ActiZ: the future of elderly care

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As an association of 400 healthcare organizations, ActiZ is committed to providing good care for the elderly and the chronically ill. Flink developed an inspiring platform for ActiZ with fascinating content for the outside world, and an extensive member portal for its members.

Case description

The healthcare landscape will change drastically in the nearby future. The proportion of elderly people in society is increasing sharply: in 2030 there will be more than 2 million people over the age of 75 in the Netherlands. That is half a million more people that are over 75, than now. The increase in the number of elderly people in the coming years also means that there will be more and more elderly people with a chronic condition. Think of diseases such as osteoarthritis, diabetes or dementia, or long-term neck and back complaints. But also, problems with movement, seeing and hearing. These are all things that require good care, so there is a major challenge in scaling up elderly care in a smart way. As an industry association, ActiZ has a social responsibility to make elderly care future proof. ActiZ therefore wanted to further strengthen the lobby by putting the sector better on the map. In addition, ActiZ wanted to adopt a more service-oriented attitude towards its members.

Case goals and results

Where actiz.nl first focused mainly on members, the website has now been completely transformed into a platform that also communicates with the outside world. The site has a clear structure with editorial flexibility. All content is connected using four themes: finance, innovation, life, and work. New content fits within one of these themes or is bundled in a collection around a relevant topic. When you land on a page as a user, there is always something relevant to read, through smart redirection of connected content. Moreover, by using different editorial formats, content is presented in an attractive way. Examples of this are categories such as 'Appen met', 'Door de ogen van' and 'Vernieuwers'.

In addition, we integrated a completely new component into the website: the ActiZ Academy. This learning environment focuses on digitization as a driver for future-proof care. Videos, webinars, podcasts and meetings are posted here. We also developed a member portal with an extensive knowledge base, exclusive publications, tools, and the network of ActiZ members. With this portal ActiZ took a big step in the digital service for its members.

The engagement on the new platform is much better than before. The bounce rate almost halved: in 2020 the bounce rate was 63%, this percentage dropped to 33% in 2021. The number of pages per session increased from 2 (2020) to 3 (2021). In total, the platform attracted 346,000 visitors last year and gained 1.9 million page views in total. There were 24,000 logins from members to delve further into healthcare matters. The platform is therefore a showcase for sharing knowledge about elderly care, with important audiences such as the press and politicians. It is also a place to inspire and connect healthcare professionals. This puts the subject of elderly care on the map, for better care solutions in the future. ActiZ's updated editorial formula has also had a huge impact on traffic from social media channels. Traffic from social media increased by 48% in 2021.

Challenges

Linking the CRM of the website presented a challenge in two ways. ActiZ's old website was in fact their CRM. This made it necessary to work together with the CRM party and we had to ensure that the website could exist separately from the components still present in the CRM. The option for users to still log in with the login details known to them, had to remain.

In the end, we made the choice to authenticate with the CRM via an API. The disadvantage of this method and the limited available API was that all other things related to forgotten passwords also run outside the website and must be adjusted directly via pages within the CRM. Slowly but surely, we are looking at whether we can remove these last parts from the CRM and give them a more logical place within the CMS.

Community contributions

For this project we leaned on the Drupal Community. All our websites are tailor-made, so we always look for the best solution for our customers. In some cases we develop modules ourselves to fit the exact need of our client, but sometimes it is simply not necessary to develop new elements. The available modules in the community were already sufficient for the project.

Date when website went live

2 years 10 months ago