American Cancers Society Builds Website Around Stages of Disease

CIO — Sandra Smiling was looking for information on the Web, but her concerns weren’t as mundane as finding a cheap flight or getting a great deal on Elvis memorabilia. The 51-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., native was a breast cancer patient. "I was looking for someone who was facing the same dilemma," she says. "I needed answers."

Smiling found what she needed at Cancer.org, the website of Atlanta-based American Cancer Society (ACS). Now, after undergoing a bilateral radical mastectomy, she visits the site two or three times a day. She finds practical information, such as whether to take Femara or Tamoxifen after her surgery, and emotional support from fellow survivors who opted for the same type of breast reconstruction. "This site uplifted my spirits and induced a spiritual healing within me," she says.

Smiling is one of more than 330,000 visitors to Cancer.org every month. However, the legion of satisfied "customers" (as ACS executives call them) still wasn’t enough to please the organization’s leaders. They believed the site needed big improvements?$7 million worth, in fact. In August, the ACS launched a new website.

"Customer expectations continually evolve, and you have to meet those expectations," says James Miller, director of Internet strategy. "If you’re really good, you go beyond them, and your customers say, ’Wow, that’s something I didn’t even know that I needed.’"

For Terry Music, strategic business manager for information delivery and Miller’s boss, the changes to the website became personal. After moving from Tampa, Fla., to Atlanta to take the position at ACS headquarters, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 1999.

Music spent the next 14 months going through treatment. She considered herself lucky to have moved to Atlanta because she had access to top oncologists at Emory University, as well as close contact with the chief medical director and surgeon at ACS. "Within the organization, we always talk about how we can help people turn information into knowledge, and that’s what they were doing for me," says Music. "I knew that the ACS as a whole could play that role for others, and I began to strive to make it easier for our customers to get information in a way that makes the most sense for them."

For the relaunch of Cancer.org, Music and Miller worked with Sapient, which had clinical psychologists and cultural anthropologists spend time with cancer patients at various stages to develop an "experiential model." That model outlined medical issues and personal questions like, "Why am I tired all the time?" and "Will chemo hurt?" that arise during the stages of cancer. Miller then rebuilt the Cancer.org site around that model. "That’s how we went from a good but rather static experience to the dynamic site we have today," explains Miller. He worked with an 18-person team and 85 Sapient staffers to consolidate and reorganize the content, build the online communities and provide new tools to help users with every foreseeable situation.

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