UScellular Home Internet

Role:

UX/UI Design Lead
UX Researcher
Lead a team of four

Product:

Home Internet Shopping Experience Redesign

Focus Area:

UX Research, Survey, Customer Interview, Shopping Behavior Observation, UX Design, User Flow, User Journey Map, Usability Testing, Prototype

Background

UScellular is one of the major cellular service providers in rural Amaerica, their coverage spread across Midwest, South, Northwest, and Northeast regions in United States.

Home internet is a growing business for UScellular. Their largest business is post paid cellular service; however, it has been shrinking year over year. They are trying to get other lines of business up to speed, such as Home Internet and Prepaid.

PROBLEM

How can we make the the customers understand the UScellular's Internet Services?

How can we make it easier for customers to shop internet plans online?

How can we help UScellular grow their home internet business?

Final Design

After having the initial meeting with stakeholders, and the previous experience with the internet business team, I quickly identified three main areas of problems that have negative impact on their Home Internet sales and market share growth.

Limited Sales Channel:

99% sales relies on in-store and call center, due to the bad Add to Cart experience with unnecessary steps, when purchase online.

Gap between the business and customers:

There is a huge gap between what the business is selling versus customers' understanding and expectation, when shopping home internet.

Terrible Strategy on Customer Reach:

There is limited awareness on UScellular's Home Internet Products among consumers. Even most of their current mobile customers aren't aware of their Home Internet offerings.

APPROACH + PROCESS

Lead with research to better understand the customers to provide a full UX strategy

Shift focus and scope of the project: Based on the challenges problems we identified, I recommended the business stakeholders and my leadership to change the focus of this project from web enhancement only to a full messaging and user experience strategy to enhance experience across all sales channels to achieve their sales growth.

Customer research:

Identify the targeted customers, their pain points and needs; Understand their shopping behaviors and preferences; Discover what criteria and information is most critical for customer to make decision when it comes shopping for home internet.

Content strategy

Use the right voice and tone to communicate with the customers; Prioritize the information based on research findings; Minimize misunderstandings or frustrations from customers; Communicate with customers more directly and effectively; Guide them through the shopping experience.

UX design

Identify opportunities and solutions during each stage of customer journey; Redesign the site map and information architecture to create a more customer friendly user flow; Design a user-centric experience for shopping Home Internet; Make sure the final design follows and brand guideline, design system and ADA compliance.

Research methodologies

Qualitative Research

Behavioral Observation

Observe shopping behavior in-store

Customer Interviews

Talk to customers directly about their needs and priorities

Quantitative Research

Survey

Gather & Synthesize data on general trends of customers' needs and preferences

RESEARCH

Customer survey

Objectives

The goal of the survey is to identify customers' pain points and preference when shopping for home internet, and how to optimize channel messaging and experience for customers.

Identify problems

What is the main drive for customers to shop internet through one channel over the other?
What do customers care about the most when shop home internet?

Who are we asking?

Age Range: Must be 18 or older
Service Territory: Must be within the provided zip codes
Cell Service: Must have cell service
Cable and/or internet use and openness: Must either currently use or be open to internet
Switch Providers: Must be very/somewhat likely to consider switching internet service
Decision Maker: Must have solo or shared decision making when it comes to cale/internet/cell service
Non-Rejector of USCC: Must have neutral or positive sentiments towards UScellular

Findings and recommendations

RESEARCH

Shopping behavior observation and customer interviews

Objectives

Observe the typical home internet shopping motion in store to understand customers' preferences and needs for home internet, which will help us prioritize messaging strategies and design a more comprehensive experience.

Identify problems

What is the main drive for customers to shop home internet through stores over web?
What do customers care about the most when shop home internet?
What concerns customers the most when switching home internet providers?

What does the observation study look like

2 researchers
Observe the customers who are interested in Home Internet
The researchers will take notes while listening and observing home internet shopping motion in store.
After purchase is complete, sales associate will introduce researcher and offer incentive if they are open to answering a few follow up questions about their home internet preferences. (max 10 min)

Synthesize data using affinity mapping

After the behavioral observation and customer interview, we used affinity mapping to synthesize the data, and find the most common frustrations and pain points customers have.

RESEARCH

Key findings and opportunities

Opportunity 1: Leverage competitive pricing

Highlighting competitive pricing
Build trust with Pricing Transparency
Use 15-days excellence guarantee as a way to build trust

Opportunity 2: Adopting customer-friendly language for internet Terms

Find different ways to illustrate the concept of Speed:

Compare internet to current phone service
Customer activities as a unit of measure
Use testimonials

Opportunity 3: Balancing level of detail with availability of information

Readily available detailed information for those customers who seek it
Buying flow should be simple with the option to access more details if the customer chooses

Opportunity 4: Leaning into existing brand trust

UScellular has existing reputation among their customers of reliability and high quality service
Word to mouth recommendations are an influential factor in customers' decision-making process

CONTENT STRATEGY

Key messaging tenets

Developing content strategies based on customer research, which was applied to all sales channels, including online, retails, and call center.

Speed

Harnessing the power of 5G to get customers connected
Fast speeds at every plan level, no matter what customers qualify for
Speeds that can support multiple devices at once

Price

Competitive prices at every plan level, no matter what the customer qualifies for
The same low rate, every month, for 36 months

Trust

Transparent pricing and plan details to help customers understand what they’re paying for
Local network provider with deep-rooted experience and relationship in the community
Serving every facet of the community, from individual phone and internet to small business

Support

Set-up made easy with one simple device
Free set-up assistance with Asurion
Dedicated customer service for all your needs
App-guided set-up
Consistent, high-quality service from UScellular
No Professional installation required

Reliability

Connect your whole home
Do multiple things at once with reliable internet connection
Faster service with our unique performance set-up
15-day excellence guarantee

DESIGN

Mapped out the user flow for both new customers and current mobile customers

User flow

Site map

My Account app changes (current mobile customer)

Competitive analysis - Shopping flow ATC

DESIGN

Educate the customers about UScellular's Home Internet

Education/Consideration stage - Landing Page

Before getting into the ATC experience, the landing page gives potential customers the ability to build out their plan prices base on different promotions. So customers understand the cost before getting in the flow.

Simple one page shopping flow

Consideration and Conversion Stage- configuring internet plan and equipment

Shorten the ATC steps to its minimum on one page into accordions, which still shows what's selected in the previous steps, and users can go back to edit the previous selection without going to different pages.

Address Check Availability improvements

Home Internet - Widget Idea Recommendation.png

IMPACT

Drove significant growth in Home Internet

This effort reshape the entire strategy and shopping experience across both web and app platforms, which led to significant growth for UScellular's Home Internet product line, and regained trust and confidence in the brand from their loyal mobile customers.

Leading to a 129% increase in digital transactions.
Key design tactics resulted in a 7.32% CTR and a 0.97 transaction-per-click rate.

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