Birth Control - Web Site Reviews: Where You Should and Should Not Go For Info About the Pill

Web Site Reviews:
Where You Should and Should Not Go For Info About the Pill

Do you ever wonder where you should go online for comprehensive information about your oral contraceptive? Usually the best place to get information is from your health care provider, or your pharmacist. Once you have arrived at home, the last thing you may want to do is call somebody concerning a question you forgot to ask, so what do you do?

Here is a quick look at four different web sites. Each has common oral contraceptive information and information about the brand they are promoting. However, one pulls far ahead of the pack by going the extra mile in offering additional information and links to it’s visitors.

Web Site – Ortho Tri-Cyclen
Load Time – Good, provides the ability to skip the intro.
Navigation – Fairly easy to find what you are looking for.
Information – Not entirely accurate.

The Ortho Tri-Cyclen web site is fairly easy to navigate, and offers more information than anticipated. Not only will you find information about Ortho Tri-Cyclen, but also about the pill in general and some information about other methods of birth control, but this is not totally accurate. I would only suggest this site if you were looking for information about the pill in general or about Ortho Tri-Cyclen in particular. They do provide an oral contraceptive quiz that I thought was interesting to take. The information in their quiz is up to date to the best of my knowledge, and you may astonish yourself and score higher or lower than you anticipated.

Web Site – Alesse
Load Time – Fast, almost no waiting for images to load.
Navigation – Poor, breaks the site up into several sections.
Information – Good, focused on the pill.

The Alesse web site is more difficult to navigate depending on what you are looking for. They have their site divided into six different areas: before childbearing, between pregnancies, after childbearing, health care professionals, media professionals, and a Spanish area. If you know what you are looking for, you should be able to find it. Offers general information on pill use, and additional information on Alesse.

Web Site – Mircette
Load Time – Fast, little wait for page to load.
Navigation – Very poor, needs a lot of improvement.
Information – Poor, only appears to provide the package insert.

Mircette takes time to navigate. You almost need to have visited the web site previously to know where to go for the information you are looking for. I found general information as well as Mircette information under Important Patient Information. The site does offer some benefits that I have not seen elsewhere. The first is a newsletter that is geared to all women. It offers health information, news on the latest fashions, movie and CD picks, and more. Not what I would have expected from a birth control site. The other is a "RemindHer Card" that beeps at the same time each day. This card can be ordered from the Mircette web site for only the cost of shipping and handling.

Web Site – Diane-35
Load Time – Fast, took very little time for pages to load.
Navigation – Great, offers a site map as well as ‘tabs’ to frequently visited areas.
Information – Great, offers detailed info on Diane-35, general oral contraception, and additional information.

First, the information that is available at this site is more than you could have hoped for! Not only does the site offer the common information about oral contraceptives along with Diane-35, but you can find a glossary there too! Want more from this site? You got it, how about some links to other sites for teens? How about links to magazines, fashion and general interests? It’s there too. This site is one of the best that I have seen in a long time. You can easily find the information you are looking for, and possibly some you didn’t think was there.

Do you have a favorite birth control site? Please share it with the rest of us so we can benefit too. Are you a webmaster with a birth control related site that you would like to see reviewed here? Contact me at ttcweb@suite101.com (this email address is no longer valid, please contact me using the Contact Us link above) with your name, the name of the site, and the subject matter or brand of birth control the site is dedicated to.