Meet DMU, a Graduate Medicine and Health Sciences University Training the Next Generation of Health Care Providers
Des Moines University Medicine and Health Sciences (DMU) is a graduate medical school offering 10 academic programs, including anatomy, biomedical sciences, health care administration, occupational therapy, osteopathic medicine, physical therapy, physician assistant studies, podiatric medicine and surgery, and public health. DMU started training osteopathic doctors back in 1898. It recently opened a new state-of-the-art campus in West Des Moines, Iowa.
Running a university requires a significant amount of support, both in attracting students and engaging with alumni and donors to raise funds. DMU’s website is a key tool in attracting prospective students and engaging alumni and donors.
When Jordan Bohr joined DMU’s marketing team as Web Content and Marketing Specialist, he stepped into a long-standing web environment hosted by a vendor the university had partnered with for more than a decade. While the site had supported DMU well in the past, it had begun to show its age, with concerns around reliability, performance, and stability. A major outage underscored the need for change.
Enter BigScoots.
What DMU Needed
A down site means missed opportunities, and DMU’s leaders knew they couldn’t just sit around and let potential students and donors pass them by.
DMU needed:
- A modern, stable hosting platform with consistently fast performance
- Support from true technical partners, not just a help desk
- Scalable solutions that would support future growth and evolving digital strategies
- Maintenance and development assistance that would fill gaps in in-house resources
Bohr set out in search of a solution.
DMU Partners With BigScoots
Bohr discovered BigScoots through a recommendation in a professional group chat. What started as a casual tip became a game-changing partnership.
“From the first conversation, BigScoots was different,” Bohr said. “They weren’t just selling a product. They were focused on solving our problems.”
BigScoots provided:
Fully Managed Hosting for WordPress
As Bohr said, DMU has a “large, complex site.” They needed a host that would deliver site-specific management with individual attention to their needs. BigScoots provided just that with their Enterprise Hosting for WordPress: individualized, fully-managed hosting with enterprise-grade performance.
“Other vendor solutions would solve some issues, but perpetuate others,” Bohr said. “BigScoots made solving ALL our challenges a priority.”
Perhaps equally as important, the DMU team didn’t feel like they were being sold a bunch of stuff that may or may not solve their problems.
“They weren’t upselling us. They were listening,” Bohr said. “Every solution they offered was based on what we actually needed.”
DMU has experienced zero downtime since the move and is enjoying significantly faster site speeds and load times. Within the first month, the site’s median load time for all pages improved by 53%. Here are some other key performance changes during that first month:
- Homepage exit rate improved by 7%
- Average engagement time per active user improved by 8.1%
- New user traffic improved by 6.6%
DMU also saw improvements in Core Web Vitals within the first month, including:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Contentful Paint (FCP) improved by nearly 3 seconds (78% improvement)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) improved by 79%
- Time to First Byte (TTFB) improved by 86%
Taken together, this data shows immediate, noticeable improvements in how well the site works.
In-House Migration and Setup
DMU needed their site stability improved well … yesterday. They didn’t have time to coordinate with a third party to migrate and set up the site. With BigScoots, they didn’t need to because the hosting company handled it all. Not only that, BigScoots also provided immediate monitoring and performance insights, which began even before the migration was complete.
“Even before we were live, BigScoots was monitoring our site and flagging performance issues,” Bohr said. “That told me everything I needed to know about the kind of partner they would be.”
Hands-On Maintenance and Support
Bohr and his team are marketers, and they need to focus on that work, not trying to be server experts or developers. With BigScoots, they can focus on what they do best and let the hosting company handle the rest, like hands-on maintenance and plugin support from WordPress developers.
“Frankly, the biggest improvement outside of site performance has been the support team and pure peace of mind that our site is stable and performant,” Bohr said. “Two things that have taken an enormous load off my plate and allowed me to focus on our org’s true priorities.”
BigScoots’ team has diverse expertise. They’re deeply passionate about their clients’ success and monitor their sites 24/7. If something goes wrong, the team is available in 90 seconds or less to do a deep dive and fix the issue. This responsive customer service is led by real people, not tickets in queues.
In addition to the service described above that all BigScoots’ hosting clients can expect, DMU is taking advantage of white-glove Maintenance Services each month, which provides dedicated engineer hours for their site. They’ve used this additional service for:
- Consultative auditing
- Collaborative issue resolutions
- Personalized guidance
- Full hands-on management of theme and plugin updates
BigScoots makes these optional Maintenance Services available to large enterprise clients who want to ensure they have the detailed, hands-on tech support they may need.
As a result of partnering with BigScoots, Bohr and his team have less tech-related stress and more time to focus on content strategy and reaching their audience. In addition, DMU can focus on big-picture content and feature improvements that once seemed unattainable.
Why BigScoots Loves Working With DMU
Honestly, who wouldn’t love helping shape the future of health care in a positive way? And we never want to see our clients miss out because their websites just aren’t serving them. BigScoots and Des Moines University of Medicine and Health Sciences were able to create a real partnership that will have an impact for years to come.
No client should ever feel like a bother or as if their website is just too difficult to handle. And you want to be able to trust any partner you work with, just like you want to be able to trust your health care provider.
BigScoots is thrilled to be a trusted provider for DMU, so they don’t have to spend time worrying about their website or missed opportunities and can focus on educating people who will make a true difference in the lives of others.
