The much anticipated Healthcare.gov website is unfortunately and embarrassingly being coined one of the "worst high-profile website launches", and one that the government should not have gotten wrong.
Healthcare.gov is a healthcare exchange website developed and run by the US federal government under "Obamacare", the provisions of which are meant to serve 36 US states that opted not to create their own healthcare exchanges. It is a way for consumers to compare health insurance options within his/her state.
Visually, the website is nice. The typography and simple layout are almost comparable to Amazon or Etsy, and the navigation is simple. Even from the home screen, the user is presented with two easy options: (1) Apply Online or (2) Apply by Phone, and is also given the opportunity to see a full list of plans in their area.
Usability, however, is a disaster. Only six people were able to sign up the day it launched. The website developers' excuse was that "After the launch, Healthcare.gov was inundated by many more consumers than anticipated." The fact that developers did not account for scalability is an extreme misstep, particularly for a site with such a publicized launch and significant purpose.
The point of registration was a crucial part of the customer journey, and the one where users were incurring the most glitches on launch-day. The reason behind the high volume of registrants was the last minute decision to implement the registration requirement before users had the ability to browse insurance products.
Not much has changed since launch. The website still looks nice, and barely works. Two lessons I take from this are (1) If you are launching a website, especially one that offers health insurance products on behalf of the government, make sure it works at launch. (2) Continuous communication between developers and key decision makers of web projects are essential. If the anticipated traffic had been communicated, or vice-versa - if the possibility of a crash due to high volume had been anticipated - this situation may have been avoided.
Source: Mashable
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