Nuts &
Bolts
Timeline
- August 2022 – November 2022
Launch
- May 2024
Project Scope
- Discovery
- Project strategy blueprint
- Information architecture
- Audience research
- Content strategy
- Visual design
- Component library build
- Front-end development
- Site testing
CMS
Omni CMS
Site Size
About 1000 indexed pages
Texas Tech Physicians has a clear mission: to make it easier for people across West Texas to get quality care.
But in 2022, their outdated website was doing the opposite—confusing users, blending into the broader university brand, and failing to support the business goals of the practice.
When Director of Digital Marketing & Content Strategy, Mary Moore joined Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) in late 2022, the redesign of the Texas Tech Physicians website was in the planning stages. Right away she saw the project’s unique opportunities and challenges. The institution operates as both a medical practice and an academic entity, serving communities across West Texas with a brand that was often misunderstood, even internally.
The old website was confusing, outdated, and functionally disconnected from the practice’s real-world goals. “It was a liability,” Mary says. “We were doing everything we could to keep people off the website.”
Texas Tech Physicians needed more than a redesign. They needed to reimagine the website as a strategic business tool—one that could cut through institutional complexity and guide patients confidently to care.
Challenge: Build a Healthcare Website Within a Higher Ed System
Unlike typical university websites, this one had to serve patients (and the people who make decisions on their behalf)—people who weren’t looking for degrees or departments, but clear paths to care. And in a region where driving six hours to access critical care isn’t uncommon, the stakes were pretty high.
The project faced multiple layers of complexity:
- Brand confusion between Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, and University Medical Center hospital
- A legacy site that was content-heavy, not conversion-focused
- Siloed digital infrastructure with limited analytics and tracking
“At the end of the day, healthcare is a business,” Mary said. “We need patients to find a doctor, make an appointment, and pay a bill. The old site just didn’t support that.”
Our Approach: Build the Foundation by Understanding the Audience
As a resident, Mary had a strong sense of the organization’s West Texas audience, but didn’t know exactly how this audience was looking for information online. She wanted to compare her assumptions with real data, so NewCity undertook user research to identify the top user goals in the healthcare journey. “To work with a team that believes in research was revolutionary and so appreciated…” she said. “The research presentation and recommendations were great. I believe in the numbers—if you read them correctly, all the answers are there.”
The usability tests revealed that, “There was confusion in the marketplace… patients don’t care who owns what. They need to find a doctor, know where to go, and get an appointment.” said Mary.
Based on the research findings, we reorganized the site’s information architecture around the real-world questions people have when they need care:
- Where is this clinic?
- What services do they offer near me?
- Can I trust this physician?
- How do I book an appointment?
With the IA in place, we worked on developing a content strategy that would enable informed, confident action for patients and decision makers. The previous site was dense, static, and overly institutional—”talking at people,” as Mary described it. The new messaging strategy and copy avoided institutional-speak and focused on clear and easy-to-digest content. While it was important to TTP to highlight their connection to the university and the hospital, Mary notes, “We didn’t try to over-explain academic medicine. We focused on demonstrating credibility—expertise, care, availability.”
Designing a Healthcare Brand Within a Higher Ed Institution
A major turning point in the project came when Mary challenged the assumption that the clinical practice should follow Texas Tech’s red-and-black brand palette. “Red and black is aggressive,” Mary said. “That’s not how you design for care and compassion.” So together we designed a visual identity tailored for healthcare. We created a new color system based on color psychology and an image style, icons and treatments that reflected calm, clarity and trust.
Mary insisted that “This was a hill I was willing to die on… We had to design for care and comfort, not institutional alignment.”
Laying the Groundwork for a Modern Marketing Strategy
In addition to connecting West Texans with trusted, quality care, a main goal for the site was to support institutional growth. Mary viewed the site as a digital home base for the marketing strategy she and her team would go on to develop. “In 2025, every decision starts on the internet”, she said. “This website is the foundation. Before we could do anything—email, content, profiles—we needed this.”
With the digital platform, strong brand and audience insights to support content development, Mary said, “Now we can confidently move forward. We have a center of gravity for our marketing. We’re not sending people to something we’re trying to hide anymore.”
What’s Next for Texas Tech Physicians
The new website now serves as a trusted, conversion-focused hub for Texas Tech Physicians’ growing digital strategy. While analytics integration is still underway, the site has enabled:
- Confident expansion into SEO-driven content marketing (via a new blog that will launch in mid 2025)
- Future HIPAA-compliant email campaigns
- Visual and brand consistency across social platforms like LinkedIn
- Ongoing efforts to track engagement at the physician profile level
“Before we could do any of that, we needed a website that looked and felt like what we wanted our audience to know about us. Now we have it.”
