How I optimized the plan selection process for SOHO users
Ringcentral is the #1 cloud communications provider worldwide. Their primary product is a platform offering Message, Video and Phone services. They desired to increase conversion of SOHO (Small Office/Home Office users) by better communicating the value of each different cloud communication (business phone) plan.
The work
Five researchers from the Roundfeather agency and myself as the lead designer teamed up to do the research and final redesigns of the "Plan selection" ecommerce flow on Ringcentral.com. We then collaborated with Ringcentral team to bring the designs to fruition.
My role
Lead UX from concept to execution.
Took Roundfeather's user research and developed a user journey, wireframes and final responsive designs across devices using the client's design system.
The impact
​45% faster plan selection by Ring Central's SOHO users and 2 rehires of the Roundfeather agency by the Ringcentral team.
User research
The Roundfeather research team conducted 18 immersive user interviews. I helped prepare a condensed summary of some of these interviews, and presented them to the team.
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While designers are only required to note-take on a few calls, I watched all 18 interviews to ensure that all feedback was incorporated into the final designs.
Myself and the research team took notes on each summary using Miro. We each referenced the notes of 4-5 participants, and made a list of patterns and trends.
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Over a total of 3 hours, myself and the research team compared our lists of patterns and put them in the following categories, in the following order:
Desiring Finding Purchasing
Upon analyzing this information, I realized that SUBCATEGORIES were necessary to direct the scope of the project and the clients’ attention.
I had the help of another designer to flush out the following journey map after we had all of the content in place. We printed this map out at a very large size and took the larger team through the issues and opportunities we found. This map allowed us to narrow the project scope to start on RingCentral homepage, and focus on the plan selection page.
Big takeaways
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• The main reason for drop off on the homepage was a lack of clarity that RingCentral’s main product was an app, and the inability to view a demo quickly without inputting information.
• Users expressed confusion around pricing options, information overload, excess time spent understanding taxonomy, and expressing, outstanding questions that would prevent them from checking out.
How I shaped the project outcome at this stage​
Although the Roundfeather team was intent on descoping the home page, I INSISTED that at minimum we provide RingCentral with revised content for this page, as whatever information a user has about RingCentral would influence their experience on the following page.
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I then identified an overarching information architecture issue and the need to redistribute the information users ere presented at each stage in the flow.
The homepage does not clarify RingCentral’s product offerings, causing dropoff​
"So right now there's not really that much information indicating what the products and services are. So it would be nice if there was like a quick little chart that indicated what the services were [that] I could click on [and] learn more [...] especially since they're offering three different services with the video, the phone, and the messaging [...] Because now I feel like I'm delving deep into the site and sometimes you just want [a] quick outlook of what they're offering."
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Nellonda W, Prospect
User flow and wireframes
I created this simplified user flow to propose two user paths.
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One is a direct flow to the product plan page
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The other is an optional QUESTIONNAIRE which functions as a solution to users’ outstanding questions that couldn’t be solved by the assumption that they would read more information on the page.
I created wireframes and presented to the client using visual talking points that 
documented solutions to specific user pain points discovered during initial rounds of testing.
I identified some outstanding questions that users had that we found were not being absorbed when they were just text on the page, such as...
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Can I use my exsiting number?
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Can I use my existing device?
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What are the free trial conditions?
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Can I get a toll-free number?
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Does RingCentral offer hardware?
Identifying these questions helped determine the information architecture to acheive the business and user goals.
Testing the first prototype
I created interactive prototypes using figma and observed all user interactions.
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Successes
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Replacing “Free trial” & conditions with my suggestion of “Don’t pay for 30 Days”
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Showing only one price reduced confusion
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Surprises
The top interactive bar was largely ignored.
Surfacing the only features that were additional to the previous plan reduced information overload, but did not increase plan selection speed.
Second prototype results
The recommendation for the questionnaire as a solution to solve user problems was successful, but users preferred finding it as a secondary solution to seeing all plans right away.
It also fulfilled the user desire of feeling like they were creating a customizable plan without having to build an entire product line. Ultimately, Ringcentral did not think this option was worth the dev effort to produce so it was never built.
The more specific language that we recommended (clarifying that an app was offered as the actual product) gave users a much better idea of the product before they took next steps.
The ability to save money in "two ways" was a market differentiator for RingCentral. While users did not pay much attention to this, it removed confusion and around pricing and transparency here was an important business need.
Consolidating features into high level categories that users could quickly understand, allowed them to narrow down to a plan or two, and then explore features in detail.
Grouping numerous plan features by category
ultimately helped users find any specific features they were looking for more quickly, and gave them context of the meaning behind those that they did not immediately understand.
Outcomes
45% faster plan selection by SOHO users and increased confidence (qualitative) in plan selection.
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Two re-hires by RingCentral & faster plan selection by RingCentral SOHO users​
RingCentral was extremely pleased with the outcome and re-hired the Roundfeather agency team to extend the scope of the project and further design the flow.
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