Collective Welcome:
Open Enrollment Redesign 2020
Overview
Role: UX Manager, Content Designer
Team: Brand Director, Brand Designer, Production Designer, Product Designer, Product Manager, Engineer
Timeline: 45 days (excluding research)
Okay, here’s what you need to know: Technically, Collective Health is a benefits administrator. But our mission is to make it easier for our members to find, understand, navigate, and pay for their health benefits.
And the start of that journey for members is Collective Welcome: a four-part program designed to help members learn about Collective Health, choose a plan, register for their account, and onboard onto the platform.
Problem
Let’s dive into that second part: the OE Portal.
Nothing about healthcare is easy, including choosing a health plan. The OE Portal is a digital space to really dig into what your plan options are and how those plans work, and then start the process of enrolling in a plan.
But unlike our shining star, Open Enrollment, and our super engaging Registration Email, the OE Portal had some sad numbers attached to it.
Engagement by the numbers:
Enroll CTA click through: 7%
Plans CTA click through: 17%
Video CTA click through: 3%
Member inquiry rates by topic:
Plan enrollment: 16%
Is this doc in-network: 14%
Plan design: 12%
Advocating for UX
Despite those lackluster numbers, Design actually had a slightly larger problem on our hands: Product didn’t see the value in making updates to the OE Portal. So before any work could be done, I had to tackle that.
First, I asked a junior Product Manager to help me gather some data (those engagement scores above). During our collaboration, she noted it seemed weird that our Enroll button wasn’t getting a lot of action, especially considering we had a lot of traffic to the site.
Bingo.
(Note the Enroll button is not the main CTA here. Nor is there any pathway for a member to follow, so it’s unclear what someone is supposed to do.)
I knew her manager would support her decisions. So once she was on board, I could start to make an appeal to Product leadership. And rather than say blah blah blah UX to them, I reframed the problem as a cost concern—or as I like to say, I talked “product” to them.
The OE Portal requires significant investment cross-functionally, as each client has a unique portal set-up. Right now, the product wasn’t serving its intended purpose...meaning we are wasting money. But we have a few options!
a. Ditch the portal entirely this year (which risks making clients upset)
b. Leave the portal as it is (which we know is relatively unsuccessful
c. Put in minimal effort to maximize the portal potential to decide if we’ll invest further, or rethink the whole product next year.
They chose C, and were off.
Process
We kept our goal simple: to increase engagement, and to decrease call volume for questions that could be answered on the portal itself.
With no time to spare, we started iterating. Our main goal was to create a clear pathway for members, so they didn’t have to wonder what they should be doing.
We explored framing the pathway as a journey or timeline to give motion to the experience, and then considered a step-by-step approach. Both these weren’t quite working though, since we couldn’t be sure where exactly members were in their journey when they arrived at our site. Had they already chosen a plan? Were they just here to see if their favorite doc was in-network? And how prominently should we put info about Collective Health itself?
Final Product
After fast iteration and multiple critiques, we landed on “the doorway” solution: a choose your own adventure product that placed equal weight on seeing your plan options, enrolling in your plan, and checking for in-network doctors. We kept the rest of the page light with our simple overview video.
Impact & Reflection
At the time of writing this, we’re not done with data gathering yet (we still have a month to go before we’re comparing apples to apples). But here’s what we do know:
LAST YEAR
Engagement by the numbers:
Enroll CTA click through: 7%
Plans CTA click through: 17%
Video CTA click through: 3%
Member inquiry rates by topic:
Plan enrollment: 16%
Is this doc in-network: 14%
Plan design: 12%
THIS YEAR
Engagement by the numbers:
Enroll CTA click through: 12%
Plans CTA click through: 15%
Video CTA click through: 3%
Member inquiry rates by topic:
Plan enrollment: 3%
Is this doc in-network: 8%
Plan design: TBD
If I could change just one thing about the solution, I wish we’d considered an information hierarchy with four doorways instead of three, and put the “Meet Collective Health” section on par with the rest of the options...just to see if people were more interested in learning about the product.