Virtus Health provide leading assisted reproductive technology, specialist pathology & day hospital services from 43 fertility healthcare clinics in 3 continents.
Virtus Health approached us with a portfolio of websites for their European healthcare clinics that needed to be unified with their existing sites across Australia and in Singapore. Pivale were able to identify and explore consolidation opportunities that would help the whole group, regional operations and individual clinics.
12 websites. 5 Countries. 3 Continents.
Pivale have transformed the way we manage websites. We were burdened with the continual cost of building and rebranding websites but Pivale offered us a unique solution to streamline the process and provide a framework whilst being flexible enough to accommodate different brands and be adaptable for the future.
— Natalie Woodbridge, Marketing & Public Relations, Virtus Health
1
Increase engagement and conversion rates
We identified specific problem areas where potential leads would likely 'drop out' due to poor design decisions or placing too much burden on the user. First and foremost, any new website strategy needed to prove its worth in terms of return-on-investment. By focusing on new enquiries, and other conversion metrics, we were able to advise which improvements should be prioritised over others.
2
Create brand consistency
Branding and messaging across the group lacked consistency due to multiple designers and developers having built the various websites. This could be greatly improved by making important decisions once and gaining the benefit across all sites.
3
Create a new site rollout plan
Virtus Health had recently begun its acquisition strategy in Europe and found it slow and cumbersome to bring the acquired businesses under the Virtus Health umbrella. Virtus Health needed a documented 'playbook' for further healthcare acquisitions that would streamline the rollout process, coordinate teams for content curation and translation, and save money from the efficiencies gained.
4
Implement a multisite strategy
Rather than managing individual websites in isolation, Virtus Health would benefit from a platform that would support easy expansion, share common functionality between sites, be future-proof, and easier to maintain than many individual sites. Being able to adapt quickly to new requirements was an important consideration that needed to be supported by a modern and flexible platform.
5
Streamline development and support
Rolling out new developments and security updates across the group were time-consuming, sporadic, and expensive. Innovations on one website would be exclusive to that site and not shareable across the other websites without additional expense. This effort should be consolidated.
6
Consolidate hosting
The Virtus Health website portfolio was hosted across multiple hosting platforms and DNS servers, creating a web of confusing and expensive invoices. It also made tracking and resolving issues more complicated given the differences in infrastructure. There were no staging environments for testing changes and safely rolling out changes to the live sites. We advised how to improve the infrastructure for best practices that would allow for getting changes live faster than before.
7
Integrate with CRM
Some websites were integrated with the group's CRM whilst some weren't meaning a lack of oversight on essential data for the business as a whole. The CRM system is a very important part of tracking Virtus Health's KPIs, so first-class integration was very important.
8
Implement privacy and compliance stategy
With evermore attention given to personal privacy online and emerging localised legislation, it was important to enhance the level of compliance Virtus Health could implement, especially given the nature of the private healthcare information being processed by the websites.
As with any major overhaul of websites one of the key focuses was ensuring a good return on investment.
As Virtus Health had many websites they were keen to ensure that any solution had the right balance of long-term efficiency and flexibility. With this in mind, Pivale were able to offer multisite as the perfect solution for Virtus Health.
12 websites serving...
3 continents
5 countries
40+ fertility clinics
60+ laboratories
7 specialist day hospitals
We have been extremely impressed with the exceptional work and service delivered by both Barry and Darren at Pivale. Their dedication, expertise, commitment to excellence, and understanding of the tech world have truly set them apart. Their ability to consistently deliver high-quality work within deadlines has greatly contributed to our success. We highly recommend Pivale as a Drupal agency and look forward to continuing our successful partnership.
— Flavia Pereira, Digital Marketing Manager, Virtus Health
Virtus Health were looking to consolidate and enhance the way they interact with patients through improved user journeys, and provide a future-proof way of managing a full lifecycle of engagement.
This meant being able to help patients from the very first contact right the way through to conceiving and starting a new family. It was nothing short of amazing to be able to literally help Virtus Health turn patients in to parents!
With all the key stakeholders united behind a vision for a more cohesive approach to workflows and branding around the world, the scene was set for Virtus Health's digital transformation journey.
Bringing five separate brands under one roof and creating a sense of unity was never going to be a simple task. From early on in the design phase we had to plan meticulously to allow each brand to have its own identity whilst placed within a framework that would be shared amongst all of the sites.
On previous sites such as Adelco's we used Pattern Lab to build a pattern library for maximum brand consistency. We started to consider whether such an approach could extend to a number of different websites and through a lot of trial and error we were able to build a single pattern library that would help with cross-brand consistency whilst allowing each individual brand to shine.
In addition to this we needed to make sure that each site could have its own unique functionality such as content, menus and forms whilst also sharing functionality such as tools, content types and design patterns. This is where our unique multisite solution comes in. We've built a unique system that handles all of these complex requirements with any degree of flexibility and customisation required.
Their team of developers demonstrated expertise in developing our website. They truly listened to our needs and preferences, offering valuable insights and suggestions along the way. Communication was seamless, with prompt responses to any queries or concerns. Their attention to detail and commitment to client satisfaction are commendable.
— Katy Mc Parland, Marketing Coordinator, Sims IVF
As Virtus Health were already familiar and happy with Drupal as their CMS, Pivale's multisite solution was the natural evolution to power their website portfolio. This allowed Virtus Health to incrementally roll out new healthcare websites in a manageable way to fit within the timelines of the content teams.
We worked through the requirements of each website one-by-one, constantly sharing the latest innovations on each site with the previous ones due to the shared system we'd built.
The sites each integrated with Google Maps, Google Tag Manager and Analytics and Salesforce. Local Danish laws meant that Trianglen and Aagaard had to have all their forms removed and replaced with a secure email facility to comply with enhanced GDPR.
Each site launched successfully and in quick succession of one another, with Aagaard being the final launch in Europe which also featured multilingual translations in Danish, English and German.
Pivale have done incredible work on our websites which look fantastic.
— Sue Channon, Group Chief Executive Officer, Virtus Health
As a result of the success of the European development and launches, we were promptly asked to turn our attention to the websites across the rest of the group's clinics in both Australia and Asia. A total of 6 further clinic sites and the corporate site for the Virtus Health were identified as being candidates for rebuilding in the new multisite system.
These sites brought a whole host of new requirements and innovations that were then in-turn shared with the European sites, allowing the group to benefit as a whole from the ongoing work.
As the Australian sites needed to be hosted in Australia instead of Europe we built a separate multisite stack, and broke out all of the shared functionality between the two so that each region could pull in the latest updates. This meant that as soon as new development took place all sites across the world could benefit immediately upon re-deploying.
Our experience with Pivale has been seamless and enjoyable from the beginning. We set the task of building new websites for our 5 Australian clinics plus one clinic site in Singapore and the global corporate site. The Pivale team were quick to find a solution that not only saved us time but also halved the cost to build 7 traditional websites. They listened to our requirements, and were able to adapt and optimise at every stage. Nothing was ever off the table.
— Niki Evans, Digital Marketing and Campaign Manager, Virtus Health
The project was a massive success for both Virtus Health and Pivale. This was the first real test for our multisite platform and proved the value of the service.
Virtus Health were able to achieve their goals for half of the cost of developing these sites in the traditional manner, whilst also ensuring that no site fell behind in terms of security, compliance, or innovation.
And most importantly, together, we've succeeded in turning more patients into parents.
Virtus Health's websites are hosted on Platform.sh
Virtus Health chose Platform.sh as their hosting partner due to their reputation for faster deployment workflows and security and compliance credentials.
Platform.sh are compliant with PCI Level 1, GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 - Type 2, WCAG 2.1 AA, TX-RAMP, CCPA, PIPEDA, APP, BDSG, and FERPA.
