Change through storytelling
A new corporate website to unify Merck’s corporate narrative as a reputation-first company.
Overview
Merck (known as MSD outside of the U.S. and Canada) has been inventing for life, bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world’s most challenging diseases. How might we enable Merck & MSD to scale their brand reputation pillars and accelerate scientific innovation through a unified platform? I co-led the redesign to simplify the corporate platforms and drive audience engagement.
ROLE & DURATION
UX Designer - Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Wireframing, Prototyping
August 2019 - March 2020
CLIENT
Merck & Co.,
WEBSITE
Nomenclature and content lacked support for low health literacy and caregiver support. Large number of sub-navigation items caused users to experience cognition overload while navigating the site.
Several clicks required to retrieve information. Lack of hierarchy and overlapping elements on the page reduced accessibility standards and users’ ability to scan the page.
The challenge.
Bring brand and patient centricity to life.
Merck & MSD’s goal is to discover, develop and provide innovative products and services that save and improve lives around the world. To support this, the new corporate website needs to balance company focused information with patient-centric content.
Eliminate and reduce redundancy.
Overlapping content presented in multiple ways felt overwhelming and discouraged patients from completing their search. Users had difficulty filtering and locating important information like contact details, program and clinical trial information. Navigation design and content needed to be simplified to support low health literacy education and caregiver support.
Flexible design system for the brand ecosystem.
Multiple platforms and systems created a lack of cohesive design across. Migrating to a new CMS and launching with an updated brand style created an opportunity to build a modular design system that will allow for all subsequent websites to scale.
Qualitative interviews.
“The whole site is very corporate. It looks like you're only talking to investors.”
— Patient
“I like how I can find each product but navigating to the information I need is too confusing. I don't see a good place to click for patients.”
— Patient
Research & Insights
The strategy and design team collaborated during the discovery phase to understand the business objectives, personas, user journeys, and competitor landscape. This extensive research led to key insights per audience group, and I was able to synthesize the findings to inform the revised site architecture and page hierarchy.
Patients & Caregivers
INSIGHT
Patients and caregivers experience anxiety and trust issues which stems from dealing with a complex and unsupportive healthcare system. Information overload online and low health literacy can further discouraged feelings of hope and empowerment.
Patients are motivated to live a normal life and do not wish to be defined by their disease. Access to patient support programs, financial support, and treatment availability is key to feeling empowered and in charge of their health.
OPPORTUNITY
Position Merck & MSD as a credible, trustworthy resource for health and disease education within their therapeutic areas.
Showcase patient-focused content on a central location with multiple access to Merck & MSD’s product information, efficacy, availability, safety profile and support programs.
Media
INSIGHT
Health journalists, reporters and publication contributors need to work fast to turn around a compelling story and is always looking for sources to present unique angles of a topic or story.
They are always keeping a pulse on topics that’s relevant to their audience or topic of interest, and rely on quality media and publication-ready content that can be packaged easily.
OPPORTUNITY
Show transparency around Merck & MSD’s company background, research, and product-related progress.
Highlight contact details of media representative and value in newsletter subscription for timely updates.
Investors
INSIGHT
Investors rely on most recent news, updates and events to monitor stock performance and evaluate potential investments.
They are motivated to support an industry that is purposeful, socially responsible and mirrors their view on strategy and leadership.
OPPORTUNITY
Provide a centralized hub to house news, events, latest earnings, analyst-relevant information and general shareholder services.
Elevate Merck & MSD’s company background information, including business strategy, pipeline, and ESG performance to help inform their investment decision.
Career Seeker & Employees
INSIGHT
Motivated career seekers want to evaluate the company’s work and growth opportunity. They are looking for transparency around the recruitment process, job benefits and compensation that will help when comparing opportunities.
How the company’s authentic culture, diversity, leadership and team structure is embodied will attract high level talent.
OPPORTUNITY
Feature stories around Merck & MSD’s purpose, vision and values to engage career seekers and employees with dynamic, transparent insights into the company, culture, teams and process.
Highlight the many employee growth programs and diversity initiatives that Merck & MSD operates and its importance.
Information Architecture
Based on the insights gained from stakeholder interviews and workshop, content audits, journey mapping, and competitive analysis I defined the sitemap and content map for both Merck and MSD sites. Variations in the sitemap and nomenclature were debated and considered to ensure the categorization and tone of voice was aligned with the company’s narrative.
Pictures from a workshop conducted with Merck’s stakeholders to understand their business needs and priorities.
Design exploration & wireframes
For Phase 1, I focused on designing the following sections:
Company
Products
Media
Careers
Based on user journeys, I explored multiple ways different users would navigate and search for stories, products and safety information, news, and contacts details through additional functionalities and mapping the circular navigation of the site. The more robust filter functionalities were not technically feasible within the time frame so I had to simplify the experience.
Having identified the content that would be migrating over, we designed a modular design system that will accommodate the different content needs - both old and new. We listened to stakeholder input about their ambition and strategy for their respective sections of the site and designed the module layout for growth and flexibility.
Key design decisions
Audience specific resources
A key success metric for the new site is measured by the engagement and CTR of Merck’s key audience groups to their respective resource section. Content in these sections supports access to different media types and clearer information overview on Merck’s product and program offerings.
Clear hierarchy of content
To reduce redundancy and simplify content-heavy pages, content modules were designed to enable easy scanning and user interaction with the page. The layout will also provide flexibility for content growth and showcase featured content in a visually engaging way.
Interactive storytelling
Merck’s history page was one of the most viewed page by all audience groups. Previously users had to scroll horizontally and click multiple times to read the full story. Slow load time added further frictions to the user experience. The updated design includes additional filter functions and an interactive timeline for a more engaging experience.
Design collaboration.
I worked with the copywriter and visual designers to translate the wireframes into working prototypes. It was essential that the design and UX copywriting was accessible, consistent, and without room for ambiguity.
Building an atomic design system.
One of the main objectives of this project was to enable Merck & MSD to have a cohesive and recognizable brand presence that can be easily maintained and scaled. We designed a library of modular organisms, templates, and pages, paying close attention to how it would pair interchangeably and also be flexible enough to accommodate future content needs.
As the development was handled externally, we made sure to document in detail the purpose and guidelines of each module - showing all possible states and variations in responsive views.
Overall impact.
+1.5M
Page views
Site traffic and engagement metrics dramatically increased. Bounce rates decreased by 10% and there were 34% increase in return visits.
+488%
Patient engagement
Visits to the patients section saw a dramatic increase in content engagement with 17% of users continuing their journey to the patient financial support page.
+318%
Priority audience traffic
High click-through rates to deeper audience content indicate users are locating content aligned to their needs.
Performance statistics were recorded from August 2020 through January 2021.
Outcome and learnings
The website redesign was well received, which led to multiple engagements including designing for Merck & MSD’s localized sites and launching a new subsidiary company website. This was accomplished by leveraging the established design system and refining the designs based on results from user testing and new business requirements.
Stakeholder management
Working with one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical company with high stakeholder expectations resulted in conflicting priorities of content visibility. In the stakeholder workshop that was conducted, engaging the team early and highlighting the user goals was key to building empathy and resolving uncertainties.
Make design scalable
Having an established design system with reusable components saved a lot of time and budget when building out the new sites. It also ensured that Merck & MSD’s digital ecosystem would look and perform consistently. Maintaining the guidelines and efficiency of the design is a challenge but I learned the importance of documenting well and seeking continuous feedback for iterations.