Price Page Redesign for Brand Drugs
Research, UX Design, Design Strategy
About the company
GoodRx is a leading prescription price transparency platform that gathers current prices and valuable savings for prescription drugs at virtually every pharmacy in America.
Context and challenge
GoodRx offers coupons to help people save on their prescriptions. However, coupons are not always the best savings option especially when it comes to brand drugs which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. To help people afford the drugs they need to maintain their well-being, GoodRx partners with manufacturers to reduce prices and connect eligible patients to the best savings.
While GoodRx was working on brokering more partnerships with manufacturers, my goal was to redesign the price page for brand drugs to improve the user experience. As the business grows, the challenge was to deliver the right design artifacts to make sure design solutions are user-centric while achieving the business goals of the company.
My role
As the lead designer, I took the full ownership of the redesign process from strategy to release, focusing on influencing product direction from a user experience design perspective.
Approach
Collaborate with multidisciplinary groups to ensure coverage from different vantage points on any challenges we faced.
Take an iterative, phased approach to the roll-out to allow for testing and user feedback collection.
Interview stakeholders and users to facilitate the best solutions.
The problem today
GoodRx provides valuable pricing and savings information, however, the price page suffers from the lack of information hierarchy.
While the price page accomplishes its goal of detailing all of the information necessary for a patient to make an informed decision, it presents all of the information "as is" without helpful, guiding structure, which can be overwhelming for users who may already be daunted by the unfamiliarity that comes with dealing with the intricacies of the pharmaceutical marketplace.
Essential information is easy to miss
Basic, but essential drug information such as generic equivalent availability, average retail price, and insurance coverage is buried inside a lengthy drug description section that can be easily overlooked.
Unaffordable coupons take up valuable real estate
The current design of the price page is optimized for price comparison, showing coupons from all available pharmacies. However the relative difference in price across pharmacies is irrelevant for brand drugs if none of the options are within the user’s budget. In these cases, these rows unnecessarily take up real estate, making relevant, actionable choices much more difficult to find.
The best savings are stuffed at the bottom
Manufacturer coupons and patient assistance programs are often the best savings opportunities, potentially helping both commercially insured and uninsured patients pay $0 for their brand drugs. They are stuffed at the bottom of the page alongside insignificant savings tips, and are poorly presented with information that is irrelevant to a user that is simply searching for the lowest price.
Redesign phase 1:
Short-term improvement
To start, we began conceptualizing how we might reorganize the content to prioritize the best savings, as well as to better highlight important and useful information.
Experiment design with viable front-end changes
While coming up with a research plan to help me understand our brand drug users and their journey looking for savings, my first instinct was to start with the low hanging fruit. Working with the product manager, we decided to take an iterative, phased approach to the roll-out of the new design in order to allow us to test and gather user feedback throughout the process.
For phase 1, we aimed to increase engagement by optimizing the components and layout while bringing more valuable yet digestible information to our users. To do so, I leveraged three techniques for improving the design.
My three techniques:
Re-architect and organize the existing information on the current page.
Take a modular approach to allow us to test and scale new designs quickly.
Introduce an insurance requirement labeling system to help users find eligible savings at a glance.
The modularized structure
Cost education module
By extracting the pricing information from the drug info section and displaying it in a compact, easier to digest format, we could help users see what they would likely pay with or without insurance immediately.
Savings programs modules
We reworked the hierarchy to show the most useful information such as pricing, insurance requirements, and contact information up top.
GoodRx exclusive offers module
Rather than show the extensive list of GoodRx coupons, we collapsed the list down to highlight the three lowest prices. If needed, users could expand this section to browse a more exhaustive list in case they were looking for other options (for instance, pharmacies that may be nearer, or more accessible from their homes).
Miscellaneous modules
Helpful but less immediately relevant information such as prices for 90-day supply and latest news were to continue to display in the same position on the bottom of the page.
Phase 1 Design
Result
Huge improvement on click rates across almost all pilot drugs.
We rolled out the phase 1 design on 17 pilot brand drugs that have limited insurance coverage and low GoodRx coupon conversion. We tracked clicks on links to ensure we delivered an improvement on the exposure of the best savings.
Manufacturer coupon
Manufacturer coupon click rate increased by 69% on desktop and 620% on mobile web.
Patient assistance program
Patient assistance program click rate increased by 46% on desktop and 298% on mobile.
Redesign phase 2:
Long-term design strategy
Though the new design was successful in better guiding users through their drug shopping journey, a shift in GoodRx’s business goals required a reconciling of the phase 1 design in order to better align with their objectives.
The new problem
GoodRx launched a new division, Manufacturer Solutions, in order to focus on building partnerships with pharmaceutical manufacturers. The team built two sponsored features to allow manufacturers to advertise above and/or within the GoodRx coupons. While the phase 1 design was performing well, it became a roadblock to business growth.
Redefine success
For patients
Create solution to help them easily find the lowest price for their drugs.
For drug manufacturers
Maintain the visibility of sponsored features to eligible users.
For the Sales team
Create opportunity for them to expand partnership with the sponsored features and the new design.
How might we navigate users directly to the best savings while stimulating business growth?
Taking a step back
Puzzling out the brand drug users and their journeys
Understanding the userbase
Insurance survey, 1,515 responses
Collaborating with the marketing team, we launched a “Do you have health insurance?” survey on the brand drug pages to capture a snapshot our users’ insurance coverage.
Diving into user's mind
Interview 6 users who called GoodRx for brand drug consultation.
With a researcher, we designed a script for a guided interview offered to users who had called in for brand drug consultations. The goals of this interview were:
To collect user feedback on the phase 1 design.
To gather information around what the user journey was like from the moment they were prescribed a brand drug to the point they purchased the drug.
User journey map
Takeaways
Education on drug savings is the key to connecting users to cost-cutting savings programs.
Contrary to popular belief, going through insurance does not always result in the best price. However, insurance can help make users eligible for various savings programs. By educating users on these facts, we could help users make more informed choices and maximize savings on their medication.
A better “shopping” experience is an opportunity to increase engagement with users.
Personalized savings options, and easy-to-understand instructions for the application would be pivotal in creating a better shopping experience and improving overall engagement with the GoodRx platform.
Solution
Insurance based, dynamic savings options
With the insights gathered from our user inquiries and research, we re-prioritized all the savings options and added an insurance filtering system to simplify choices for the users while ensuring sponsored savings programs to be highlighted for eligible users.
The new architecture
Drug info module
Similar to the first redesign, we displayed high level information such as treatment, generic availability, retail price, and insurance copay right at the top, giving users immediate access to the information that would be most relevant to them.
Simplified menu and settings
We grouped mutual functionalities that applied across all drug price pages, including those that apply to generic drugs, allowing users to find accurate GoodRx coupon prices based on their prescriptions.
Insurance filter
Instead of overwhelming users with a flood of options, we chose to provide a top-level filter based on the their insurance availability, allowing them to see only the savings programs and options that were relevant to them. This also gave us the opportunity to target sponsored results directly to the users that might use them.
Modularized savings options
As with phase 1 of the redesign, we continued to use a modular approach to allow us to test and scale new designs rapidly.
Miscellaneous modules
Again, helpful but less significant information continues to be displayed at the bottom the page.
Phase 2 Prototype
What's next?
The project is currently pending executive and stakeholder review, but in the meantime, my goal is to make sure that the phase 2 design feels fluid given real-world data and constraints by getting and assessing feedback from across multiple disciplines, especially SEO and engineering.
Our user interviews indicate that healthcare providers are still patients’ primary resource of information, but users discover the GoodRx site on their own rather than being referred to it by their healthcare providers.
Moving forward, one of my goals is to think about how we might design the brand price page different for users that come from the healthcare providers’ side, allowing them to use GoodRx as a resource directly and to refer their patients to the site in a seamless way that allows their patients to make informed decisions about shopping for their medication after their consultations.
GoodRx continues to grow and evolve to meet the demands of those seeking solutions for saving on high-cost brand drugs, as well as partnering up with drug manufacturers looking to increase their outreach. Our user-research and click-through statistics have shown that viewing these problems from the user’s perspective and helping to guide and educate them through what can otherwise be a daunting and overwhelming task can have a profound effect on enabling people to take the best care of their own well-being.