The one-step checkout flow worked well for a long time. It had a pretty simple job, supporting two core products. As the digital pharmacy grew and new features rolled out, the system became overloaded, and was soon to become overwhelming for users. With more demands on the experience and priorities on the roadmap ahead, it was clear our team needed to rethink how the checkout flow could scale to support growth and better serve pharmacy patients.
It was important to address because an overloaded and growing checkout flow risked creating friction in the final moments of order placement, introducing barriers for 60 million people relying on pharmacy services to get their prescriptions. And at that scale, the risk wasn’t just complexity. It had a major impact in delaying care. My challenge was to rethink the end-to-end checkout experience to better support pharmacy patients and their health needs, while meeting the demands of a growing digital platform.
After gathering enough requirements to get started, I dug into the existing checkout flow to understand it's current state. I quickly learned it hadn’t been touched in years. Outdated content and inconsistent use of patterns were pretty clear evidence that the experience was old and needed some attention and re-work.
Reviewing the current state helped me shape a strategy and identify key painpoints and missteps that were grounded in user and business needs. It also led to defining the questions and goals that would inform my design intentions throughout the process, which ultimately revolved around themes of coherence, predictability, and usefulness:
- "How might we design a scalable checkout experience, enabling users to complete tasks effortlessly with less fallout?"
- "How might we organize information in a way that feels clear and easy to navigate for people to complete their tasks?"
- "How might we design a checkout experience that aligns with what people expect, making it intuitive from start to finish?"
Because the existing checkout flow was absent of a dedicated cart, I started with some discovery work by looking at other sites to validate the pattern as a common step in an online shopping flow.
My assumption was correct. 100% of all of the online shopping sites I reviewed had a dedicated cart step in a checkout flow. In fact, all of the ones I evaluated had a near identical layout and structure of a cart UI. That meant there were established patterns and conventions when it came to checkout processes; and with that, probably also strong mental models among customers when it came to online shopping.
So, it was clear that including it into the existing pharmacy checkout flow would be beneficial to adopt, to not only help solve the problem of an overloaded and growing checkout experience, but to maintain a familiar model so users could effortlessly navigate through even with the possible addition of a new step.
I worked closely with my research partner to plan and run a moderated usability test. The goal was to help us learn and refine the design decisions I explored for a dedicated cart interface that would include additional feature updates and recommended improvements.
The result of that effort gave us productive insights and evidence to share back with key stakeholders during our weekly full-kit-team meetings, align, and continue in a confident path forward with the most desirable, intuitive, and usable approach.
I redesigned the checkout flow to support future growth while making it easier for people to get what they needed. It also worked smarter by reminding users to act on other prescriptions that were ready to be filled. Even with a new step introduced, cart abandonment dropped by 3% (from 45.1% to 41.9%), showing that the changes didn't introduce friction. Instead, changes reduced it.
One likely reason was the redesigned 'Continue Shopping' feature. Instead of navigating users away, it let them take action right where they were. Engagement with the feature jumped from a 6% benchmark to 19%, helping to drive a smoother, more effective checkout experience. It also increased the number of items added to cart by 1.7Xs, indicating it's effectiveness in reminding people to adhere to their medications.