eZRx+ Healthcare E-commerce

Overhauling and scaling the B2B Healthcare E-commerce platform for a seamless healthcare buying experience.

Overview

Problem

eZRx has various usability issues, leading to a low user adoption rate.

Additionally, its operation across 10 Asian markets with decentralized development teams has caused fragmented processes, hampering both product scalability and brand identity cohesion.

Outcome

Enhanced the user experience of the e-commerce platform and digitalising the end-to-end healthcare purchasing process.

Standardising the design system across various markets to streamline development and enable a unified application.

ezrx-plus

The product information, client names, and prices indicated on mockups are placeholders used for illustration purposes and do not reflect the real data on the live eZRx+ application.

Platform

B2B Web Application

Region

10 markets in the East Asia and Southeast Asia

Timeline

Early 2023 to Late 2023

Software/Tools

Figma, Jira, Confluence

Background

eZRx is a leading ASEAN Business-to-Business (B2B) healthcare e-commerce platform, designed for healthcare providers and professionals to conveniently order, pay, and track healthcare products online.

We offer pharmaceutical partners' product listings on eZRx and enable B2B customers to purchase with their business licenses.


Who are the Partners (Principal)?

Pharmaceutical Companies.


Who are the Users (Customers)?

Employees of the clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies. (eg. Clinic assistants, Purchasing assistants, Purchasing managers, Wholesale managers.)

The Team

What I Worked On
  • Requirement gathering
  • Stakeholder coordination
  • User interface design
  • Design hand-offs & QA

Cross-Functional Collaboration

A team of over 60, including local and offshore members from design, product, and engineering.

Usability Issues

I joined the team during the design phase, and several key issues were identified by the team as priorities for the overhaul.


1. Vague Product Details
  • Product descriptions were displayed as one-liners.
  • Deals and offers were hidden – Users have to mouseover the icon to view the details.

Impact

Customers frequently contact sales representatives to verify order details and may miss out on product discounts due to a lack of awareness.

usability-problem-1

2. Critical Information Hidden
  • Stock availability and product expiration details are only visible once items are added to the cart.
  • Batch numbers are missing.

Impact

Stock availability, product expiration, and batch numbers are crucial information influencing customer purchasing decisions. Their absence upfront leads to uncertainty and user dropout.

usability-problem-2
Note: Products on offer may have a short expiration timeframe. Batch numbers are essential for customers to access crucial details such as shelf life, expiry date, and product specifications, and are vital for product recall purposes.

3. Unclear Delivery Statuses
  • The order statuses lack clarity.
  • Statuses are vaguely indicated as eg. ‘In process’ or ‘completed’, providing no details of the stocks' exact location.

Impact

Customers lack visibility on the expected delivery time of their goods, often requiring them to contact sales representatives or customer support for order status updates.

usability-problem-3

Research Studies

Before diving into the solutions, we need to find out more about users' behaviors, pain points, and motivations for using eZRx.

Assisted by our Product Research Lead, Imran, we conducted an in-depth research study involving 17 customers of diverse operational scales and purchasing capacities. Below is a summary of the user groups.

Small Purchaser (x3) Medium Purchaser (x6) Large Purchaser (x8)
Type of customer
  • Independent medical supplier vendor
  • Small clinic
  • Retail pharmacy chain
  • Clinics (with less than 10 branches)
  • Medical centre
  • Retail pharmacy chain (with more than 10 branches)
No. of users
  • 1 Finance Assistant
  • 2 Clinic Assistant
  • 6 Purchasing Assistants
  • 1 Wholesale GM
  • 1 Wholesale Manager
  • 1 Purchasing Manager
  • 5 Purchasing Assistants

From the research insights, we identified three primary user archetypes and aligned them with their respective jobs to be done.


User Archetypes

user 1

Amirah Akirah

Clinic Assistant
user 2

Syakira Johari

Purchasing Assistant
user 3

Muhammad Fazli

Wholesale Manager

Synthesising User Insights

1. Time Pain Point
time-pain-point
  • B2B purchasers are time-sensitive, often multi-tasking and requiring speedy order placement, sometimes for multiple branches.
  • They need to place orders quickly.
2. Cost Pain Point
financial-pain-point
  • B2B purchasers have budgets to adhere to.
  • They need to be able to make cost-effective purchases, particularly for bulk orders.
3. Visibility Pain Point
visibility-pain-point
  • B2B purchasers require easy access to critical product information.
  • They also need clear visibility of order statuses for effective communication with customers, colleagues, and superiors.

Design Process

workshop_1

After gathering user insights, our design team brainstormed ideas and conducted Crazy 8 exercises to iterate the legacy platform.

We then collaborated with the product team to design high-fidelity mockups for critical features and seamlessly integrated them into the agile development workflow, working alongside developers to plan implementation in each sprint.

workshop_2

Challenges

1. Unifying the design for 10 diverse markets
variant order summary

Navigating diverse market demands presents challenges in standardising components across regions with varying real estate needs.

variant languages

Certain markets may require the use of different languages. Hence, we also need to ensure that the layout doesn't break when the content is translated.


What We Did?

To address these challenges, I catch up with my product design teammates regularly to discuss component updates and ensure comprehensive coverage of all market use cases. We also consider backlog requirements to future-proof the design and minimise rework.


2. Communicating & aligning the cross-functional teams
tech-communicate

Working in a large team presents significant challenges in communication. There are often delays in disseminating information among dispersed members across various time zones.


What We Did?

To address this, our design team established an internal Kanban board to capture pending requirements and proactively liaise with Product Managers and Business Analysts. This approach ensures early clarification of queries and swift understanding once requirements are finalised.

Design Solutions

1. Addressing Time Pain Point
  • A prominent search bar sticky on the header enhances the findability of the product.
  • Ease of making repeat orders with the ‘Recently ordered’ section.
ezrxplus homepage

2. Addressing Cost Pain Point
  • Product Catalogue page allows users to filter and find products that are currently on offer.
  • Prices are listed upfront on the product cards.
ezrxplus product-catalogue

3. Addressing Visibility Pain Point
  • Key product information such as the expiration date, batch number, and stock availability are visible above the fold on the product detail page.
  • Product images added for customers' quick reference to identify the right product, with views of the main packaging, the usage instructions, and the actual content inside.
  • 'Similar products' section was added to enable customers the ease of browsing and find similar products that they may need.
  • Delivery status is also clearly stated, with an estimated date of delivery, so customers know when they can expect the goods to arrive.
ezrxplus order-details-history

Impact

The solutions underwent iterative refinement through stakeholder alignment, beginning with a basic 'Vanilla' version with common features across all markets. Subsequent iterations introduced enhancements for advanced features.

Tests with stakeholders yielded positive feedback, with users favoring the revamped eZRx+ for its highlighted advantages:

user feedback

Retrospective

1. Don’t Assume, Ask When In Doubt
img-ask

A key lesson learned in large team settings is to always seek clarification when in doubt. Initially, I assumed no variant requirements existed when there was no written documentation or prior information shared for market-specific features, only to later discover unrecorded variant requirements, resulting in design rework.

2. Be Prepared Early
img-prepare

Initially, rushed design deadlines stemmed from delayed requirements and information sharing. Implementing an internal Kanban board facilitated early reference to upcoming requirements and preemptive queries to the Product team. This fostered future-proofed designs and minimised rework and taught me the importance of early preparation.


Future Enhancements

The above represents the 'Vanilla' version of eZRx, and there's ample opportunity to grow the platform. Given the opportunity, I aim to observe the full implementation of these solutions across all markets, conduct further usability studies, and utilise data analytics for ongoing user experience enhancement.

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