Terminix Purchase Path Improvements
The Challenge
The expedition's objective was to enhance Terminix's online shopping experience and simplify the user flow for purchasing service products, making it easy to use, learn, and understand. The existing online funnel suffered from a significant 83% dropout rate from the landing page, with customer feedback indicating a strong desire to price shop, receive quotes, and learn more about the products. This represented a major hurdle in user engagement and information transparency, impeding business growth.
The Stewardship Model
As the guide on this critical sales path, I led the project, starting by gathering quantitative data from Google Analytics and HotJar to inform a clear problem statement for stakeholders. Key requirements included ambitious sales targets, creating an online experience akin to leading retailers like Xfinity, and a mobile-first design due to user analytics showing high smartphone usage. Recognizing that Terminix was pioneering online service contract sales, the effort focused on cultivating a simple sales funnel optimized for home protection needs. Working collaboratively with the internal team and a branch in Marietta, Georgia, needs were collected from individuals handling online sales and services through short Design Thinking - Brainstorming and Brain Dumb sessions. The project was scoped into two phases of Design Thinking cycles over two months, including observational testing with five homeowners using two low-fidelity Adobe XD prototypes. Discoveries revealed significant user pain points related to product content; customers desired more information on product safety, duration, and seasonality, and preferred greater control over product viewing. These findings, presented to a wide audience including executives, challenged previous assumptions about customer needs. A second ideation round consolidated findings into a single user flow, prioritizing content for informed decisions and building customer trust. Collaboration with the internal development team addressed latency issues. High-fidelity Adobe XD prototypes were tested using the Userlytics Platform, yielding positive feedback and confirming the solution met stakeholder and customer needs. round consolidated findings into a single user flow, prioritizing content for informed decisions and building customer trust. A design system for the UI was developed, a key blaze marker for assisting future designers and front-end developers in creating reusable components, thus improving ROI by reducing the development cycle. This demonstrated an intuitive pursuit of exploration and discovery of deep user needs, coupled with resourcefulness in building tools for sustainable development.
The Impact
The improvements led to a significant decrease in user confusion and frustrations. Reports indicated that the consolidation and UI enhancements empowered clients to modify and take action much quicker, with reduced friction. Increased mobile device access was observed due to reduced UI component code latency and ease of use. The creation of a design system for the UI also contributed to sustainable development practices and improved ROI. This project fostered a more human-centered and resilient online purchasing system, aligning with the nascent principles of sustainability in the digital product lifecycle.