In-depth statistical analysis of the use of a website providing patients' narratives on lifestyle change when living with chronic back pain or coronary heart disease.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the use of lebensstil-aendern.de ("lifestyle change"), a website providing peer narratives of experiences with successful lifestyle change, and to analyze whether peer model characteristics, clip content, and media type have an influence on the number of visitors, dwell time, and exit rates.

METHODS: An in-depth statistical analysis of website use with multilevel regression analyses.

RESULTS: In two years, lebensstil-aendern.de attracted 12,844 visitors. The in-depth statistical analysis of usage rates demonstrated that audio clips were less popular than video or text-only clips, longer clips attracted more visitors, and clips by younger and female interviewees were preferred. User preferences for clip content categories differed between heart and back pain patients. Clips about stress management drew the smallest numbers of visitors in both indication modules.

CONCLUSIONS: Patients are interested in the experiences of others. Because the quality of information for user-generated content is generally low, healthcare providers should include quality-assured patient narratives in their interventions. User preferences for content, medium, and peer characteristics need to be taken into account.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: If healthcare providers decide to include patient experiences in their websites, they should plan their intervention according to the different needs and preferences of users.