Macmillan Orders
Macmillan Cancer Support • Lead product designer
Macmillan Orders provides free cancer information and merchandise to the public, supporters, healthcare professionals, and staff. As part of a major transition to a new platform, we focused on addressing key challenges, meeting diverse user needs, and enhancing the overall experience. A key objective was to streamline internal processes, enabling a smoother and more efficient service for all stakeholders.
The new platform successfully launched in October 2024, attracting over 3,000 users within its first month. The redesigned experience significantly improved navigation, product discovery, and the ordering process, offering a solution that aligned more closely with Macmillan’s branding. It also optimised order management, delivering greater efficiency for the supporter care team.
Case Study 1: Addressing Navigation Issues
Conducted a workshop with five Health and Social Care professionals to identify key challenges and opportunities for improvement.
Discovered difficulty navigating cancer information resources due to:
Ineffective search functionality.
Inefficient tree structure with pagination.
The need for users to know "exactly what they’re looking for" to locate resources.
Aimed to enhance navigation to make finding cancer-related information easier and more efficient.
Focused on improving usability and the overall user experience.
Collaborative design
Facilitated workshops with the Cancer Information, Macmillan Orders, and Content teams to develop a more intuitive navigation structure.
Converted workshop insights into an interface design solution.
Addressed technical limitations by:
Using filters and tags to tackle navigational challenges.
Creating landing pages to direct users to pre-filtered collections.
Improved the user experience with Shopify's built-in search function, tested and validated by the technical team.
Evaluation
Conducted 15 user tests with Health and Social Care professionals via UserZoom to evaluate the design’s effectiveness.
Participants successfully located materials, primarily using landing pages or search, and reported a smooth experience.
Post-launch monitoring include:
Integrating Hotjar to track user behavior, focusing on long sessions, rage clicks, and search issues.
Ongoing follow-up interviews with Health and Social Care professionals to gather additional feedback.
Case Study 2: Enhancing ordering efficiency
Identified the need for minimal development optimisations during migration.
Examined the existing process for supporters, where an approvals process was not in place.
Gathered insights from the Supporter Care Hub and Macmillan Orders teams to understand how supporters access and use the platform.
Conducted user journey mapping to capture the supporter’s journey, revealing they needed to call the Supporter Care Hub during working hours to place orders for fundraising materials.
Designing and Testing Solutions
Proposed utilising the approvals process functionality on the new Shopify platform to improve efficiency.
Collaborated with the Supporter Care Hub to understand their needs and concerns about implementing an online ordering process.
Designed a checkout journey with questions guiding users to provide necessary information for order approvals.
Conducted UserZoom usability testing, confirming the questions were clear and providing the necessary approval information.
Identified and addressed a misalignment in approvals, where non-fundraiser users were routed incorrectly, leading to a business-accepted compromise to mitigate poor user experiences.
Iterative Improvements with Constraints
Proactively investigated concerns after implementation, discovering that 43% of orders were being rejected due to insufficient user information.
Recognised a lack of backend capacity for automated solutions and adapted by collaborating with the frontend team to redesign the checkout experience.
Introduced mandatory fields to collect critical information and added messaging to set clear user expectations.
Balanced business and technical needs to improve order processing efficiency.
The redesign is set to launch in early 2025, with metrics such as rejection rates and support queries being tracked to evaluate success.