Re-thinking website navigation architecture
Business objective:
Paying attention to the feedback from our audience - one of the pain points that stood out as consistent, was the issue of navigating the website.
"I get lost searching for forms and other information"
"Cannot find approved drug list"
"Website is too clunky to navigate"
etc.
Therefore, there is a requirement to understand the behavior and analyze the reason for these pain points. Restructure the navigation if necessary.
Understanding the behavior
General research notes
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Digital engagement among Seniors
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73% seniors connected to internet. 1
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Rate of growth in Digital engagement is higher than any group. 2
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Healthcare, News Media and travel websites are the most visited websites by Seniors
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Debunking XD beliefs
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3 clicks rule to accomplish any task is False. 3
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Better to undertake cognitive factor assessment (Decision forks and Content quantity)
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Users look straight at the content and ignore the navigation areas. 4
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Therefore, active efforts in User Nav Engagement needs to be undertaken.
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We should try adding contrast to the main navigation.
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Resorting to call customer care - is clear Dissatisfaction, due to failed attempt to achieve goal/purpose of visiting.
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Better Navigation design tips
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Content is more discoverable if it is not buried under multiple intervening layers. 5
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Create a further less cognitively heavy copy on the Nav.
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Better to use static interface. 6
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Common Nav. associated Senior user behaviors
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Seniors give up easily. Twice as likely as younger user group. 6
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Seniors tend to take path of least resistance - SEARCH bar
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Their UX rating for Amazon and Google is very high.
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Changes in USUAL website design is negative UX for Seniors, especially Navigation. (They sometimes tend to note down the nav. steps)
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Seniors like more forgiving website, especially in forms.
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1 - https://www.pewinternet.org/fact- sheet/internet-
2 - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact- sheet/internetbroadband/?menuItem=9a15d0d3- 3bff- 4e9e- a329- 6e328bc7bcce)
3 - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/3- click- rule/
4 - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/is- navigation- useful/
5 - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat- vsdeep-hierarchy/
6 - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability- seniorsimprovements/)
Competition assessment
Graph showing the raking based on member satisfaction for Medicare Advantage
Quick nav. design analysis
Interesting trends observed :
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Prominent search bar
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Left side vertical navigation on functional pages
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Stark contrast between Home pages vs Functional pages
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Single click navigation (no drop-downs)
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Better sub-categorization of pages
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Explicit but simple copy usage
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Better differentiation between Nav-Bar and rest of the page
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Good amount of breathing space between links
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Static design
Most visited websites by seniors
Aetna Medicare Solutions navigation analysis
Using the average Visit Per Day (VPD) data from previous year (2020), I categorized and color coded the main-navigation as well as sub-navigation
Color coded list of pages categorized on Visits Per Day.
Graphical representation of most visited pages on navigation
Conclusions drawn from this study
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Almost all of the most visited page are buried under some category.
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More than 50% of the pages got less than 50 visits per day on an average in a year.
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These pages are cluttering to navigation.
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We use dynamic navigation - not recommended for 65+ age group audience.
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We are not able to track effectively how are these pages getting leads from prospects.
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Search page is amongst the most visited pages - not a good sign for website architecture.
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Contact us is also amongst the most visited pages - is that a good sign? Need to analyze.
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Most of the highly visited pages are in Member side of Navigation.
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The Prospect side of navigation is not attracting enough visits.
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"Understanding Medicare" section is for prospects - These pages get less than 50 VPD on avg./year.
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Strategy to acquire new leads through educating prospects early on is failing.
Re-designing - Understanding Medicare
We worked worked with the Business and SMEs to figure out a more integrated way to attract the unique visitors and help the conversion rate.
Working with the marketing department we will create a new hub for prospect users
(<65 yrs old). This will act as a landing page for audiences who are directly routed through the QR code present on the post cards, or emails or reach out methods.
Figuring out the user flow from the hub page.
Heuristically the the design flow 1 was selected.
Designing pages
We used the components from our design library to design the hub pages as well as the sub-category pages.
These pages are under construction and will be soon pushed to production.
Links in the white NBA box takes users to their respective journeys based on their age.
I had to design a new calculator component so that users could calculate how far are they from being eligible for Medicare.