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Rx + Ecommerce

Explored the possibilities of enabling users to mix Rx and Non-Rx items in basket.

Expanded Case Study

Expanded Case Study

UX/UI Design

UX/UI Design

Ecommerce

Ecommerce

Reserach

5-Min Read

We successfully launched a feature enabling users to pre-pay for prescription orders on our website using our “Rx Pay ‘N Go” interface, which drove $750 Million in incremental pharmacy revenue.

During this process, we heard overwhelming feedback from users that they would like to add other non-prescription items to their order to pick up or deliver along side their prescriptions, so we got to work. This addition to the program was ultimately not successful, and was differed indefinitely after a year long pilot.

Along the way we discovered some key issues with our ecommerce checkout engine, and although we differed this feature, it led to efforts that greatly impacted our ecommerce experience.

We successfully launched a feature enabling users to pre-pay for prescription orders on our website using our “Rx Pay ‘N Go” interface, which drove $750 Million in incremental pharmacy revenue.

During this process, we heard overwhelming feedback from users that they would like to add other non-prescription items to their order to pick up or deliver along side their prescriptions, so we got to work. This addition to the program was ultimately not successful, and was differed indefinitely after a year long pilot.

Along the way we discovered some key issues with our ecommerce checkout engine, and although we differed this feature, it led to efforts that greatly impacted our ecommerce experience.

Challenges:

Rite Aid had never attempted to integrate their back-end systems for prescriptions and ecommerce. Enabling this feature came with many challenges, including:

The new functionality would require users who are only interested in prescriptions to navigate a more complex user journey.

Rite Aid’s implementation of Magento, the ecommerce engine, did not perform as well as the lightweight backend of the legacy interface that did not include any ecommerce functionality.

The business was averse to running this as a split test, so our pilot ran as a pre/post test using a small group of stores. This made measuring impact difficult.

Cutting costs on front-end development resulted in poor fidelity between UX Prototype requirements and the production pilot.

Process:

I started by performing the following research to inform our direction:

User Journeys

User Innterviews

In analyzing our competitors, we found that none of them had added a feature comparable to this at the time. We were in uncharted territory here. It was critical to approach this from a user-centered direction. We created user journeys in many forms to help conceptualize our vision and interviewed users who had expressed interest in this feature.

After iterating on the flow and deciding on a direction, we created prototypes and began user testing. Lots of positive feedback and user success sped us along to our next phase, the pilot.

Outcome:

We ran the pilot for over a year. The primary requirement of the pilot was to reach a completion rate greater than, or equal to the legacy (control) experience. We iterated on several different aspects of the interface, reducing the number of steps, and scaled back the features that encouraged users to add non-rx items, but ultimately the challenges I outlined above proved too much to overcome given the resources we were working with.

Evidence strongly pointed to load times on the cart page as the culprit leading to increased abandonment. Although we ultimately differed this add-on feature, it directly led to the following improvements in the overall ecommerce experience:

We ran the pilot for over a year. The primary requirement of the pilot was to reach a completion rate greater than, or equal to the legacy (control) experience. We iterated on several different aspects of the interface, reducing the number of steps, and scaled back the features that encouraged users to add non-rx items, but ultimately the challenges I outlined above proved too much to overcome given the resources we were working with.

Evidence strongly pointed to load times on the cart page as the culprit leading to increased abandonment. Although we ultimately differed this add-on feature, it directly led to the following improvements in the overall ecommerce experience:

Reduction in the number of steps in bottom of the funnel.

Improved site speed for 18% reduced load time on the cart page

Increased conversion rate by 28% within the cart page.

a comic style user-jouirney showing a woman adding non-rx items to her rx order and picking them up together in a curbside order.
a comic style user-jouirney showing a woman adding non-rx items to her rx order and picking them up together in a curbside order.

User Journey in Comic-Strip form for executive pitch-deck

Usertest screenshot and data Indicating 100%
task completion.

Two screens that appear to have the same content, but look very different.
Two screens that appear to have the same content, but look very different.

Early struggles with front-end development

Early struggles with front-end development

Three iphones showing a user interface for this featrure
Three iphones showing a user interface for this featrure

Final screens from flow, initiated by SMS.

Final product list page, cart page, and checkout page

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brian@briantalbot.design