Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company, has a rich history dating back to its origins in 1901. Telstra's consumer products and services span mobile and fixed-line telecommunications, internet services, entertainment, and digital solutions. It remains a dominant force in the Australian telco industry, leveraging its extensive infrastructure, technological expertise, and customer-centric approach to maintain its market leadership.
As the UX Lead for digital eCommerce at Telstra Digital, I spearheaded a cross-functional team, including two UX designers, a visual designer, and a copywriter. Our mission was to address the complex challenges in Telstra's broadband plan sales experience, focusing on improving user satisfaction and driving higher conversion rates.
Telstra's online sales experience for broadband plans suffered from complex and unclear product information, an overwhelming array of plan options, and confusing navigation paths. These issues caused significant customer frustration, leading to a low conversion rate of just 8% and a high incidence of order errors.
To address these challenges, Telstra needed to simplify the user experience, reduce friction, and improve the rate of successful customer acquisitions.
The conversion rate for broadband plan purchases rose from 8% to 40% following the implementation of the new user experience.
Simplified navigation and clearer product information significantly reduced customer friction, resulting in fewer order processing errors.
The introduction of customisable plans and refined terminology made it easier for customers to find and select the plans that best suited their needs.
Streamlined user journeys and improved alignment with customer expectations resulted in reduced customer friction, shortening the purchase time.
To tackle these challenges, my team and I initiated a comprehensive project initiation phase, starting with data analysis, voice-of-customer analysis, and competitor research. Leveraging tools like Omniture and Tableau, we identified several critical pain points within Telstra's digital experience. These included unclear pricing, a lack of transparency, and a confusing user journey that caused cognitive overload, leading to significant drop-offs during the purchase process. Customer feedback also highlighted dissatisfaction with the perceived value for money and inadequate support through digital channels.
This phase involved close collaboration with sales, product, and engineering teams to ensure our findings aligned with Telstra’s broader business goals. Our analysis revealed that customers were frequently frustrated by Telstra's extensive product offerings, which were difficult to navigate and often failed to meet their needs due to unclear and overly complex information.
"There is no list with all the packages with the prices. It is too confusing!"
"Offering a mobile bundle bonus that is not a bonus. This is just smoke and mirrors."
"There are no real savings with the products offered by Telstra. I am going elsewhere."
The competitor analysis revealed that while similar issues were present across the industry, Telstra's offerings were particularly complex and lacked the transparency needed to guide customers effectively. Based on these findings, we developed a set of recommendations aimed at simplifying the user experience and improving clarity.
Product comparison across domestic brands.
The outcomes of the initiation put forward 13 recommendations. These were proposed to the project stakeholders, several of which were prioritised and included in the solution implementation.
The recommendations focused on several key areas to enhance the customer experience and support Telstra's positioning as a premium brand in the broadband space:
These recommendations were aimed at not only improving the immediate user experience but also ensuring that Telstra's digital assets were aligned with long-term strategic goals, such as reducing churn during the NBN migration and reinforcing Telstra's premium market position.
Armed with the insights from the project initiation phase, my team and I formulated several key hypotheses to guide the solution development:
These hypotheses provided a foundation for the next stages of design iterations, content development, and usability testing.
Following the recommendations and hypotheses, we moved into the design phase. My team and I created detailed wireframes, user journey maps, and component designs that aligned with our goal of simplifying the customer experience.
We explored three key interaction models:
These designs were then translated into interactive prototypes, which we prepared for usability testing.
Optimised user journey based on customers degree of product knowledge
Wireframe concepts exploring bundled plans .
I conducted 90-minute semi-structured usability testing sessions with eight participants (five males and three females) to validate our designs. The participants had diverse backgrounds, with the majority having recently signed up for broadband services. The testing was designed to evaluate several key aspects of the proposed updates, including copy and content comprehension, product comprehension, transparency around pricing, value proposition comprehension, user flow (including service and customer qualification steps), page and component interactions, and information architecture.
As the UX Lead and primary researcher, I moderated the usability testing sessions. The session was structured as follows:
Participants were encouraged to think out loud while completing tasks, allowing us to capture their immediate reactions and decision-making processes. We recorded their navigation paths and noted areas of confusion, frustration, and drop-off.
The usability testing confirmed the initial hypotheses and revealed several key insights:
These findings, along with the quantitative data from the SUS, SEQ, and NPS, provided a comprehensive understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the design concepts, guiding the next steps in the project.
The project successfully delivered an optimised online sales experience, leading to significant improvements in key performance metrics:
As the UX Lead, this project reaffirmed my commitment to a user-centred design approach and underscored the critical role of cross-functional collaboration. The success of the project was a direct result of my team’s ability to integrate user insights into every stage of the design and implementation process. The project demonstrated the value of thorough research, iterative design, and continuous user testing in delivering a digital experience that meets both business objectives and user needs.
