Key findings
- The presentation of an eligibility threshold was influencing the information people entered.
- Questions about mental-health history prompted concern about being judged or refused.
- The route for people who could not use the service ended abruptly.
- The overall cost was also difficult to establish.
More finished forms.
Better answer: fewer, more accurate ones, from people the service was right for.
At a glance
The client provided an online, clinically reviewed health service. A prescriber reviewed each consultation before a decision about treatment. The commercial brief focused on people leaving the form, while the clinical team needed accurate information and appropriate screening.
We led research into the online consultation, the reasons for incomplete or queried submissions and the experience after sign-up. The clinical team helped define both the research measures and the safeguards that a design change must preserve.
The brief
The initial question was how to make more people complete the consultation. A long form can create avoidable effort, but some people should not proceed because the service is unsuitable for them. Treating every departure as a failure would put the design work in conflict with the purpose of the consultation.
We agreed with the clinical leads to focus on eligible, accurate completions. That changed the evaluation. A design that increased submissions by encouraging people to omit information would not be a success. Nor would a consultation that attracted more people through a low headline price, only for them to cancel once they understood the full cost.
The boundaries of the work
The consultation collected sensitive health information. The product needed to explain why it was asking, who would use the answers and how they related to clinical review. Those explanations had to be useful at the moment of answering, not confined to a separate privacy page.
The service also operated within clinical and advertising constraints. We worked with those responsible for them rather than treating commercial copy as an unrestricted optimisation exercise. Safeguarding questions could not simply be removed because they appeared near a point of abandonment.
We agreed to consider prescriber queries and rejections, cancellations, refunds and safety-screen behaviour alongside form completion. These measures made it harder for a superficially successful experiment to conceal a worse consultation or a misleading expectation.
How we investigated the consultation
We examined the funnel question by question and considered the prescriber's decision alongside completion. That helped separate effort that prevented an appropriate person from continuing from a screening decision that the service needed to make.
Moderated research explored how people interpreted the questions and what they believed would happen to their answers. Recruitment used an independent route rather than relying on the client's patient list. This gave us a way to investigate the interface without turning participation into an extension of a person's care relationship.
We reviewed the reasons consultations were queried or rejected and compared them with the design of the form. We also looked at cancellation and refund reasons. A problem that appeared after sign-up could begin with something the consultation form failed to make clear.
What we found
The presentation of an eligibility threshold was influencing the information people entered. Answers clustered around the threshold in a way that made the form's apparent completion success difficult to trust. Showing people exactly what qualified before asking for their information could encourage an answer chosen to progress.
Questions about mental-health history prompted concern about being judged or refused. The interface did not adequately explain why that information mattered or who would review it. Removing the question would miss the problem. People needed enough context to answer accurately.
The route for people who could not use the service ended abruptly. An unexplained rejection gave them no constructive next step. Research showed people looking elsewhere, so the quality of the exit mattered as well as the experience of those who qualified.
The overall cost was also difficult to establish. A headline consultation price did not communicate the continuing cost of the service. That encouraged people to begin with an incomplete picture of the commitment and created problems later on.
What we tested and recommended
We tested short explanations alongside sensitive questions: why the information was being requested and who would see it. These were designed to support accurate answers, rather than to reassure everyone that their answer would lead to acceptance.
We tested changing the order in which eligibility information and personal responses appeared, with clinical verification requirements retained. The aim was to reduce the design's incentive to shape an answer around a displayed threshold. A reduction in raw completion could be acceptable if the information reaching the prescriber was more reliable.
We tested making the continuing cost visible before someone invested effort in the consultation. That could reduce starts while creating a more informed decision to proceed. We therefore considered subsequent cancellations and queries, not just the number entering the funnel.
For an unsuitable applicant, we developed clearer explanations and more useful next steps, including routes to other professional support or a different programme where appropriate. The exit was part of the service, not a failed conversion screen.
The work required product, commercial and clinical colleagues to evaluate the same change from different perspectives. We kept those perspectives connected through the measures agreed at the beginning, so that a gain in one chart could not silently override a safeguard elsewhere.
The principle
In a sensitive service, a completed form is not automatically a good outcome. The consultation should help the right person provide accurate information, understand the commitment and receive an appropriate decision. Research earns its place when it helps a team recognise which conversions it should not pursue.