimizations of the sites to meet such goals as increasing traffic through SEO, growing our product offerings for sponsorship, increasing conversion on lead gen and affiliate offers, increasing ad viewability, increasing acquisition and retention of our newsletter subscribers, and adding user value to increase engagement and improve brand recall.
I’ve compiled a sample of some of these initiatives.
Rx Savings widget
I designed a concept for users to find coupons for their medications with a partnership with a coupon company.
Goal: Revenue diversification, user engagement, traffic growth.
Calculators
We needed a BMI calculator and a calorie calculator for SEO articles on Healthline and MNT, and because we were very limited on time and had to keep the scope small, I made both uses cases into one component design with just a few variations.
Goal: User engagement and traffic growth.
Quizzes/Assessments
I worked on multiple quiz types for different use cases and on different sites, while avoiding adding complexity to the design system. Credit: I was a collaborator on the Healthline quiz as the product designer’s manager.
Goal: User engagement, sponsorship opportunities, migration while preserving traffic
Sponsored program page differentiation
With each site we added to our platform, we needed to create new products for advertisers to sponsor. The Sales team was more successful pitching additional products if the products looked like something new and exciting.
I designed page templates that were reskinned for the different brands and re-used components creatively to build different experiences. For the more lifestyle audience on Greatist, I used more image-heavy components, and for the audience on MNT who prefers content full of science and studies, I used components that looked more like a resource list.
Goal: Sponsorship opportunities
Newsletter popups.
Goal: Subscriptions and brand recall