Audicus Hearing Aid e-Commerce Experience
Audicus, my client at Red Antler, was a D2C hearing aid retailer. Red Antler was asked, as part of the rebrand, to redesign their marketing site and the entire e-Commerce experience. I lead UX for both the marketing site and the unique e-Commerce experience for seniors.
Audicus Users
The target audience of Audicus made this redesign particularly unusual and challenging for both visual design and UX. The Audicus audience can be broken down into 3 segments:
Seniors who, having looked into hearing aids, were shocked at how expensive aids are (on average, around $3000 per ear) and were looking for affordable alternatives
First time buyers who needed hand holding through the confusing process of getting hearing aids
The immediate friends and family of the hearing aid wearer, who are typically younger and more aware of disruptive models
Red Antler Design Process
This was the process we had at Red Antler. At each phase of the design, I would collaborate with different teams as the UX Lead. I began with a stakeholder kickoff with the client to understand the challenges facing their business and identify their needs. With insights from the kickoff, I’d proceed with a competitive audit and user research— employing different research methodologies depending on the project. Synthesizing information from this first phase one, I would nail down the primary problem facing the client and establish our key objectives.
Objectives
Guide users through the purchasing process
Help users select product that best suits their hearing loss
Educate users about their hearing loss and hearing aids
Segment users during funnel
Challenge
The primary challenge, in the case of Audicus, was that our e-Commerce experience couldn’t be boilerplate. Unlike most e-Commerce sites, the user couldn't just pick the product they wanted, add it to their cart, and check out. The Audicus user, who is also less web-savvy, needed to understand their hearing loss needs, pick the right product for their needs, and submit their audiogram (hearing test) to Audicus before finalizing the purchase.
The Product Wizard
The solution I proposed we develop as the UX lead, was a product wizard, or a product quiz. The quiz would allow us to meet several key objectives simultaneously. The quiz would guide the user step by step, help them get an audiogram if they didn’t already have one, help user identify their own hearing loss needs, and guide them to the appropriate hearing device.
With this particular project, the wireframes were pretty high fidelity and pretty prescriptive.
User Flows
I plotted out the flow of the quiz through the checkout process, considering different entry points for the quiz and how it would lead users into the checkout.
Final Design
This was the final solution, fully designed and developed in collaboration with a visual designer and an engineer. The product quiz only had 4 questions. I used progressive disclosure so the user would see one question at a time. I also included a progress indicator and a clear way to go back and change your last response. Every question collected information to aid Audicus in segmenting their own customers throughout the conversion process.
Question 1 doesn't change any outcome but is used to discern whether customer is a first time buyer and collect that information. Question 2 asks if the customer already has an audiogram. If they don’t, and click no, the quiz then reveals information on how to get an audiogram and a Zocdoc search engine API to facilitate this medical exam. If they do have an audiogram then question 3 and 4 (which are the same except for right and left ear), help the user read their own audiogram and select one of 3 hearing loss ranges. This was most challenging step, and I used my own experience trying to understand hearing test for myself to isolate a read into a single simple question. Finally, the quiz determines which hearing aid suits your needs based off your responses and leads the user to corresponding product detail page.
Meeting the objectives
The Product Wizard solution worked four-fold, and helped us meet our initial objectives.
Guided users step by step
Helped users get an audiogram
Empowered users to understand their own audiogram and hearing loss
Lead users to the appropriate device for their needs.
Satisfying our client
“One of the key problems for our customers was that they felt powerless in the purchasing process. The quiz is intuitive, clear, and extremely beneficial. It effectively empowers our customers to understand their own hearing test results. It helps us streamline customer service, collect valuable user information, and segment users. With the quiz, we collect more hearing tests. This is key because our data analysis reveals that once our users submit audiograms, they will complete their purchase, on average, within only one day. By easing the friction of that hurdle, sales increased significantly.”
