Out of "site": Low Utilization of the American Urogynecologic Society's Online Patient Resources in an Observational Study Using Website Analytics

Objectives The aims of the study were to estimate utilization of the American Urogynecologic Society's patient education website, VoicesForPFD.org, by women with pelvic floor disorders (PFDs), to describe users over time and how they found the site, and to evaluate use of content areas of the site. Methods Website metrics were extracted from Google Analytics during 2013-2019 for VoicesForPFD.org. Data included number and geography of users, source of user arrival (for example search engine, social media, advertisement), and web pages viewed. Utilization was calculated by dividing the number of website users by the estimated number of women with symptomatic PFDs in the same year from previously published prevalence estimates and U.S. Census population data. The number of page views were extracted for each web page from 2017 to 2019 to describe content use. Descriptive analyses are presented. Results VoicesForPFD.org had 1,382,287 users during 2013-2019, predominantly in the United States. Nationally, there were 5.3 VoicesForPFD.org users for every 1,000 women with symptomatic PFDs in 2018. Users arrived primarily through organic search and advertisements; less than 1% of users arrived via social media. The pelvic organ prolapse section of VoicesForPFD.org was the most highly viewed content with 670,550 page views in 2017-2019. In the same years, the site's pages on pelvic mesh had only 21,249 page views despite high media visibility on the subject. Conclusions Utilization of VoicesForPFD.org by U.S. women with symptomatic PFDs is very low. More research is needed on methods to engage women online and through social media to provide them with high-quality PFD treatment information.