Challenge: Stiefel Laboratories (a GSK company) was interested in developing a new dermatology-focused physician portal for use by dermatologists and physicians’ assistants.

Objective: Prior to the development process, Stiefel and its agency, were interested in better understanding these audiences’ overall web usage related to their practices, particularly with regard to research, patient treatment, and product information.

Solution: Plan-it conducted an in-depth Exploratory Study among dermatologists and physician’s assistants across major markets. Specifically, Plan-it explored overall web behavior related to the clinicians’ practices, including the use of mobile devices and applications, reactions to key competitive sites, and had them build “the ideal” site through a creative exercise. This learning helped identify the most compelling information, functionality and features for the new website. A wide variety of physician-related homepages were also exposed to understand key elements that drive usage and value of a site.

Result: Based on learning, Plan-it made recommendations for the optimal dermatology physician portal from Stiefel, including a positioning direction, overall design, crucial content and functionality, and ways to overcome some obstacles such as credibility of certain content.