Converge
An E-commerce marketplace that allows users to learn, explore, and shop multiple types of insurance coverage options on site. Phase I soft launched in late 2019 as an MVP solution and Phase II’s kick-off began in January 2020 and went live on November 2020.
What's the problem?
There were many inconsistencies in branding and visual design issues. Furthermore, the information architecture and the applied navigation systems were confusing, and many links were broken.
What was my role?
I was the lead UX designer for Phase II of this project. My responsibilities included:
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Conducting user research and usability testing
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Creating user flows, personas, journey maps, wireframes, and prototypes
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Defining the experience for mobile systems
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Establishing and standardizing a design system with branding guidelines
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Presenting research and designs to stakeholders and working with PMs and developers to implement designs
Understand User Needs:
The Research Process
To determine the redesign goals, we engaged in discovery work with our users:
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Usability Tests: Tests were conducted at various stages of the project. Due to limited resources and time, the initial tests were conducted with TryMyUI and subsequent tests were conducted with our client’s third-party service
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Competitive Analysis: We looked at eight other health care websites and compared key performance indicators
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Heuristic Evaluation: We compared the current site's experience against a set of pre-defined principles to identify potential usability problems
Research Questions
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To what extent do participants find key features and functions easy to find and use?
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To what extent does the organization and categorization of the tool’s items meet users’ expectations?
Usability Tests
30-minute remote usability testing sessions were conducted with ten health care consumers, ages varying from 66 to 71. All ten participants were given a set of activities to complete on the desktop version of the site. Each session focused on gathering data regarding:
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Impressions of the landing page
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Ways that participants interacted with the site while completing tasks
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Reflections on participants’ experiences using the site
Note: The site was not optimized for mobile
Main findings from TryMyUI
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The homepage did not leave the user with a positive first impression
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There were many inconsistencies in branding and visual design issues such as use of color, alignment and button size
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The information architecture and the applied navigation systems were confusing, and many links were broken
Benchmarking Analysis
April 2020 - August 2020
We identified metrics to analyze and benchmark as key indicators of site health, ongoing performance, and optimization. We looked at eight other health care websites and compared key performance indicators.
How does Converge stack up against similar, more established sites?
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With an average of 34.3% for the group of established sites, Converge must bring down its bounce rate by more than 50% to be on par with other sites in this category.
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Steady competitor site traffic (sessions) throughout Phase I, coupled with relatively high average session duration and pages per session, suggest that users are engaged in content and are navigating the site following an awareness or education-based path on competitive sites.
Converge Phase I Time Period
How does Converge stack up against similar new/immature sites?
Stride Health’s engagement metrics (average session duration and pages per session) are a strong indication of having engaging content and a positive user experience.
Their UX consists of highly visual, simple content with a clear navigation bar for grounding and product options “below the fold,” making Stride Health a leader amongst immature sites.
Converge Phase I Time Period
How does Converge stack up against market leaders?
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Market leaders with established sites have an average bounce rate of 38.42%, so improvements are required to be able to compete in this category even as the site matures and rates improve.
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During Phase I, average session duration and pages per session follow identical trends, which could indicate that shoppers are researching their options and are thoroughly reading each page and following a standard “learn” path. We are led to presume that user intent during Phase I is primarily education-based (considering the majority may not be able to purchase/renew until OEP).
Converge Phase I Time Period
Who are our users?
Utilizing the insights gathered from user research, I created personas for the multiple user types.
Heuristic Evaluation
We compared the current site's experience against a set of pre-defined principles to identify potential usability problems.
Establishing Goals and Prioritizing Features
Meetings with the internal and external teams were held on a weekly basis. This helped to create alignment on the objectives, encouraged a shared vision between the multidisciplinary teams, and drove decision making. We defined the requirements and use cases, and established features that would be included in the enhanced site.
Deliverables
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Med Supp Third Part VPP (View Plans and Pricing) Integration
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Suppression Enhancements
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UI Enhancements
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Federal Enhancements
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Dental Enhancements
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Click to Chat Functionality
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Vision Insurance Integration
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Vision Discount Page
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Customer Satisfaction Surveys
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New York Life Link Off
User Flows
I worked on the high-level flow and then focused on the individual products that were offered on the site. I created the user flow of the redesigned information architecture to better visualize how users may interact with the site.
We adhered to a top-down approach to defining the overall structure and flow of the experience and my ideation process involved high-level sketches for the primary use cases. The designs were shared with stakeholders and teams on a weekly basis to obtain feedback on the functionality and interactivity of the product.
Redesign and Development
With the information gathered from usability testing, benchmark analysis, and heuristic evaluation, how can we improve the user’s experience, so that we attract new users and the conversion rates increase?
Observation 🔎
We were losing shoppers as evidenced by high bounce rate (84.94%), short session durations (38s), limited site depth (14%), and low conversions. This was most likely because of the long page load times, lack of clear navigation, and lack of learn content relevant to users’ needs.
Opportunity ⭐
Embed educational and personalized content throughout the Converge experience and at key decision points. Currently, the Converge homepage and other marketing landing pages lack a “How it Works” component, which is critical in guiding users through the experience. In addition, ensure stronger CTA’s to improve conversion.
Observation 🔎
Category leaders such as Stride and Humana prioritize highly visual, simple, and clear UX, with a navigation bar on top and learn content on the homepage, which leads to more sessions with higher session durations and more pages per session. Additionally, because Converge is geared towards an older population, headers and descriptions can easily be lost if not AAA WCAG compliant.
Opportunity ⭐
Guide Shoppers by adding a main navigation path and breadcrumbs. In addition, reorganize the structure of the pages and contents to make it easy for users to find and digest the information.
Observation 🔎
Converge competitors used a combination of tactics to encourage more site engagement such as continuous scroll, needs analysis forms, and mobile-first design.
Opportunity ⭐
Given Converge users’ heavy mobile use, we should redesign with a mobile-first approach.
Proposed Redesigns
We prioritized creating a clear navigation path and added a "Learn More" / FAQ section to the home and product pages to boost user engagement. The addition of educational content helps users understand how Converge works, guiding them through each stage of consideration with greater confidence. Additionally, we redefined the mobile experience to enhance usability across devices.
Feedback was collected and several iterations were made on the designs throughout the product life cycle. We went through cycles of requirements, consensus, approvals, details specifications, and handoffs.
Accessibility
We ensured that our products are WCAG 2.0 AA compliant and that users are able to accomplish tasks that they set out to perform. Designing for accessibility, diversity, and inclusion are crucial, and I made sure that we kept these questions in mind during planning, designing, and developing.
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Is there sufficient contrast in the design for users who are visually impaired?
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Is it responsive and can I access what I need on different devices?
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Is there a clear content hierarchy?
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Is it keyboard friendly?
Development
During development, I worked closely with the developers to clarify any doubts on the features that I implemented and provided guidance on the hand off specifications.
Style Guide
As I started transitioning into high-fidelity designs, I also worked on creating a style guide that would serve as a guideline to ensure that the company implemented a consistent design system across the different products that we were building.
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Typography and font
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Color palette
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UI components
Challenges
The biggest challenge I faced throughout this project was the limited time and resources for user research and testing. We did not have a clear UX process so I invested in building research capability, gathering as much information as I could by asking questions, interviewing stakeholders, and setting up weekly brainstorming and design sessions with the team. The scope of the project was also constantly changing, and I had to adapt to those changes while also balancing moving forward with designs.
As branding was also another challenge due to the fact that we did not have a style guide that we could refer to, I worked on creating one in parallel with the Phase II project for Converge.
Learnings
This was a genuinely engaging project for me to work on and a tremendous learning experience. Some of the things I learned from this experience include:
Prioritization
Have a plan and prioritize features. This helps deal with out-of-scope requests that could potentially derail the project.
Research
Take time for research and get feedback early and often. This saves time and re-work.
Advocate for better UX practices
Make people more aware of the importance and benefits of user-centric designs.
The Launch and Impact
After nearly a year of design and development, we completed Phase II and launched our enhanced site in late 2020.
It was a pleasure to see my work brought to life and the impact it continues to have on users. Following the launch of our enhanced site, we continued to monitor for any bugs and issues users may encounter. We also collected metrics to analyze ongoing performance.
⭐Decreased bounce rate
84.94% to 57.41%
⭐Redefined mobile experience and increased mobile usage