Count On Coffey

By Melissa Queen, Digital Services Manager

Healthcare marketing leaders spend a lot of energy improving navigation, calls to action and campaign landing pages. But there's one experience that can quietly undermine all of that effort if left unaddressed: internal site search.

Search is where website visitors stop browsing and start declaring intent. They're not saying, "I'm interested." They're saying, "I need to pay a bill," "I want a provider," "Is there a job opening?" or "Who treats this condition?" And many visitors get there fast. One commonly cited data point is that 43% of users go directly to a site's search bar.

If what they see next is irrelevant, incomplete or empty, the outcome is usually simple: They leave. That's why search deserves to be treated less like a utility and more like a conversion pathway, especially for health systems intent on strengthening their digital front door.

The failure pattern we see most

A common issue on healthcare sites is "exact match or nothing": Users get few results unless they type the exact phrasing that appears on the page. Tagging and metadata may exist, but they're not meaningfully influencing relevance.

Nielsen Norman Group has long emphasized that site-search log analysis and search-results tuning should be part of usability work—yet many teams can't (or don't) manage search well, resulting in "no relevant results."

And "no results" is more than an inconvenience. In healthcare, the stakes are high: The person who can't find a provider or bill pay link doesn't just abandon a cart—they may abandon your organization.

A nod to what's next: Semantic search and directory normalization

Healthcare search is also getting more complex. Users increasingly expect "smart" results, closer to semantic search than keyword matching. That's where structured provider/location data and consistent taxonomy (of specialties, conditions and services, for example) matter. Even the modest step of using synonyms + weighting + better filters can dramatically improve relevance today, while preparing you for more AI-assisted search experiences tomorrow.

The takeaway

If you want fewer exits from search results, don't just redesign your homepage and hope for the best. Make internal search a high priority in your website roadmap—because it's where high-intent visitors go to decide whether your site will help them or waste their time.

Categories: Digital