State vaccine websites have problems with slow loading and browsing times

On paper, using a website to schedule your vaccine appointment seems like an easy way to gain access to much-needed COVID-19 immunizations. But a new investigation of Marking shows that state-run vaccine sites take a long time to load on mobile devices, compounding what can be an intimidating sign-up experience for people who feel less comfortable online.

Marking conducted its performance tests using Google’s open source Lighthouse tool, in this case relying on the tool’s ability to measure the time it takes for a website to load and run. For this test, Marking focused on the performance of the mobile version of the websites in the Chrome browser and conducted the tests in three different locations (New York, Texas and California). The Nevada vaccine site was the slowest to load, taking 15.7 seconds to fully load compared to the fastest (Puerto Rico) with 1.4 seconds and the average (Colorado) with 5.9 seconds.

Image: Marking

The causes for these slowdowns vary, but in the case of the Nevada site, Marking suggests that an abundance of interactive embedded content may be contributing to the slowdown:

The Nevada vaccination page features several videos embedded on YouTube and posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that offer public health information, featuring health professionals answering common questions in English and Spanish. Our tests show that the Nevada page has the lowest average performance score of all the sites we review.

All of this extra information is great, but I think the confusion also arises for people less familiar with the web, because these sites don’t work like scheduling a traditional medical appointment over the phone. Receiving a lot of links from the original site to websites of other vaccine providers was intimidating for my grandparents – who often worry about getting “lost” online – and I imagine it would be for many others.

The situation recalls other occasions when government organizations were tasked with building essential online infrastructure, such as the implementation of health.gov. The problems with the federal website have now been resolved and state health departments are working on a much smaller scale, but some of the problems are similar. It is not that these departments are unable to build a website, it is that time and resources are scarce, and many of them have never really been in charge of such a large project. “They never needed the infrastructure they require now,” says Tory Hogan, a professor of health services at Ohio State University. Marking.

Third-party solutions have emerged in response to these inadequacies, from startups focused on connecting people with remaining doses of vaccine, like Dr. B, to independent vaccine hunters scheduling appointments for strangers. But there is no solution, at least not until the launch of the vaccine discovery website promised by President Biden on May 1. I hope the site works better.