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ChatGPT Analysis

Note: Instructions used to create this report are the same that were provided to COPILOT.

“I need an in-depth analysis of our website www.allthingspg.org The focus should be on usability and scalability, not so much on content itself, although it should be helpful information to the target audience. I’m interested to know - is it a good web site or not, and areas for improvement. it can be as detailed as you like, as long as you long. Examine as many pages as you can, identify faults, compare to modern websites and standards, and make recommendations for improvement. Save the report as a .md file, using #, ### headers”.

Website audited: https://www.allthingspg.org/
Audit date: October 3, 2026
Primary focus: usability, information architecture, accessibility, task completion, maintainability, scalability, and future growth
Secondary focus: trust, SEO/discoverability, performance risk, and content governance where those affect usability
Overall conclusion: Good foundation, but not yet a strong modern patient-service website.

Overview

This audit is intentionally weighted toward how the site works as a product rather than whether every sentence or medical statement is correct. I reviewed the live site and a broad sample of primary pages, utility pages, articles, people pages, event pages, forms, and linked services. The site has a clear mission, clean URLs, a coherent basic navigation structure, and some genuinely valuable tools—especially the clinic finder, survey, support/community resources, and direct access to the board and organization.

The biggest opportunity is to move from a collection of pages to a task-oriented patient information system. That means organizing around what people are trying to accomplish, making the highest-value actions obvious, using real content types and structured data behind the scenes, and making accessibility/testing part of the design process rather than a final check.

Executive Assessment

The answer to “is it a good website?”

Yes, in the sense that it is credible, useful, understandable, and functional. No, in the sense that it is not yet operating at the level of a modern, scalable patient-support website.

I would characterize it as:

A solid first-generation nonprofit website with good bones that now needs a second-generation usability and information-architecture redesign.

The site is particularly strong in these areas:

Area	Score	Assessment
Purpose and mission clarity	4.5/5	Visitors quickly understand that the site is for the PG community.
Basic navigation	3.5/5	Reasonable top-level structure, but it is organization-centric rather than user-journey-centric.
Core PG education	3.5/5	The major topics exist and are easy to understand.
Clinic-finder concept	4.0/5	Excellent strategic idea; the UX and underlying data model need to mature with it.
Community/support orientation	3.5/5	The site communicates support, but support pathways are not prominent enough.
Homepage task orientation	2.5/5	Too much promotional/rotating content relative to the user's likely immediate needs.
Accessibility	2.5/5	Several likely semantic/accessibility issues are visible from the crawl and require a dedicated WCAG 2.2 audit.
Forms and interaction design	2.5/5	Form and third-party-service dependencies need a more deliberate experience.
Search/discovery	2.0/5	No obvious site-wide search or robust content discovery system.
Content scalability	2.5/5	The current model can grow, but future volume will make page-by-page management increasingly difficult.
Data scalability	2.5/5	Clinic/provider data is the biggest candidate for a proper structured data model.
SEO foundation	3.0/5	Clean URLs and useful page topics are good; semantic structure and structured data should be strengthened.
Performance risk	3.0/5	No lab score was available during this audit, but several external integrations and media patterns create avoidable risk.
Governance/maintainability	2.5/5	The site needs reusable content models, QA controls, ownership, and lifecycle rules.

Overall: approximately 62/100 today.

That is not a failing grade. It means the site is valuable and serviceable, but there is substantial room to make it easier to use, easier to maintain, and much more capable of supporting growth.

What I Reviewed

Live site pages and functions

The audit covered the homepage and the primary navigation destinations, including:

Home
What is PG?
PG Symptoms
PG Causes
Diagnosis of PG
Treatment of PG
Associated Health Issues
Take the PG Survey
Talking About PG
How to Identify PG
Rare Disease Affiliates
News & Events
Our People
Individual board/member pages
Clinic Finder
Mission Statement
Contact
Subscribe
Donate
Industry Partners
PFAC
Data and Privacy
Several individual news/event pages
External survey, newsletter, donation, video, and event destinations

The live site exposes a recurring global navigation containing About PG, All Things PG, News & Events, About Us, language choices, Contact Us, and Donate. The homepage also promotes the Clinic Finder, survey, newsletter, industry partners, and community-support content.

Important limitations

This was a live-site usability and architecture review rather than a full penetration test or source-code audit.

I could inspect rendered page structure, navigation, links, headings, forms as exposed to the crawler, and a substantial set of pages. I could not reliably run a browser-based Lighthouse/PageSpeed lab test in this environment, so I am not assigning numerical Core Web Vitals scores.

Likewise, color contrast, exact touch-target dimensions, keyboard focus appearance, mobile breakpoints, screen-reader behavior, form error handling, and JavaScript-only interaction behavior need a hands-on accessibility/device test before being called confirmed defects.

Those items are nevertheless included as explicit test requirements where the current site gives reason to investigate them.

The Current Site’s Biggest Strength

It has the right ingredients

The site already contains most of the building blocks a strong PG patient resource needs:

disease education
diagnosis information
treatment information
associated conditions
patient/caregiver guidance
community resources
provider/clinic discovery
research participation
survey participation
events and PFAC activities
donation/support
leadership transparency
external rare-disease connections

That is an excellent starting position.

The problem is less “missing pages” and more how these pieces are presented, connected, prioritized, and maintained.

For example, the homepage separately promotes the survey, clinic finder, newsletter, industry partner support, community support, and a video/story. These are all individually reasonable, but a first-time patient is left to decide which path applies to them.

Modern patient organizations increasingly organize the experience around user intent. The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, for example, explicitly begins with journey choices such as newly diagnosed, living with a condition, and caregiver roles, and it provides an “I am a…” audience selector. The National Psoriasis Foundation similarly starts with user states such as “I’m not sure if I have psoriasis,” “I’m newly diagnosed,” “My treatment isn’t working,” “I’m supporting someone,” and “I’m a healthcare professional.” Those patterns reduce cognitive load because they mirror the user’s mental model rather than the organization’s internal structure.

Sources:

https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/
https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/patientsandcaregivers/ibdjourney
https://www.psoriasis.org/
https://www.psoriasis.org/navigationcenter/

Homepage Assessment

What works

The homepage immediately communicates the organization’s purpose:

“All Things PG: A Pyoderma Gangrenosum Community connecting patients and caregivers.”

That is strong positioning. It does not make people hunt to understand what the site is about.

The homepage also places three important actions near the top:

find a clinic
take the survey
subscribe

That is strategically good. The site understands that it is not just an information library—it is also a service and community hub.

The clinic finder promotion is especially valuable because it solves a real task rather than just promoting the organization.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/

The homepage’s main weakness: too many competing “primary” messages

The page appears to use a rotating/slide-based promotional area. The crawl exposes “It’s Our Anniversary” and “Take the Survey” as separate headline-level items along with “Welcome to Our Community” and “Connecting the PG Community.”

The crawl also exposes:

“Previous”
“Next”

This is characteristic of a carousel/slider experience.

That is not automatically bad, but it is usually a poor place to put critical patient tasks. Rotation makes content disappear, reduces discoverability, creates keyboard/focus requirements, and increases the chance that two different visitors see different “first” messages.

For this site, I would strongly prefer:

one stable patient-oriented hero section + a small number of fixed task cards

rather than a rotating promotional hero.

A stronger top of page would be something like:

Pyoderma Gangrenosum Support & Information

Trusted information, PG-experienced care, community support, and ways to participate in research.

Then:

I need information

What is PG?
Symptoms
Diagnosis
Treatment

I need help

Find a PG-experienced clinic
Talk with the community
Find support resources

I want to help advance PG care

Take the survey
Participate in research
Advocacy and events

This is much closer to how a stressed patient or caregiver thinks.

Homepage recommendation

Make the homepage answer these five questions in the first screen or two:

What is this site?
Where should I start?
How do I find PG-experienced care?
How do I get support?
How can I participate or help?

Everything else should be secondary.

Information Architecture

The current global navigation is approximately:

About PG
All Things PG
News & Events
About Us
Contact Us
Languages
Donate

Under About PG:

What is PG?
PG Symptoms
PG Causes
Diagnosis of PG
Treatment of PG
Associated Health Issues
Take the PG Survey

Under All Things PG:

Talking About PG
How to Identify PG
Rare Disease Affiliates

About Us contains Our People, Clinic Finder, and Mission.

The structure is rational from the organization’s perspective.

The problem is that “All Things PG” is both the organization name and a navigation category. That is likely to create ambiguity.

A patient does not naturally think:

“I need to go to the All Things PG category.”

They think:

“I was just diagnosed. What do I do now?”

Recommended information architecture

I would consider a first-level model like:

Learn About PG
Find Care
Living With PG
Support & Community
Research & Advocacy
News & Events
About Us
Donate

Then expose the utility actions prominently:

Find a PG Clinic
Get Support
Take the PG Survey

This does not mean adding a huge number of menu items. The goal is the opposite: make the top-level choices correspond to major user tasks.

Proposed structure

Learn About PG
    What Is PG?
    Symptoms
    Causes
    Diagnosis
    Treatment
    Associated Conditions

Find Care
    Clinic Finder
    How to Find a PG-Experienced Provider
    Preparing for a PG Appointment
    Questions to Ask Your Doctor

Living With PG
    Identifying PG
    Talking About PG
    Wound/Care Resources
    Emotional Support
    Caregiver Resources

Support & Community
    Support Groups
    PFAC
    Community Events
    Rare Disease Organizations
    Patient Stories

Research & Advocacy
    PG Survey
    Research Participation
    Clinical Trials
    Advocacy
    Industry Partners

News & Events
    News
    Events
    Newsletters
    Archived Events

About Us
    Mission
    Our People
    Medical/Scientific Leadership
    Partners
    Contact
    Privacy

Donate

This structure is much more scalable because new content has obvious homes.

The global header appears consistently across the site. That is good.

Visitors can move from an education page to the clinic finder, contact form, or donation area without having to return to the homepage.

The site contains multiple levels of content:

topic
article
article category
person
event
utility
external tool

Yet the pages do not expose an obvious “You are here” path.

For a site that grows, breadcrumbs become valuable because they provide both orientation and an additional navigation path.

For example:

Home > Learn About PG > Diagnosis

or:

Home > Research & Advocacy > PFAC

Breadcrumbs are especially useful on long health-information pages where users arrive from Google rather than the homepage.

Weakness: there is no obvious site-wide search

The crawlable navigation does not expose a site search.

At the current size of the site, this is survivable.

At 2–3x today’s content volume, it will become increasingly important.

A search system should eventually cover:

articles
events
people
clinics/providers
support resources
research resources
external resources

W3C’s WCAG 2.2 guidance explicitly recognizes search as one of the ways a user can have multiple ways to locate content.

Source:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/quickref/?versions=2.0

Recommendation

Add a prominent global search, but do not simply add a generic search box and stop there.

The search should understand:

PG terms and common variants
provider/clinic names
states/cities
resources
people
article titles
event titles

Eventually, the clinic finder should have its own specialized search rather than depending on the site search.

Page Structure and Semantic HTML

This is one of the most important technical/usability issues I found

The rendered page structure strongly suggests that interior-page titles are being presented at a low heading level.

For example, the crawl identifies the main title on “What is PG?” as:

“What is Pyoderma Gangrenosum?”

but exposes it at a ### level, with subsequent subheads at ####.

The same pattern appears on “Treatment of PG,” “Find PG Care Near You,” “Talking About PG,” “Data and Privacy,” and others.

On the homepage, several major sections appear as top-level # headings.

That indicates the design may be using heading elements for styling rather than enforcing a consistent semantic document hierarchy.

Why this matters

Headings are not just visual formatting.

They create a navigable outline for:

screen readers
browser accessibility tools
search engines
people scanning a page
users who jump between headings

W3C’s WCAG 2.2 specifically requires headings and labels to describe topic or purpose and provides guidance around heading structure.

Google also recommends that the main page title be clear and visually distinctive rather than presenting multiple equally prominent headings as competing titles.

Sources:

https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/quickref/
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link

Recommended semantic pattern

Every page template should have:

<h1>Page Title</h1>

<h2>Major Section</h2>
<p>...</p>

<h2>Another Major Section</h2>
<h3>Subsection</h3>

The visual size should be controlled by CSS—not by choosing a heading level because it “looks right.”

This is a foundational template issue. Fixing it once in the page template can improve the whole site.

Homepage Heading Problem

Multiple competing H1-style messages

The homepage crawl exposes:

Welcome to Our Community
It’s Our Anniversary
Connecting the PG Community
Take the Survey

as top-level headings.

A homepage can technically contain more than one H1 under modern HTML, but from a usability and accessibility perspective I would still establish one unmistakable page-level identity and use H2 for major sections.

The homepage should have one primary title and then clear content sections.

That also helps search engines determine the page’s main subject.

Google’s current guidance specifically warns that multiple equally prominent headings can make the primary title ambiguous.

Source:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link

Link Text

Repeated “Read more” links

The News & Events page repeatedly uses “Read more” as the link label.

That is a very common design pattern, but it is not ideal for accessibility, scanning, or link-list navigation.

A user using a screen reader can pull up a list of links. A list of:

Read more
Read more
Read more
Read more
Read more

is far less useful than:

Read about the First PFAC Meeting in Michigan
Read the July 2026 All Things PG Newsletter
Read the First Year Anniversary Celebration

WCAG 2.2 requires link purpose to be understandable from the link text or its programmatically available context. W3C also explicitly recommends descriptive link text where possible.

Source:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/quickref/?versions=2.0
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Techniques/general/G53.html

Recommendation

Use full link labels wherever practical.

If visual design requires “Read more,” make the accessible name something like:

Read more about First PFAC Meeting in Michigan

while retaining the shorter visual treatment.

Accessibility

Accessibility should be treated as a primary design requirement

The target audience makes accessibility particularly important.

PG affects people dealing with:

pain
mobility limitations
fatigue
cognitive overload
difficulty concentrating
caregiver burden
potentially older users
potentially users who depend on keyboard, zoom, screen readers, or voice input

The site therefore should aim for WCAG 2.2 AA, not merely “good enough for most visitors.”

W3C currently recommends WCAG 2.2 as the conformance target for sites updating from earlier WCAG versions.

Source:

https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/new-in-22/

Specific accessibility concerns visible from this review

Heading semantics

As described above, the apparent H3/H4 page-title structure needs correction.

Priority: High

Image alternative text

The homepage exposes one image simply as “Image,” while some content images have more descriptive alternatives and others use very minimal text such as “5.”

Examples observed include:

generic “Image”
“Image: 5”
descriptive board-member image alternatives

That inconsistency suggests an image authoring/governance problem.

Decorative images should use empty alt text.

Meaningful images should describe their purpose.

Images containing text should not rely solely on an unhelpful alt string such as “5.”

Priority: High

Keyboard and focus

The site needs a full keyboard pass for:

top navigation
mobile navigation
carousel/slider controls
clinic finder sorting/filtering
map interactions
forms
external-service embeds
modal/pop-up components, if present
newsletter/signup experiences

WCAG 2.2 adds specific requirements around focus visibility and focus not being obscured.

Source:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/new-in-22/
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/

Priority: High

Touch target size

WCAG 2.2 includes a minimum target-size requirement of 24×24 CSS pixels for pointer inputs, subject to exceptions.

Small text links, map controls, menu controls, sort controls, and icon-only buttons should be tested.

Source:

https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/new-in-22/

Priority: Medium/High

Form labels and error handling

The contact page exposes fields for:

name
email
phone
interest/message/question

W3C recommends explicit labels, clear instructions, and useful error feedback. Accessible forms are easier for everyone, not just assistive-technology users.

Sources:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/forms/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/forms/labels/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary/

Priority: High

Color contrast

I could not reliably measure the exact color ratios from the rendered crawl.

This should be included in a dedicated automated accessibility test.

WCAG AA requires, among other things, a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text and 3:1 for large text.

Priority: High to verify

Zoom/reflow

The site should be tested at:

200% zoom
400% zoom where practical
narrow mobile widths
large text settings
Windows high-contrast/contrast themes where relevant

Health-oriented sites should remain useful at large text sizes.

Forms

Contact form: unnecessary friction

The contact page marks:

*Your phone number

as a required field.

For a general nonprofit contact form, a phone number is usually not essential to answer a question.

Requiring it can cause unnecessary abandonment and makes users wonder why it is needed.

W3C’s forms guidance explicitly notes that users prefer simpler forms and recommends asking only for information required to complete the process.

Source:

https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/forms/

Recommendation

Use:

Name — required
Email — required
Message — required
Phone — optional

Then explain why phone is useful if you truly need it.

Even more important: discourage health disclosures

The free-text field says:

“Your interest, message or question”

That invites people to tell the organization about a personal health situation.

The privacy page audited is specifically framed around newsletter collection, not a full website privacy model.

I strongly recommend adding a visible instruction above the contact form:

Please do not include medical records, detailed medical history, photographs of wounds, prescription information, or other sensitive health information in this form.

Provide an appropriate route for information that genuinely needs to be shared.

This is both a risk-management and usability improvement.

Current implementation

The site has a dedicated /subscribe page and links to a Constant Contact page as a fallback.

The crawl shows the signup form area itself as largely empty while exposing:

“Click here to sign up if you’re unable to complete the form above.”

That strongly suggests an embedded third-party form with an external fallback.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/subscribe

UX issue

A newsletter signup is one of the simplest actions on the site.

It should feel instant, obvious, and trustworthy.

The ideal experience is:

Email address
[____________]

[Subscribe to PG updates]

We send occasional news, research and community updates.

Then confirmation should clearly explain what happens next.

Recommendation

Keep the email platform if it is working operationally, but wrap it in a first-party experience:

visible field labels
concise explanation
explicit consent language where needed
clear validation errors
no surprise redirect
clear success state
privacy link immediately adjacent
mobile-friendly interaction
keyboard accessibility
accessible fallback

Survey Experience

Current implementation

The PG survey page links to an OHSU Qualtrics survey.

The external survey page presents a JavaScript-required shell to the audit crawler.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/take-the-pg-survey
https://ohsu.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1Rgun9506UbVoEe

Qualtrics is a reasonable platform choice, but the site should treat the survey as an important application, not merely an outbound link.

Recommended UX

Before leaving the site, show:

who can participate
approximate time required
whether it is anonymous
who sponsors/administers it
what happens with the information
whether participation is voluntary
any age requirements
accessibility/contact support
external-site indicator

Then:

Start the PG Survey →

This makes the transition much less abrupt.

Clinic Finder: The Most Important Product on the Site

Strategic assessment

The Clinic Finder is arguably the most valuable service feature on the entire site.

The page says it provides an interactive, searchable map of clinics and providers who evaluate and treat PG.

The current visible data includes:

provider name
clinic name
city/state
provider type
telehealth availability
clinical trial availability
“more info”
sorting by provider name or clinic name

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/pyoderma-gangrenosum-clinic-finder

That is an excellent foundation.

The current UX is not yet mature enough for the importance of the task

The crawl does not expose an obvious user-facing search input or sophisticated filter set, even though the page describes the tool as searchable.

This may be because the interactive map/search layer is JavaScript-rendered, so it should not automatically be called a defect.

But because this is a core service, it needs an explicit usability test.

Ideal clinic-finder task flow

A user should be able to say:

“I live near Charleston, South Carolina. Show me the closest PG-experienced providers.”

The interface should support:

ZIP code / City / State
[ 29577                       ]

Distance
[ 25 miles ▼ ]

Provider type
[x] Dermatologist
[ ] Rheumatologist
[ ] Wound care
[ ] Other

Telehealth
[x] Available

Clinical trials
[ ] Available

[ Find PG care ]

Then return:

18 providers found

Map                         Results

1. Provider Name
   Clinic
   Charleston, SC
   Dermatology
   Telehealth available
   Clinical trials
   12 miles

   View provider

Essential capabilities to add

Geographic search

ZIP
city
state
optionally “use my location” with permission

Filters

provider specialty
clinic type
telehealth
clinical trials
accepting new patients if verifiable
pediatric/adult where applicable

Sorting

nearest
provider name
clinic name

Result count

Always show:

12 providers found

This helps users understand whether their search worked.

Map/list synchronization

Clicking a map marker should highlight the corresponding card.

Clicking a card should highlight/pan the map.

Mobile-first design

On mobile:

list first
map toggle
large tap targets
sticky “filters” action
no tiny map-only controls

Clear provider detail

A provider record should ideally contain:

provider name
credentials
specialty
clinic name
full address
phone
clinic website
appointment/contact route
telehealth coverage
clinical trials
referral requirements where known
insurance note where verified
last verified date
data source

The key scalability recommendation: normalize the data

Do not treat every clinic record as a blob of page text.

Use separate structured entities such as:

Provider
    provider_id
    name
    credentials
    specialties
    status

Clinic
    clinic_id
    name
    address
    city
    state
    ZIP
    phone
    website

ProviderClinic
    provider_id
    clinic_id
    role
    telehealth
    clinical_trials

Verification
    record_id
    verified_date
    verified_by
    source
    notes

This lets one provider work at multiple clinics and prevents duplicate data.

Add “last verified”

This is extremely important.

A clinic directory is only trustworthy if users know how current it is.

Show:

Verified September 2026

or:

Last reviewed September 2026

and provide:

Report an update

That creates a sustainable maintenance loop.

Data Model and Scalability

The site should move toward real content types

The current site can probably handle incremental growth, but a page-by-page publishing model will become painful once the organization has dozens or hundreds of resources.

At minimum, define these content types:

Resource

For downloadable or external resources.

Fields:

title
resource type
audience
topic
language
file/external URL
date
expiration/review date

Article

Fields:

title
excerpt
body
publish date
author
categories
tags
featured image
external/internal
review date

Event

Fields:

title
date
start time
end time
time zone
location
virtual/in-person
registration URL
recording URL
status

Person

Fields:

name
role
photo
short bio
long bio
credentials
specialty
organization
publications
social/external links

Clinic

Structured record as discussed above.

Partner

Fields:

organization
category
URL
logo
description
relationship type

Translation

Never treat translated pages as unrelated copies.

Each localized page should know:

English page ID
Spanish page ID
French page ID
...

That makes translation management possible.

News & Events

Current state

The News & Events page contains a chronological list of announcements, newsletters, videos, survey notices, PFAC events, external media coverage, and older items.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/news-and-events

This is fine at low volume.

It will degrade as the organization publishes more frequently.

Current problems

The content types are mixed.

For example:

newsletter
organization announcement
local event
podcast
YouTube video
survey
Zoom event
third-party media story

all appear together.

A user looking for an upcoming event has to scan through unrelated articles.

Recommendation

Split discovery by content type:

News
Events
Newsletters
Videos
Research/Study Updates

Then provide filters:

topic
year
category
audience

Future event lifecycle

An event should move automatically through:

Upcoming
    ↓
Today
    ↓
Completed
    ↓
Recording available
    ↓
Archived

This prevents manual maintenance and keeps the page clean.

Date and Editorial Governance

Small examples matter because they signal system quality

The site contains minor editorial inconsistencies in event/article content, such as “Kalamzoo” rather than “Kalamazoo” in one event listing.

That is not a major website problem by itself.

What it demonstrates is a broader governance issue:

The system needs a publish/review process that catches small errors before they become part of a public archive.

This matters more as the site grows.

Recommended publishing workflow

Every page should have:

Draft
Internal review
Medical review where applicable
Accessibility check
Publish
Review date
Next review due

For health information, the system should also support:

reviewed by
source/references
medical owner
last medically reviewed
next review date

Medical Trust Without Turning the Site Into a Medical Textbook

The site should distinguish “information” from “authority”

I intentionally did not evaluate the accuracy of the medical material in depth because that was not the requested focus.

However, the structure of a modern health site should make trust easy to assess.

Mayo Clinic’s current PG material makes source/review information, staff attribution, references, treatment sections, “when to see a doctor,” and appointment-preparation guidance part of the experience.

Source:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pyoderma-gangrenosum/symptoms-causes/syc-20350386
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pyoderma-gangrenosum/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20350392

All Things PG can keep its patient-friendly tone while adding small trust signals:

Medically reviewed by Dr. ______
Last reviewed: September 2026
Sources

This is much more useful than simply adding a generic disclaimer at the bottom.

The content exists, but the experience does not fully reflect it

The site already has:

Talking About PG
How to Identify PG
support-related content
clinic finding
associated conditions

But the global IA does not make “Living with PG” a dominant destination.

The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation is a good reference point because it explicitly organizes a user journey around being newly diagnosed, living with the condition, treatment decisions, support, and related resources.

Source:

https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/patientsandcaregivers/ibdjourney

The National Psoriasis Foundation similarly organizes around user states and provides a dedicated patient navigation center.

Sources:

https://www.psoriasis.org/
https://www.psoriasis.org/navigationcenter/

Recommended change

Make “Living With PG” a real destination rather than an implied collection.

That page could become the practical launchpad for:

emotional support
talking to doctors
caregiver information
wound-care resources
preparing for appointments
tracking symptoms
workplace/disability issues
insurance/navigation
peer support
patient stories

This would significantly increase the site’s usefulness without needing huge amounts of new content.

Audience Segmentation

The site currently serves multiple audiences but does not clearly separate them

The site is relevant to:

patients
caregivers
dermatologists
other clinicians
researchers
advocates
donors/industry
partner organizations

Yet the IA primarily organizes by internal topic.

That causes different audiences to enter the same navigation structure.

Recommended audience entry points

Near the top of the homepage:

Who are you?

[ I have PG ]
[ I care for someone with PG ]
[ I am looking for a diagnosis ]
[ I am a healthcare professional ]
[ I am a researcher ]

You do not need to force registration or collect personal data.

These are simply shortcuts.

Why this matters

Recognition is easier than recall.

Nielsen Norman Group’s usability heuristics include “Recognition Rather Than Recall” and emphasize making relevant options visible instead of forcing users to remember where a task is located.

Source:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

Content Discovery

Current weakness

The site depends heavily on navigation plus search-engine entry.

That works while there are relatively few pages.

As content grows, users will need:

related content
topic hubs
tags
search
filters
“next step” calls to action
recommendation blocks

Every durable page should end with a “What next?” block

For example:

After reading about diagnosis:

What should I do next?

[ Find a PG-experienced provider ]
[ Learn about treatment ]
[ Prepare for your appointment ]

After reading about symptoms:

You may also want to read:

Diagnosis of PG
How to Identify PG
Find a PG Clinic

This is more useful than a generic newsletter CTA after every page.

The footer repeats About PG and Living With PG links and includes Data and Privacy.

That is fine, but the footer could become a more useful secondary navigation hub.

Recommended footer columns:

LEARN
What is PG?
Symptoms
Diagnosis
Treatment

GET HELP
Find a Clinic
Support
Caregiver Resources
Contact

GET INVOLVED
PG Survey
Research
PFAC
Advocacy

ABOUT
Mission
Our People
Partners
News & Events
Donate

LEGAL
Privacy
Accessibility
Terms

Add:

social links if actively maintained
organization email
contact route
copyright
accessibility statement
language selector

Language Support

This needs attention immediately

The global header exposes:

English
Spanish
French
Italian
German

However, during this audit the non-English language controls did not expose corresponding localized pages in the crawl; the navigation returned to the primary homepage behavior rather than showing clearly localized content.

That makes the controls potentially misleading.

Three acceptable strategies

Strategy A — fully implement multilingual content

Best long-term solution if the audience genuinely needs it.

Use structured translation relationships and proper language metadata.

Strategy B — support only English for now

Remove the unused language links until translations are live.

This is better than promising translations that do not exist.

Strategy C — translate a carefully selected subset

For example:

What is PG?
Symptoms
Diagnosis
Treatment
Find a Clinic
Support
Contact

This can be a very effective interim solution.

Technical requirements

A multilingual implementation should use:

correct lang attributes
hreflang
translated titles/descriptions
translated navigation
equivalent content relationships
language-aware URLs
no fake language links

Google’s mobile-first guidance explicitly recommends maintaining equivalent content and metadata across localized/mobile representations.

Source:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing

Privacy and Trust

Current privacy statement is too narrow for a growing site

The Data and Privacy page describes newsletter information such as name and email and explains general protections.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/data-and-privacy

However, the broader ecosystem now involves:

contact form
newsletter provider
Qualtrics/OHSU survey
Givebutter donation system
Constant Contact PFAC/event forms
YouTube/video services
potentially map/location features

That creates a broader data-processing environment than the current page describes.

Recommendation

Create a site-wide privacy framework that distinguishes:

Website visitor data
Contact form data
Newsletter data
Survey data
Donation data
Event registration data
Clinic-finder/location interactions
External services
Cookies/analytics
Retention
User rights
How to request corrections/deletion

This does not need to become an enormous legal document on every page.

It should simply be accurate, centralized, and linked wherever users provide data.

Third-Party Dependencies

Current site ecosystem

Observed external dependencies include:

OHSU Qualtrics for the survey
Constant Contact for newsletter/PFAC signup
Givebutter for donations
YouTube for at least one video
Zoom for at least one meeting/event
external partner organizations
third-party media outlets

This is normal for a nonprofit.

It becomes a scalability issue when users cannot tell which experience is still “All Things PG” and which is a third-party service.

Recommendation

Standardize all external transitions:

Take the PG Survey ↗
Donate securely via Givebutter ↗
Register for PFAC ↗
Watch on YouTube ↗

For important workflows, include a short “You are leaving All Things PG” cue only when it is genuinely useful.

Do not use popups for every external link.

Performance and Core Web Vitals

I am deliberately not giving the site a fake performance score

I was not able to obtain a reliable PageSpeed/Lighthouse lab result during this audit, so any numeric performance claim would be invented.

The relevant current standard is Google’s Core Web Vitals:

LCP — loading
INP — responsiveness
CLS — visual stability

Google currently recommends good user experience at the 75th percentile around:

LCP ≤ 2.5s
INP ≤ 200ms
CLS ≤ 0.1

Source:

https://web.dev/articles/vitals

What I would test on this site

At minimum:

Homepage
What is PG?
Treatment of PG
Clinic Finder
News & Events
Our People
Individual article
Subscribe
Contact
Donate

Test both desktop and mobile.

Performance risks to investigate

Hero and promotional images

Large image-based sections can hurt LCP.

Third-party embeds

Constant Contact, Qualtrics, maps, YouTube, and donation services can add:

JavaScript
DNS lookups
layout changes
tracking requests
interaction delays

Image formats

Use modern responsive image delivery:

AVIF/WebP where supported
correctly sized variants
srcset
width/height attributes
lazy loading below the fold
priority loading only for the main LCP image

Fonts

Limit custom font families/weights.

Carousels

Avoid loading a large group of slides/images just to display one.

Search Engine Optimization

Good foundation

The site already has several SEO-friendly characteristics:

descriptive URLs
focused topic pages
individual news pages
individual people pages
clear page subjects
crawlable navigation

Examples:

/what-is-pg
/pg-symptoms
/diagnosis-of-pg
/treatment-of-pg
/pyoderma-gangrenosum-clinic-finder

These are good URL patterns.

Areas to improve

Page titles

Ensure every page has a unique, descriptive title.

Google recommends that each page have a concise and descriptive <title> and warns against repeated boilerplate titles.

Source:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link

Ideal examples:

Pyoderma Gangrenosum Symptoms | All Things PG

Diagnosing Pyoderma Gangrenosum | All Things PG

PG Clinic Finder | Find a Pyoderma Gangrenosum Specialist

Meta descriptions

Each important page should have a unique, useful description that explains the page’s purpose.

Organization structured data

The homepage should use Organization structured data with relevant properties such as:

name
logo
URL
sameAs
contact information where appropriate

Google explicitly recommends Organization structured data to help it understand and disambiguate an organization.

Source:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/organization

Article structured data

News/articles should use appropriate structured data.

Event structured data

Events should use Event schema with:

date
time
location
virtual status
registration URL

Use breadcrumbs where appropriate.

Author/profile data

People pages should have clear metadata connecting a person to the organization and role.

Indexing and Crawlability

The sitemap could not be directly verified in this environment

Attempts to access the site’s robots.txt and sitemap.xml through the browser tool were not successful.

That is not proof that these files do not exist.

A production audit should verify:

/robots.txt
/sitemap.xml

and then inspect:

canonical URLs
indexing directives
sitemap coverage
lastmod values
redirect chains
orphan pages
duplicate pages
broken internal links

Google recommends crawlable URL structures, standard anchor links, and appropriate sitemap use.

Source:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/troubleshoot-crawling-errors

Content Architecture vs. Content Volume

The site does not need 5x more pages

This is an important strategic point.

The goal should not be:

“We need more content.”

The goal should be:

“We need better paths through the content we already have.”

For example, the pages:

What is PG?
Symptoms
Causes
Diagnosis
Treatment
Associated Health Issues

already create a basic information set.

A stronger system would connect these through:

What is PG?
    ↓
What are the signs?
    ↓
How is PG diagnosed?
    ↓
How do I find an experienced provider?
    ↓
What treatment options exist?
    ↓
How do I live with PG?

That is a patient journey.

The present architecture is more like:

Here are six pages. Choose one.

That distinction is one of the biggest usability opportunities.

News, Articles, and Evergreen Information Should Be Different Things

Current site blurs these categories

A durable medical-information page is not the same thing as:

an event announcement
a newsletter
a news item
a patient story
a third-party media link

These should have different templates.

Search and Filtering as the Site Grows

The first search problem is not “search everything”

It is discovering the right things.

NORD’s current Resource Library is a useful example: it provides keyword search plus audience/collection categories and a paginated resource set.

Source:

https://rarediseases.org/resource-library/

That model is more scalable than a single flat News & Events page.

Recommended resource library

Eventually add:

Search resources

Audience
[ Patient ]
[ Caregiver ]
[ Clinician ]
[ Researcher ]

Topic
[ Diagnosis ]
[ Treatment ]
[ Support ]
[ Research ]
[ Advocacy ]

Format
[ Article ]
[ PDF ]
[ Video ]
[ External website ]
[ Tool ]

Language
[ English ]
[ Spanish ]
...

This makes the site significantly more useful without requiring sophisticated artificial intelligence.

Mobile Experience

Responsive design should be assumed, then tested—not assumed sufficient

Google recommends responsive web design and emphasizes that the mobile version is used for indexing.

Source:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing

The site should be tested at:

320px
375px
390px
414px
tablet
desktop
large desktop

Mobile-specific tasks

Pay particular attention to:

opening the navigation
returning to the previous page
clinic-finder filtering
map/list toggle
long medical pages
donation process
newsletter signup
forms
external redirects
image/text reflow
fixed headers/footers

Clinic Finder is the highest-value mobile test

Someone searching for a specialist may be doing it from:

a phone
a hospital room
a doctor’s office
while traveling
while helping a family member

That is exactly where the interface needs to be excellent.

Visual Hierarchy

The site should feel calmer

The subject matter is emotionally heavy.

Modern patient-support sites benefit from:

strong white space
restrained motion
large readable type
obvious buttons
short sections
clear cards
fewer competing promotions
reassuring visual consistency

The site should not feel like a marketing brochure.

It should feel like:

a trustworthy patient resource center.

Use visual hierarchy to show importance

For example:

Primary

Find a PG Clinic
Get Support

Secondary

Learn About PG
Take the Survey
Research

Tertiary

News
Partners
Organization history

That ordering reflects user value rather than organizational priority.

Calls to Action

Current calls to action are somewhat repetitive

The site repeatedly promotes:

newsletter
survey
clinic finder

This is not inherently bad, but repetition without contextual relevance makes calls to action feel like advertising.

Use contextual CTAs

Instead of:

Sign up for updates

at the end of every page, do:

Diagnosis page

Find an experienced PG provider.

Treatment page

Learn how to find PG-aware wound care.

Talking About PG

Find support from people who understand PG.

Research page

Take the PG patient survey.

This is much more persuasive and less intrusive.

Our People

What works

The organization is unusually transparent about its leadership.

The board page exposes:

names
roles
photos
biographies

and individual profile pages exist.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/our-people

This is excellent for a patient advocacy organization.

Scalability issue

Individual profiles should have structured fields, not just long narrative blocks.

For example:

Name
Role
PG connection
Professional credentials
Short bio
Full bio
Areas of expertise
Publications
External credentials
Contact/organizational link

That would allow the site to create:

leadership listings
expert directory
clinician profiles
research contributors
conference speakers

without creating completely different templates.

Industry Partners

Current approach is primarily narrative

The Industry Partners page explains why support matters but does not appear to operate like a structured partner directory.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/industry-partners

As the number of partners grows, this should become a proper partner content type.

Useful fields:

organization name
logo
partner level/type
website
year
sponsorship/program
description
disclosure/relationship language

This avoids a giant page that has to be manually rearranged every time a sponsor changes.

Rare Disease Affiliates

Good concept, but likely underused

The Rare Disease Affiliates page currently links to a small set of relevant organizations, including Global Skin, the Hidradenitis Suppurativa Foundation, and NORD.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/rare-disease-affiliates

As the directory grows, use:

organization cards
category
condition
purpose
country
website
verification date

This can become a genuinely useful rare-disease resource directory.

PFAC

Valuable program, but currently feels like an event page

The PFAC page contains a clear purpose, agenda, date/time options, and signup links.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/pfac

The current text also contains spacing/authoring problems such as:

“meetingaccessible to as many aspossible.Please”

That is minor editorially but important as a signal of template/publishing quality.

Better PFAC structure

Create a permanent PFAC landing page:

Patient & Family Advisory Committee

What PFAC is
Who can participate
How PFAC works
Upcoming meetings
Past meetings
Recordings
How to join
Contact

Then events become children of that program rather than standalone pages.

This is a classic scalability principle:

Programs should own events, not the other way around.

Donation Experience

Current state

The donation page explains the mission and sends users to Givebutter.

Source:

https://www.allthingspg.org/donate

That is a reasonable implementation.

Recommendation

The page should make the decision easy:

Support All Things PG

Your donation helps us:

✓ connect patients with PG-experienced care
✓ support patient education
✓ strengthen research participation
✓ build community resources

[ Donate Now ]

Other ways to help
[ Volunteer ]
[ Share PG information ]
[ Participate in research ]

The donation page should feel like an action page, not an essay.

Trust Architecture

Add a persistent “reviewed” model

For health information, every significant evergreen page should eventually display something similar to:

Medically reviewed by Dr. ______
Last reviewed: September 2026

Optional:

Medical review due: September 2027

This helps users distinguish stable information from event/news material.

Add source blocks

At the bottom:

Sources & Further Reading
- ...
- ...

This is especially valuable on diagnosis and treatment pages.

The goal is not to make the page academic. It is to make it auditable.

Scalability: What Will Break First?

1. Clinic directory

This is the highest-risk area because data changes and duplication grows.

2. News/events

The current flat chronological feed will become harder to navigate.

3. Translations

Five language links imply a much larger publishing burden than the current English-only experience suggests.

4. Resource discovery

As soon as you have 50–100 resources, navigation alone becomes inadequate.

5. People and partner pages

Narrative profiles are fine at six people. They become difficult at 30–50.

6. External services

More forms and tools can create a fragmented user experience.

7. Manual QA

Every new content type multiplies the chance of broken links, inconsistent headings, wrong dates, image problems, and stale information.

Recommended Technical Direction

Do not rebuild the site simply for visual reasons

A rebuild should happen because the underlying model needs to support:

structured content
reusable components
accessibility
search
filtering
multilingual content
clinic data
events
review workflows
structured SEO
analytics
automated QA

The visual redesign should sit on top of those foundations.

Core architecture principles

One shared design system

Define reusable:

buttons
cards
notices
headings
article headers
provider cards
event cards
link styles
forms
alert boxes
call-to-action sections

One content model per content type

Do not create each new event by manually copying an old page and changing the text.

Structured metadata

Every page should have:

page type
audience
topic
review status
author
review date
related content
SEO fields

Header/footer should exist as reusable components.

Automated link checking

Run regularly against:

internal links
external links
PDF resources
partner sites
event URLs
YouTube URLs

Automated accessibility checks

Run in CI or publishing QA where possible.

Content expiry

Especially:

events
time-sensitive announcements
clinical trial links
partner programs
external resources

#3 Analytics

The site needs a task-oriented measurement plan

Do not only measure pageviews.

Measure tasks:

Clinic Finder starts
Clinic Finder searches
Clinic Finder result clicks
Clinic detail views
Survey clicks
Newsletter starts
Newsletter completions
Contact starts
Contact completions
Donation clicks
Donation completions
External-resource clicks
Search queries
Zero-result searches

Most valuable metric

The most important measurement should be:

Did the visitor successfully complete what they came here to do?

For example:

Visitor searched for PG care → found provider → clicked provider/contact information.

That tells you more than traffic alone.

Search Analytics

Zero-result searches will be especially valuable

When the site gets internal search, log searches that return nothing.

Examples:

“wound care”
“biopsy”
“prednisone”
“insurance”
“support group”
“Florida”

A large number of zero-result searches identifies missing content or terminology gaps.

This is one of the easiest ways to let the website tell you what it needs next.

Content Governance

Assign an owner to every content class

Example:

Content	Owner
PG medical education	Medical/content lead
Clinic directory	Directory administrator
Events	Program coordinator
PFAC	PFAC owner
News	Communications
Board profiles	Executive/board admin
Privacy	Admin/legal owner
Translations	Translation/content owner

This prevents “everyone owns it, so nobody maintains it.”

Publishing Checklist

Every new page should pass this checklist

[ ] Correct page template
[ ] Correct URL
[ ] Exactly one clear H1
[ ] Logical H2/H3 structure
[ ] Useful page title
[ ] Meta description
[ ] Descriptive link text
[ ] Alt text reviewed
[ ] Mobile layout checked
[ ] Keyboard navigation checked
[ ] Focus visible
[ ] External links identified where appropriate
[ ] Related content included
[ ] Primary CTA included
[ ] Medical review recorded if applicable
[ ] Sources recorded if applicable
[ ] Review date recorded
[ ] Broken links checked

This is far more scalable than relying on individual editors to remember every requirement.

Recommended Redesign of the Homepage

Proposed wireframe

--------------------------------------------------
LOGO

Learn About PG   Find Care   Living With PG
Support          Research   News & Events
                         [Donate]
--------------------------------------------------

Pyoderma Gangrenosum Support & Information

Trusted information, PG-experienced care,
community support, and ways to participate.

[ FIND A PG CLINIC ]   [ GET SUPPORT ]
--------------------------------------------------

WHERE SHOULD I START?

[ I am newly diagnosed ]
Learn what PG is and what to do next.

[ I think I may have PG ]
Learn the common signs and why diagnosis is difficult.

[ I care for someone with PG ]
Support and practical guidance for caregivers.

[ I am a healthcare professional ]
Clinical and research resources.

--------------------------------------------------

FIND PG CARE NEAR YOU

Search for PG-experienced providers.

[ ZIP / CITY / STATE ]
[ FIND CARE ]
--------------------------------------------------

LIVING WITH PG

Talking about PG
Support resources
Caregiver resources
Preparing for appointments
--------------------------------------------------

RESEARCH & ADVOCACY

Take the PG Survey
Clinical research
PFAC
Advocacy
--------------------------------------------------

LATEST

3–4 current items

[View all news & events]
--------------------------------------------------

ABOUT ALL THINGS PG

Mission
Leadership
Partners

[Donate]
[Contact Us]
--------------------------------------------------

This is dramatically more useful than a promotional carousel because it provides a visible path for every major audience.

Recommended Redesign of an Educational Page

Example: Diagnosis page

<h1>Diagnosing Pyoderma Gangrenosum</h1>

Short answer:
PG is difficult to diagnose because ...

[Find a PG-experienced provider]

<h2>How PG is diagnosed</h2>

<h2>What other conditions can look similar?</h2>

<h2>Diagnostic frameworks</h2>

<h2>When to seek specialist care</h2>

<h2>How to prepare for an appointment</h2>

<h2>Related resources</h2>

[Find a Clinic]
[Talking About PG]
[Treatment of PG]

Medical review:
Reviewed by ______
Last reviewed: ______

This makes the page a journey rather than a wall of information.

Recommended Redesign of the Clinic Finder

Desktop

----------------------------------------------------------
FIND PG CARE NEAR YOU

Search by ZIP, city, or state

[____________________________] [ SEARCH ]

Filters:
Distance  Specialty  Telehealth  Clinical Trials

----------------------------------------------------------
18 providers found

MAP                        RESULTS

     [map]                 Provider Name
                           Clinic Name
                           City, ST
                           Dermatology
                           Telehealth
                           Clinical trials
                           [View details]

                           Provider Name
                           ...
----------------------------------------------------------

Mobile

Find PG Care

[ ZIP / City / State ]

[ Search ]

18 providers found

[ Filters ]

[ Map ] [ List ]

Provider card
----------------
Name
Clinic
City, ST
12 miles
Telehealth
Clinical trials

[ View details ]

This is the kind of focused application experience the current site can grow into.

Recommended Search Experience

Global search

Search All Things PG

[ search __________________ ] [Search]

Suggested:
“diagnosis”
“clinic”
“wound care”
“support”
“research”

Results

12 results

Clinical information
    Diagnosing PG

Living with PG
    Talking About PG

Care
    Find a PG Clinic

Resources
    ...

Search should highlight the matching words and allow filtering.

Modern-Website Comparison

NORD

NORD provides a large resource library with search and filtering.

This is the direction to emulate for resource discovery—not necessarily the visual design.

Source:

https://rarediseases.org/resource-library/

Lesson for All Things PG: structured content beats giant lists.

National Psoriasis Foundation

NPF prominently asks visitors to identify where they are in their journey and provides a Patient Navigation Center.

Sources:

https://www.psoriasis.org/
https://www.psoriasis.org/navigationcenter/

Lesson for All Things PG: start with the user state, not the organization structure.

Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation

The IBD Journey explicitly supports newly diagnosed users, diagnosed users, support-seeking, provider discovery, and decision-making.

Sources:

https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/patientsandcaregivers/ibdjourney
https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/

Lesson for All Things PG: build a journey model.

Mayo Clinic

Mayo’s PG pages clearly separate overview, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, support, preparation for appointments, and related care options.

Sources:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pyoderma-gangrenosum/symptoms-causes/syc-20350386
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pyoderma-gangrenosum/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20350392

Lesson for All Things PG: use predictable medical-information patterns and strong next steps.

Heuristic Evaluation

Nielsen’s 10 heuristics

Using Nielsen Norman Group’s classic heuristics as a framework:

Source:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

Visibility of system status — 3/5

Good for ordinary page navigation.

Needs improvement for:

clinic search status
filtering
form submission
external transitions
newsletter/registration success
errors

Match with the real world — 3/5

The language is understandable.

The IA, however, still maps somewhat to organization structure instead of patient journey.

User control and freedom — 3/5

Standard browsing is straightforward.

Interactive tools and third-party transitions need testing.

Consistency and standards — 3/5

The global structure is consistent, but heading levels, link text, multilingual navigation, and content templates are not consistent enough.

Error prevention — 2.5/5

The contact form asks for unnecessary phone information as a required field and does not make the purpose/handling of personal information sufficiently obvious.

Recognition rather than recall — 2.5/5

Users have to know which top navigation section contains their task.

The homepage should expose more task-oriented choices.

Flexibility and efficiency — 2.5/5

The site is easy to browse if you already know where things are.

Search, filters, topic hubs, and shortcuts are needed for efficient repeat use.

Aesthetic/minimalist design — 3/5

The site has a clean nonprofit feel, but promotional repetition and sliders compete with the core patient tasks.

Error recovery — 2.5/5

This needs dedicated form and interactive-tool testing.

Help and documentation — 3/5

The site has useful educational pages but lacks a stronger “where do I start?” and “what should I do next?” layer.

Priority Matrix

P0 — Fix immediately

Either implement the advertised languages or remove the inactive options.

P0.2 Heading semantics

Audit every page template for proper H1/H2/H3 structure.

P0.3 Contact form

Make phone optional unless there is a clear operational need. Add a warning not to submit sensitive medical information.

P0.4 Clinic Finder reliability

Test the complete workflow on desktop/mobile/keyboard and document how provider data is maintained.

P1 — Major improvements

P1.1 Rebuild information architecture around user tasks

Move from organization-centric categories to:

Learn
Find Care
Living With PG
Support
Research/Advocacy
News/Events

P1.2 Replace promotional carousel with stable task-oriented hero

Use one primary message and fixed actions.

P1.3 Introduce search

Start simple.

P1.4 Create structured content types

Especially:

Clinic
Provider
Event
Article
Resource
Person
Partner

P1.5 Add review dates/medical review metadata

Especially on diagnosis/treatment pages.

P1.6 Create a dedicated accessibility audit

Target WCAG 2.2 AA.

P2 — Strategic improvements

P2.1 Resource library

Search and filters.

P2.2 Program pages

PFAC, research, advocacy, support.

P2.3 Multilingual architecture

Implement properly rather than simply adding language links.

P2.4 Event lifecycle

Upcoming → live → recording → archive.

P2.5 Directory maintenance workflow

Verified dates and update requests.

P2.6 Analytics tied to user tasks

Measure clinic searches, survey starts/completions, donation completions, and search success.

P3 — Polish and optimization

P3.1 SEO structured data

Organization, Article, Event, Breadcrumb.

P3.2 Performance optimization

Images, third parties, fonts, JavaScript, caching.

Reusable components and consistent page patterns.

P3.4 Editorial QA automation

Broken links, missing alt text, missing page descriptions, orphan pages.

Suggested 30-Day Plan

Week 1 — Fix obvious UX defects

remove or repair nonfunctional language controls
review heading hierarchy
review alt text
make phone optional on contact
add health-information warning to contact form
review “Read more” link labels
document clinic finder behavior
remove unnecessary homepage repetition

Week 2 — User journeys

Design five entry paths:

I think I have PG
I have been diagnosed with PG
I care for someone with PG
I need a PG-experienced provider
I want to participate in research

Week 3 — Clinic Finder

Document and prototype:

search
filters
result cards
provider detail
verification dates
update requests
mobile workflow

Week 4 — Analytics and accessibility

Set up/verify:

Search Console
analytics events
accessibility scanner
link checker
Core Web Vitals monitoring

Suggested 90-Day Plan

Month 1

Fix P0 issues and prototype the new IA.

Month 2

Build the new design system and structured content types.

Month 3

Launch:

redesigned homepage
new navigation
search
improved clinic finder
resource taxonomy
stronger accessibility
updated page templates

Do not wait for every piece of the site to be redesigned before improving the highest-value user tasks.

Suggested 6–12 Month Plan

Phase 1

Patient journey architecture.

Phase 2

Clinic/provider directory database.

Phase 3

Resource library and search.

Phase 4

Multilingual implementation.

Phase 5

Program pages for research, PFAC, advocacy, community.

Phase 6

Personalized navigation/role-based experiences if analytics demonstrate a need.

What Not To Do

Do not simply make it “prettier”

A visual redesign without information-architecture changes would leave the major problems intact.

There are already enough.

The solution is better categorization, not a larger menu.

Do not create hundreds of hand-built pages

Use structured content.

Do not add an AI chatbot as the first response

A chatbot can be useful later, but it should not compensate for weak navigation, search, or content architecture.

Do not make the homepage a news billboard

The primary job is helping patients and caregivers accomplish important tasks.

Do not overuse carousels

Stable, visible content is better for accessibility and decision-making.

Do not hide important information behind animation

Users should not have to wait for a slide.

Long-Term Vision

What this site should become

The opportunity is much bigger than “a better nonprofit website.”

All Things PG can become a patient-facing PG information and care-navigation platform.

The site could eventually provide:

Learn
    trusted PG information

Find Care
    providers
    clinics
    telehealth
    clinical trials

Live With PG
    practical resources
    caregivers
    emotional support
    appointment preparation

Community
    support groups
    PFAC
    patient stories

Research
    surveys
    studies
    publications
    clinical trials

Advocacy
    awareness
    policy
    events

Resources
    searchable library

Directory
    clinics
    experts
    organizations

That is the scalable product architecture.

Final Verdict

Is All Things PG a good website?

It is a good and worthwhile website with a solid foundation, but it is not yet a best-in-class modern patient-support website.

The positive side is important:

The purpose is clear.
The organization looks real and accountable.
The primary PG topics exist.
The site has real community resources.
The clinic finder is strategically excellent.
The organization exposes its people and mission.
The donation/survey/newsletter infrastructure exists.
The site uses generally clean and understandable URLs.

The weaknesses are also clear:

The information architecture is more organization-centric than task-centric.
The homepage has too many competing messages.
The carousel/promo model is not ideal for accessibility or patient task completion.
The apparent heading hierarchy needs correction.
Link labels such as repeated “Read more” are weaker than they need to be.
Search/discovery is underdeveloped.
The clinic finder needs to be treated as a real product with a scalable data model.
The multilingual controls are misleading unless the translations are actually available.
The contact form creates unnecessary friction.
Third-party services create a fragmented experience unless wrapped carefully.
Content types, review dates, and governance need to be formalized before the site gets much larger.
Accessibility needs a dedicated WCAG 2.2 AA program.
Performance should be measured rather than guessed.
SEO should add stronger metadata and structured data.

The single most important recommendation

Do not start with a visual redesign.

Start with:

“What are the 5–7 things a patient, caregiver, clinician, researcher, or donor is actually trying to accomplish here?”

Then rebuild the navigation, homepage, content types, clinic finder, and related-content system around those tasks.

That change would make the site feel dramatically more modern even before the colors, fonts, graphics, or page layouts changed.

The second most important recommendation

Treat the Clinic Finder as a product, not a page.

It is the feature with the strongest potential to make All Things PG uniquely useful. A well-designed, verified, searchable PG provider directory would give the site a lasting practical advantage that a generic information website cannot provide.

The third most important recommendation

Build the site so that growth makes it better instead of making it harder to manage.

That means:

structured content + reusable templates + search + filters + metadata + review dates + analytics + accessibility + automated QA.

That is the foundation for the next 5 years of the organization.

Audit Evidence / Pages Reviewed

All Things PG pages

Home — https://www.allthingspg.org/
What is PG? — https://www.allthingspg.org/what-is-pg
PG Symptoms — https://www.allthingspg.org/pg-symptoms
PG Causes — https://www.allthingspg.org/pg-causes
Diagnosis of PG — https://www.allthingspg.org/diagnosis-of-pg
Treatment of PG — https://www.allthingspg.org/treatment-of-pg
Associated Health Issues — https://www.allthingspg.org/associated-health-issues
Take the PG Survey — https://www.allthingspg.org/take-the-pg-survey
Talking About PG — https://www.allthingspg.org/talking-about-pg
How to Identify PG — https://www.allthingspg.org/how-to-identify-pg
Rare Disease Affiliates — https://www.allthingspg.org/rare-disease-affiliates
News & Events — https://www.allthingspg.org/news-and-events
Our People — https://www.allthingspg.org/our-people
Clinic Finder — https://www.allthingspg.org/pyoderma-gangrenosum-clinic-finder
Mission — https://www.allthingspg.org/mission-statement
Contact — https://www.allthingspg.org/contact
Subscribe — https://www.allthingspg.org/subscribe
Donate — https://www.allthingspg.org/donate
Industry Partners — https://www.allthingspg.org/industry-partners
PFAC — https://www.allthingspg.org/pfac
Data & Privacy — https://www.allthingspg.org/data-and-privacy
First PFAC Meeting in Michigan — https://www.allthingspg.org/first-pfac-meeting-in-michigan
July 2026 Newsletter — https://www.allthingspg.org/1-yr-anniversary-celebration-newsletter
First Year Anniversary Celebration — https://www.allthingspg.org/anniversary-celebration
Individual board/member profiles, including:
- https://www.allthingspg.org/dave-depottie
- https://www.allthingspg.org/dr-alex-ortega-loayza
- https://www.allthingspg.org/corlis-watkins-nass
- https://www.allthingspg.org/lasaunia-thompson
- https://www.allthingspg.org/gina-castelli

External services observed

Qualtrics/OHSU survey — https://ohsu.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1Rgun9506UbVoEe
Givebutter donation flow — linked from https://www.allthingspg.org/donate
Constant Contact signup — linked from https://www.allthingspg.org/subscribe and PFAC
YouTube video — linked from News & Events

Standards and Reference Sites

Accessibility

W3C WCAG 2.2 — https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/
W3C WCAG 2.2 Quick Reference — https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/quickref/
W3C Forms Tutorial — https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/forms/
W3C Form Labels — https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/forms/labels/
W3C Accessibility First Review — https://www.w3.org/WAI/test-evaluate/preliminary/

Usability

Nielsen Norman Group — 10 Usability Heuristics — https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

Performance

web.dev Core Web Vitals — https://web.dev/articles/vitals

Search / SEO

Google Search — Mobile-first indexing best practices — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing
Google Search — Title links — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link
Google Search — Organization structured data — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/organization
Google Search — Crawl troubleshooting — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/troubleshoot-crawling-errors

Comparison sites

National Organization for Rare Disorders resource library — https://rarediseases.org/resource-library/
NORD “How NORD Can Help” — https://rarediseases.org/living-with-a-rare-disease/how-nord-can-help/
Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation — https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/
Crohn’s & Colitis IBD Journey — https://www.crohnscolitisfoundation.org/patientsandcaregivers/ibdjourney
National Psoriasis Foundation — https://www.psoriasis.org/
NPF Patient Navigation Center — https://www.psoriasis.org/navigationcenter/
Mayo Clinic PG information — https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pyoderma-gangrenosum/symptoms-causes/syc-20350386
Mayo Clinic PG diagnosis/treatment — https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pyoderma-gangrenosum/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20350392

Bottom Line

If the organization does nothing

The current site will continue to be useful, but as content, providers, events, resources, translations, partners, and programs grow, the navigation and maintenance burden will increase.

If the organization makes the recommended changes

All Things PG could become a much stronger destination:

easier for a newly diagnosed patient
easier for a caregiver
easier for a clinician
easier for researchers and advocates
more accessible
easier to search
easier to maintain
more trustworthy
more scalable
more useful on mobile
more measurable
more defensible as a long-term patient resource

The site does not need to be thrown away. It needs to evolve from a good information website into a well-structured patient-service platform.

Administrator access

ChatGPT Analysis

Overview

Executive Assessment

The answer to “is it a good website?”

What I Reviewed

Live site pages and functions

Important limitations

The Current Site’s Biggest Strength

It has the right ingredients

Homepage Assessment

What works

The homepage’s main weakness: too many competing “primary” messages

Pyoderma Gangrenosum Support & Information

Homepage recommendation

Information Architecture

Current top-level navigation

Recommended information architecture

Proposed structure

Navigation and Wayfinding

Strength: global navigation is persistent

Weakness: the site has no obvious breadcrumb system

Weakness: there is no obvious site-wide search

Recommendation

Page Structure and Semantic HTML

This is one of the most important technical/usability issues I found

Why this matters

Recommended semantic pattern

Homepage Heading Problem

Multiple competing H1-style messages

Link Text

Repeated “Read more” links

Recommendation

Accessibility

Accessibility should be treated as a primary design requirement

Specific accessibility concerns visible from this review

Heading semantics

Image alternative text

Keyboard and focus

Touch target size

Form labels and error handling

Color contrast

Zoom/reflow

Forms

Contact form: unnecessary friction

Recommendation

Even more important: discourage health disclosures

Newsletter Experience

Current implementation

UX issue

Recommendation

Survey Experience

Current implementation

Recommended UX

Clinic Finder: The Most Important Product on the Site

Strategic assessment

The current UX is not yet mature enough for the importance of the task

Ideal clinic-finder task flow

Essential capabilities to add

Geographic search

Filters

Sorting

Result count

Map/list synchronization

Mobile-first design

Clear provider detail

The key scalability recommendation: normalize the data

Add “last verified”

Data Model and Scalability

The site should move toward real content types

Page

Resource

Article

Event

Person

Clinic

Partner

Translation

News & Events

Current state