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UX Diaries

12 min readSep 6, 2020

Redesigning the User Experience | PharmEasy (pharmacy made easy!)

Disclaimer: All the changes implemented or features added are hypothetical and are done only for educational purposes strictly under the guidance of our mentor Abhrojit Boral.

Hello! I hope you are doing Well :)

Buying medicines online! Sounds very skeptic for me and I know sometimes even for you ;) . Before choosing this company for a UX project, I was unaware of many interesting ideas and policies this company has implemented for customer ease. It is very obvious that a good user interface or great user experience always leaves a trace in our mind! Right? With this motive, Me and my partner Avanti, has tried to make the user experience of this company’s website much more delightful.

‘Recasting’ or ‘Redesigning’ is the integral job of a UX designer. It is nearly impossible for any product or website to grow only on the basis of technology. A great UX seals the deal.

People ignore design that ignores people

Frank Chimero (Designer)

Taking that into consideration,

Brief

We were asked to have a deep understanding of the User Experience and interface of any online company with the intent to recreate the platform by in depth research and analysis, adding essential features to attract the targeted customer cluster for better and more engaging user experience.

The company we chose to work on, is an online pharmaceutical company known as PharmEasy.

Clients

It is important for any designer to analyse their clients which can help them render best user solutions. The majority of clients for pharmeasy are :

Patients (users of products)

As most of the footfall is by patients on the website, who in turn are the main users for the products, it is very essential to minimize their struggle in searching for the desired medical or healthcare brands.

User Persona

Goals of the Users :

One stop destination: Majority of the users on the website look for a platform consisting of a vast selection of medical and healthcare brands that aims to fulfill all their needs and desires. The users would be delighted to find every expected or unexpected products and services at one place as this will save a lot of time and efforts of searching at various other websites.
Affordable purchase: Buying products at lowest price in the whole market is the primary goal of every consumer. The user would be intrigued by the company selling products or services at comparatively less price. Availing additional discounts and offers on purchasing from the website is what acts as the cherry on the cake for every user .
Swift purchase: In today’s fast paced life, every user expects a quick and easy journey of purchasing any product or service. Minimum time in purchasing will lead to maximum visits on the site. It is very important for every e-commerce company to develop a smooth navigation flow which can help the users to reach specific information or product.
Authentic products & services: As users have inputted the money for the products, it’s their right to expect the original outcome. It is very important for an e-commerce company, especially for an e-pharmaceutical company to be critical about the delivery of authentic products and services. This is one thing which can play the lead role in building ‘brand loyalty’.

My agenda in the project

After researching thoroughly about the company, my agenda was :-

illustration: iwon.my

To help the business grow by increasing crucial business metrics which includes empathy, loyalty, improving brand perception etc.
Understanding the User Persona and making the users think in a certain way to improve brand perception.
To introduce new and progressive features for the company which can help people to experience unrivaled services at their doorstop.
Building trust and relationship between company and the users by being sensitive to the needs and wants of the customers.
For consumers to be able to navigate easily through the website. To sell authentic medicines and healthcare products. (solving a problem)
Gaining customer loyalty.
Connecting with customers at a personal level by understanding their needs and wants in order to build a strong relationship based on trust and loyalty between consumers and the brand.
Standing out amongst its competitors.
To grow in terms of customer reach and to have a strong and large consumer base.

User Research Process :

a.) Strategizing

— S.W.O.T Analysis:

Strengths -

Discount is the strongest feature for which PharmEasy is known. The company normally gets 1–2 % commission, while the customers get a flat 20 % discount on the medicines they buy through the start-up, with a local retail pharmacy delivering it. The company also offers upto 75 % discount on some diagnostic tests.
(95% of all medicines) 1 lakh + medicines available on this website.
Tie ups with multiple payment partners such as : Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Paytm, RuPay, Visa etc.
Tie ups with multiple reputed and certified diagnostic centers and doctors too. (Suburban, General, Modern Wellness, Healthians and Thyrocare Technologies)
Wide range of target areas : serviceable to 22,000 + pincodes and 1000 + cities in India.

Weaknesses -

Delivery of faulty/incorrect medicines is one of the biggest weaknesses of pharmeasy. High percentage of people have registered a complaint regarding wrong medicines or equipment being delivered by pharmeasy. Customers also complain of receiving incorrect quantities of medicines.
Not delivering on time has turned out to be one of the main reasons for decreased traffic on the website.Customers complain about constant delay in delivery of medicines and health care products by approximately 5–10 days.
Hurdles in getting refund for damaged products — If a product is damaged or not in the condition of proper usage, it should be the prime concern of the company to protect customer’s rights by initiating the refund or providing an appropriate solution.However, in PharmEasy, it turns out to be a difficult task of demanding a refund for any damaged or dissatisfactory product received by a customer.
Can’t refuse to use wallet money — Different people have different choices for everything. PharmEasy forces the customers to use discounts and perks offered to them that are added in the customer’s wallet for an immediate purchase.No individual choice in terms of collecting some money in the wallet for future payments and discounts. It is compulsory to redeem them at the time of payment.
No section for product reviews — Many customers are confused about quality and authenticity of products they consider buying, and a customer review and images from consumers on each and every product (apart from medicines, as they depend upon the prescription) could give them clarity on products and their packaging condition, authenticity etc.

This could accelerate the sales of the company and increase the traffic on the website as people wouldn’t be concerned about wasting their money on an unknown product or on one that hasn’t been rated in terms of quality.

Opportunities -

PharmEasy has tied up with Amazon India to enable digital payments using the ‘Amazon Pay wallet’.
PharmEasy acquired 100% stake in its smaller rival Medlife, while the latter picked up a 19.59% stake in PharmEasy. The combined entity is valued at $1.15 billion.

Threats -

Reliance Retail officially announced its acquisition of Netmeds. Reliance Retail acquired Netmeds for a cash consideration of ₹620 crore. This partnership proves to be a strong competition against the PharmEasy — Medlife tie — up.
Amazon has recently entered the e — pharmacy industry, while Flipkart has been reportedly looking into it too.
Competitors such as 1mg having a revenue of $163 million are more successful than Pharmeasy.

— Mission & Vision:

Mission : To establish PharmEasy as the leading e-pharmaceutical company by making navigation through the website more convenient and effortless by putting our best foot forward.
Vision : A dream to connect patients to local pharmacies and diagnostic centres through a mobile app. Their vision was to make healthcare accessible and affordable across India through a quick and efficient doorstep service with great discounts. This vision gave birth to PharmEasy, India’s №1 healthcare aggregator.

— Stakeholders Mapping

Co — Founder and Founder
Investors
Consumers
Doctors
Design Partners
Other employees
Delivery agents

— Competitors Analysis:

PharmEasy Competitors: 1MG, Medlife, Netmeds

(*can hover over the table for easy understating)

Created on Sheetsu by us

In transaction volume market share, 1MG witnessed significant downfall to 18% from 23% in the period whereas Pharmeasy maintained the lead with 29%.

In terms of average order value (AOV), Medplus led the e-pharmacy table with Rs 990 from Rs 589 in January. 1mg AOV saw Rs 120 gain to Rs 792 in June. The only player that saw a downfall in AOV is Pharmeasy, whose value per order went down to Rs 965 from Rs 1017 in January.

However, Pharmeasy replaced 1mg as a top player with the most frequency of purchase on the platform from users in a month.

The report highlights consumers’ behavioral pattern that shows they are spending less on non-necessary purchases. The new users on a platform not only spend less money but also spend less frequently as compared to earlier users.

With the increasing growth of Pharmeasy, Medlife proposed a deal to merge for latter in for $1.2B on Aug 18, 2020 .

Pharmeasy will acquire a 100% stake in its smaller rival Medlife, while the latter is also expected to pick up a 19.59% stake in Pharmeasy, according to the filing.

— Understanding the existing interface:

The existing interface of Pharmeasy is quite decent and easy to navigate but after looking at millions of micro interactions, I realized that some changes could be made or features could be added to make the website a pleasure to use.

Detected problems with solution hypothesis :

No icons under ‘Healthcare Products’ (Categories) for better interaction with customers. More illustrations, Infographics to make the website look more captivating and memorable, that would in turn, help with brand recall .
Gets difficult to find every medicine or item and takes a lot of time to find the desired product/medicines. Order medicines could have alphabetically organized medicines as well as separate categories dedicated to illnesses, diseases, allergies etc. which on clicking, would display medicines / supplements related to the particular category. Hence, segregation could be made easier.
Difficult to track the page on the site . There’s no proper heading or title for indication.

This is what appears at the top of the Healthcare page. ‘Covid Essentials’ is one of the categories mentioned on the Healthcare page. On clicking on the category,

Home > All categories > Covid Essentials

Is what appears at the top of the page, which makes it unclear to the consumer as to which page they’ve been directed from. The suggested manner of representation would be :

Home > Healthcare > Covid Essentials

an underline under Healthcare Products would also work.

No option for reviews from customers on products. So in order to make the experience much better and easier, a separate section for customer review could be added.(*only applicable for non prescription items.)
Can’t add diagnostic tests from different centres at the same time in the cart.
The site doesn’t have an option for, suggestions for similar products, for all products on the website (feature limited only to selected items) and comparison between similar products. A separate section for both could be added for better user experience.
No option for navigating to the Home page. So a separate icon for Home could be added for easy navigation.

b.) Customer Analysis

— Analyzing different customer clusters :

For every site to grow, it is very important to keep a track of “hero’s” i.e “customer’s” choice, preferences, Different age, background, socio-economic & geographical location. To find out the same, a survey was conducted which helped us in coming up with much better solutions and gave an idea of preference for the users.

Stats of survey conducted via Google forms -

Derivations from the above statistical data -

Maximum respondents belong to : Maharashtra (21 / 37 responses)
Maximum respondents belong to age group : 18 -25 (60.5 %)
Maximum respondents have heard of PharmEasy before (63.2 %)
Maximum respondents prefer visiting : Pharmaceutical store (73.7%)
Maximum respondents have not ordered from an e — pharmacy before (57.9%)
Maximum respondents would be interested in the category ‘Daily essentials’ on an e-pharmacy (62.2%)
Maximum respondents would be interested in donating blood (71.1%)
Maximum respondents would prefer donating blood from home via PharmEasy (65.4%)
Monthly, on average, most respondents spend 500–1000 rs. on medicines and healthcare products (38.9%)

As after the user research survey, it got very clear that majority of the population would prefer visiting a physical pharmaceutical store than visiting it online.

According to User hypothesis, there is a need to build trust and assurance for the company amongst the users as the trend of online medicines is somewhat new in India which makes people skeptical about the quality and authenticity.

For this is very important for the company to build trust by selling authentic products and advertising it to a large customer cluster. According to the human psychology, a user is always attracted to the company if it tries to connect emotionally.

— Suggested features to incorporate :

Adding a feature wherein consumers could choose to avail of First Aid or Emergency situation training by calling a medical professional at the desired location or via infographics followed by a brief questionnaire.
Adding a “Take Care!” or “Get Well Soon!” note along with the patient’s name to add a personalized touch.
Segregated sections comprising of donation opportunities could be introduced, type of illness / allergy and current COVID — 19 pandemic essentials could be highlighted by incorporating attractive illustrations and by adjusting the size of the categories.
A feature wherein which PharmEasy could act as a platform which connects organ / blood donors with recipients.

Designing

a.) Discussing the scope of UX

— Information Hierarchy:

Information Hierarchy is the vital part of creating an optimal user experience.

b.) The first skeleton

— Navigation flow :

Wireframes

Prototypes

Changes Implemented:

HOME PAGE:-

1.) Blood donation from home

2.) First Aid training (Basic, Intermediate, Advanced)

3.) Icon for Home page added

ORDER MEDICINES PAGE :-

1.) Option for “Alphabetically order” or order according to “Health Concerns” is added. (the Alphabet table shown , will appear after clicking on the option “Alphabetically”).

2.) Highlighted some important call to action buttons.

3.) As offers are the most important feature for pharmeasy, it is important to highlight them in the sight of users.

HEALTHCARE PRODUCTS PAGE :-

1.) “Customer reviews section” added for every user (applicable only on non prescribed products)

2.) “Product Comparison” available with rated stars according to customers .

3.) “Similar Products” option will be available for 90% of the healthcare brands (applicable only on non prescribed products)

Conclusion

So with all this, we concluded our project by redesigning the UX for PharmEasy. To be honest, this was not a very pleasant experience initially with all the hard core research but as I highlighted in the beginning, “A great experience seals the deal”. The whole experience was beyond my expectations and now looking at the whole project done with my very dear friend Avanti Premkumar, I would be delighted to take another UX project like this.

Thank you :)