Service redesign: How the redesign of the product has changed users’ experience

Product thinking, User researches, Colaboration

Meta is a mental-health service. It is a marketplace where clients find psytherapists. Smart algorithm allows our service to offer specialists who will best cope with a request. The client then selects an appropriate specialist and arranges a meeting.

In december 2021, we conducted a rebranding. Redesigning the main service page was the first task to introduce a new visual style into the product. We wanted to conceptually separate ourselves from competitors through an image of expertise.

Together with the introduction of a new style, we started improving the conversion at the very top of the product funnel — increasing the number of visitors who switched to filling out the survey.

Meta home page in December 2021

70% of visitors who visit the website don’t go to fill out the survey

We (the product manager and I) started by studying the problem — why people visit our website and don’t go to fill out the survey.

We’ve gone over the webvisor, analytics and previous interviews with users: clients who chose a psychotherapist through our service; customers who considered our service, but chose competitors. And here’s what we learned:

• the service looks like a beta version, and it doesn’t inspire with confidence; it feels like it hasn’t been made by experts;
• lots of text blocks, its hard to read;
• extra blocks that don’t work for persuasion;
• it is very difficult to describe the process of work — a lot of text, which no one reads;
• there is no trust in psychological services as such — there are only cheap therapists, which usually means poor quality;
• don’t understand the difference from other services;
• don’t understand how the service works, what will happen to them after filling out the survey: difficulties in making a payment, and where the courses will be taking place, etc..

The work on solving any problem starts with studying the problem. What we already know about it: analytics data, interviews with clients

We analyze web pages of 20 similar services in the european, US and CIS markets. We look at what blocks they consist of, how services tell about themselves, what persuasion techniques they use, and how they convey values.

We conduct 15 interviews with clients to find out what they are paying attention to. We also study those who are already undergoing therapy and those who only plan to take it. What would they pay attention to if they were choosing a therapist right now? We show the landing pages of competitors.

Landings of 100% of the services studied are built according to the classical scheme

Studying competitors helps us to understand what information to include to fit the category and how we are different from other services

What makes us different from other services is that we have the most stringent selection of therapists in our database

At this stage, we formulate two types of audience. The first group: experienced — who have been undergoing therapy for many years, and they know how it all works. They used to find therapists by using someone’s connections. They are ready to try to find a psychotherapist through the service if the service offers them additional convenience.

What they found important: features and the way the service works, reviews of the service, the experience of psychotherapists, how psychotherapists are selected into the database, mission and values of the company.

The second group are inexperienced ones who want to try psychotherapy as a tool to change life for the better. They pay much attention to whether a psychotherapy will help them overcome their problems. We essentially sell them not a service, but psychotherapy.

We compile job stories — a list of “works” that the client wants to perform when he or she visit the website — and their possible solutions. And then make a text prototype of the new landing. We conduct several iterations with a marketing team, editors and a team of expert psychotherapists.

Next, we conduct another 8 interviews with clients to understand how much they understand the values we want to convey. We ask them to arrange the blocks in order of importance to them.

Text prototype — a quick way to check if the customer will understand our ideas

We make changes to the texts and order of the blocks. We prepare design prototypes and test them on 6 users. We make sure that the meanings remain understandable, and the design doesn’t interfere with understanding and reading.

We choose the best prototype, make final changes and once again conduct control interviews with 6 users.

During the design process, 10+ design options for blocks were tested by us

Home page after redesign

As a result, we surveyed users and found that the new homepage makes the service look more expert, the information about the service can be read more quickly, and the differences from other services are better understood.

At the time of publishing the case study we are in the process of redesigning the rest of the product pages.