A More Robust Product Discovery

For the purpose of this case study I will refer to the client company as ABC Automation.

Company Overview

Pharmacy automation and adherence is crucial for healthcare companies to compete in today’s market. ABC Automation services its customers by implementing pharmacy automation workflows and devices The company’s website worked for basic purposes, but my task was to find ways to make the discovery process more streamlined. ABC’s ultimate focus is to be a leader and innovator in their market. This must be true not only for their products and services, but their presentation as well.

Defining the Problem

ABC Automation’s customer service is well known as the best in the industry. They strive to make sure customers are satisfied with every aspect of the journey from their very first contact to their continued partnership with ABC. This lead me to my ultimate problem:

How can the website better reflect the experience customers will have with the company’s products and services?

The company’s services and supporting products help reduce pharmacy fulfillment errors, speed up sorting and fulfillment processes, and simplify medication maintenance for patients. The website should also reduce error, speed up conversion, and simplify the decision processes.

User Research and Analysis

I began by conducting competitive and heuristic analysis on the current site and the sites of ABC’s competitors. While most of the company’s competitor offered a worse experience, there were some who did provide a better use of white space on the screen. The heuristic analysis help me identify issues with the product category and individual product displays. The each product category had tabs which represented each of the products associated with said category.

There are two issues with this. One, You are severely limited on the amount of tabs and thus products you can have on one screen before everything gets jumbled. Two, tabs are meant to be categorized “tidbits” of information about a very specific thing. These tabs were used to represent all information about the product however each product had dedicated categories of information that could demand tabs on its own. It is always best to hide as little pertinent information as possible, especially when it comes to showcasing products.

I also installed some visitor monitoring software called HotJar to record user sessions on the site. This gave some insight into how people used the site and issues they may have been experiencing. The over 2,000 recordings revealed that people did not seem to be able to find what they wanted. There was lots of bouncing from place to place. Content was buried in many tabs so people did not see the meat and potatoes of what the company had to offer, there was no guidance.

Content was also shoe horned into existing architecture without much forward thought. This resulted in a confusing and ineffective mix of content types in the same context. For example some product categories would list actual products and individual product software updates together in connected tabs as if they were all individual products.

Developing a Solution

After multiple design iteration sketches my team and I decided to completely revamp the product and category pages along with the homepage. To help people find what they really are looking for we decided to implement an enhanced product search and site search.Add a robust search so person can look for a general term and find what they need. We also filtered products and used clearer language to describe them. Content was further broken out to reflect its true nature, a software update for a product should not be listed with the other products of that category, but as a news update on an individual products page.

Implementation and Results

I had to work within the constraints for the current product categorization to keep the project manageable. The goal is to release smaller updates over time to begin testing as opposed to a complete overhaul that takes over a year to implement. Enhanced search was developed using Swiftype’s Search API, which allows for a Google like search experience.

We are sure that the solutions implemented will have a positive effect on user engagement.The question remains how much of an effect it will have. After further analysis of the post launch product section visitor recordings and web traffic analytics, we will better understand the impact and discover any additional enhancements needed for the site.