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The Irish-born site announced this week that it is expanding across Europe with the opening of a Swiss Web site in addition to its sites in Ireland, the UK and Germany. The company's original backers include Denis O'Brien via Island Capital, and in June of 2001 it raised an additional EUR750,000 from Irish private investors. The company aims to be profitable by the end of 2002.
"The general health Web sites are far more news based than we are," said Eumom.com managing director Dr. Joe Mason. "The amount of content you need is staggering and the resource is enormous. Although we are a content site, we are not a news site and we don't need to change the content much once it has been written." The site is reviewed on a quarterly basis, which is very infrequent for a content site, Dr. Mason added.
The "personal page" is the most popular page, which tracks the changes in the woman's body at the stages of her pregnancy. The page changes every week for the visitor, to correspond with her week of pregnancy, but the underlying content is the same as when the site went live.
Dr. Mason also explained that the stickiness of the site is in its bulletin boards where pregnant women have on-line discussions. Mason said, "We have 70 percent of our visitors returning three times a week and 40 percent of our traffic to the site comes from our bulletin boards."
Because pregnancy is a relatively long-term health condition, Eumom.com has the ability to keep visitors coming back regularly, Dr. Mason said. "At many health Web sites, a visitor may be sick for a week or two and will only use the site for that long." Additionally, many illnesses, such as the cold, are seasonal whereas women become pregnant throughout the year.
Like all content led Web sites, health sites have seen their fair share of layoffs, closures and bankruptcies in the past 18 months. Clickmango, a UK-based health site, shutdown in late 2000, putting 20 out of work. Later that year, DrDrew.com in the US sold its assts to Drkoop.com, which subsequently cut a third of its staff in May 2001. Drkoop.com then cut another third in August, leaving it with around 80 staff. In that same month PediaNet.com said it would cease operations.
That was just the beginning for the downturn in the sector. The US health site giant WebMD, which was formed by a merger between Healtheon, WebMD and CareInsite, said in September it would cut 1,100 jobs and last month the firm's co-CEO resigned.
But Eumom has avoided some of the difficulties in its sector and according to the company, its success can be attributed not only to its purpose, but also to its financial model. Eumom.com is based on the need for pregnant women to buy goods and thus the company offers marketing services to vendors targeting the expecting mother demographic, Mason said. The site's advertisers offer users deals and free samples if they submit names and address for marketing purposes, which in turn generates revenue for the site.
Dr. Mason also said that the company does not advertise, instead its popularity has been spread by word of mouth.
The company employs 11 across Europe including seven in Ireland. Dr. Sean Daly, Master at Coombe Women's Hospital, leads its Irish medical editorial team. Although Eumom is attracting 3,200 unique visitors per week, each staying for an average of eight to 10 minutes, Dr. Mason says, like most Web sites, staff expansion is not imminent. "We are running a very tight ship until times improve. This is not the time to expand."
Eumom is at http://www.eumom.com.
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