Hope Changes Lives: How Pfizer’s Website UX Lifts Spirits
Close your eyes, let’s go back about 2 years. Imagine you’ve clicked on a website to learn more about and determine which COVID-19 vaccine to get. While there, you see perplexing words, poor aesthetics, and slow loading times. How do you feel?
In today’s digital age, people expect websites to provide them with a seamless, intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing experience. Without a strong website UX, businesses are at risk of missing out on potential customers.
The Meaning of UX…
As you may know by now, I love formal definitions. For those who do too, you can find these below:
- User Experience (UX): The experience people have as they interact with every aspect of a company’s products and services, such as its website.
- User Experience (UX) Design: The process of increasing user satisfaction levels with a product/ service by improving its functionality, ease of use, and convenience.
To better understand this concept, we’ll use Pfizer’s website as an example.
The Homepage…
As the first thing people see when arriving at a site, the homepage offers businesses the opportunity to give a rundown of who they are, what they do, and why visitors should stay. When landing on Pfizer’s homepage, you’re greeted with exactly this; who they are, a biotechnology company, what they do, innovate revolutionary medicines, why stay, because they promise hope. With a simple yet effective mRNA hero image, Pfizer ensured no distractions from their brand story — “Hope Changes Lives.”
The Rather Bland Aesthetics…
(I know, bland sounds bleak, but please let me explain).
While “bland” usually implies a negative connotation, in Pfizer’s case, it’s a positive. Using just three relatively dull colors (blue, white, and black) throughout the site, Pfizer enhanced its brand personality — relentless, straightforward, and confident. Blue symbolizes security and dependability, signaling that Pfizer’s a reliable source of hope, white symbolizes cleanliness and perfection, reassuring visitors that Pfizer won’t release medications until they’re perfect (both safe and efficacious), and black symbolizes power and protection, encouraging confidence in Pfizer’s ability to deliver on their promise.
The User-Centered Focus…
Adding to their compelling homepage and deliberate color choices, Pfizer placed visitor needs and desires at the forefront of their web design. This is done in the following ways:
- Logical Headings Structure
From the headings arrangement, we can infer that Pfizer’s target audience are patients (and their families). Knowing that patients want to better understand the disease(s) they have, Pfizer placed “Science” first. It’s then followed by “Products,” showing how they’re treating these condition(s), “Stories,” boosting hope, “Newsroom,” highlighting updates, “About,” recognizing the people behind the science, “Search,” allowing visitors to swiftly find what they need, and “Contact Us,” ensuring resolutions to any unanswered questions. As the section ends with a language translator, Pfizer also ensured that their content was comprehensible to everyone worldwide. - Quality Content
In the biotech industry, there is a plethora of complicated terms that people may be unaccustomed to. To properly serve its visitors, Pfizer explained concepts clearly, using layman’s terms. This is especially important for its target audience as it helps patients better understand their condition(s), allowing them to make well-informed decisions as to which treatment path(s) they’d like to undergo. - Ease of Conversion
In Pfizer’s case, conversions would be having patients sign up for clinical trials, allowing them to gain valuable insights that’ll progress their assets. Before applying, pfizer.com guides patients to the “Clinical Trials” section of their “Science” page which outlines what the trials are, how the process will go, and who’s eligible to participate. After providing this information, they then suggest patients to sign up, simultaneously offering an easy yet informative enrollment process. - Cookie Policy Transparency
When applying for clinical trials, pfizer.com displays a pop-up requiring visitors to first consent to cookies. Here, they clearly identify how long data will be stored for, how many partners it’s being stored with, and how the cookies will be used. Once fully-informed, visitors can then choose to opt-in or out as they please. - Lack of AI
As chatbots pose dangers of misinformation, lack of empathy, and privacy concerns, such artificial intelligence would not be appropriate for a biotechnology site. As an alternative, Pfizer enabled visitors to directly send them emails, ensuring that a human team member could better assist them with their needs. - Responsive Design
As mobile progressively grows more intertwined with peoples’ lives, it’s crucial that sites be optimized for various devices. The look and feel of pfizer.com carry over seamlessly from desktop to mobile as it’s adapted for both orientations. For example, on desktop (larger landscape screen), headings are showcased at the top. When moving to mobile (smaller portrait screen), these headings are sorted within a hamburger menu, ensuring a neat and organized arrangement.
The Room for Improvement…
Nowadays, many consumers will wait no more than three seconds for sites to load before abandoning, making speed optimization crucial to UX design. According to Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, while pfizer.com performed well on desktop, its mobile version performed poorly. It’d hence be beneficial for Pfizer to quicken its mobile website loading times.
The Conclusion…
While healthcare may be considered a serious/ solemn topic, pfizer.com flipped the narrative by discussing it through an optimistic lens. Overall, via prioritizing user needs, providing relevant content, and facilitating effective navigation, Pfizer’s website UX succeeded in lifting my spirits.
Do you agree? Let me know what you think about the site!
