Over 18 months, Mad*Pow worked with Cigna to solve these issues. First, they developed a single set of UX design guidelines. Then the Mad*Pow team put these guidelines into practice and completely rebuilt Cigna's website.
The result was accessible, intuitive, and completely user-centric.
The Process: Creating Design Standards That Work
Cigna needed a centralized, best-in-class set of design standards. They also needed to ensure consistent adoption across the company. Lastly, they needed to put the theory into practice, and totally revamp their website using the new UX design standards.
Collaboration at Its Finest
Enter Mad*Pow. Mad*Pow's design and content experts build Cigna's Experience Design Standards. They analyzed various UX design guidelines and developed a set of best practices with accessibility and health literacy at the forefront. They conducted extensive usability research on the standards.
Perhaps most importantly, Mad*Pow worked with Cigna to understand their internal dynamics. That way, the team could build a centralized plan for successfully implementing the standards.
Rubber, Meet Road
With the Experience Design Standards complete and in hand, Mad*Pow zeroed in on the Cigna website. The team started with research, to understand how consumers found and interacted with the site. Mad*Pow then created a new IA, in line with consumers' mental models. Designers and content strategists reworked page templates and created new content. Mad*Pow also collaborated with Cigna's internal SEO team, to define keywords and optimize content for organic traffic. Finally, the team optimized the site for mobile with a responsive web design.
The Results: Reaching More Consumers with a Best-in-Class Website
Mad*Pow delivered a beautiful, intuitive, and accessible website based on best-in-class UX design standards. Cigna.com immediately showed a dramatic increase in organic traffic, page views, and mobile traffic. Branded and non-branded keyword searches rose sharply. And Cigna's site now boasts the highest page load speed score among their competitors, thanks to Mad*Pow's development-friendly design.
The Experience Design Standards have empowered Cigna to move forward with a design thinking mindset. Cigna now has clear direction on how to maintain and update the Standards and approach design as an organization. Cigna is poised for continued success as they reach and connect with ever greater numbers of consumers.
- Design Transformation: The Design Transformation team (sometimes called DesignOps) was critical to Cigna's success. They worked with Cigna leadership to understand internal dynamics and determine how to achieve alignment. Through ongoing trainings, they helped the Cigna team disseminate the Experience Design Standards across the organization. They also developed processes for website ownership and maintenance.
- Research and Testing: Mad*Pow researchers conducted user interviews, accessibility audits, competitive reviews, tree studies, and usability testing to inform the Experience Design Standards and ensure the success of the new website design and IA.
- Experience Design: The design team analyzed Cigna's multiple style guides, with an eye to accessibility. They created a single, unified set of standards that follow best practices. And they utilized responsive design techniques to optimize the site for mobile.
- Content Strategy: The Content Strategy team collaborated with the Design team to analyze design standards. Their focus was on health literacy, a major concern among Cigna's population. The Content team reworked the Cigna site's IA, and rewrote content across the site for improved readability, accessibility, and consistent tone and voice. They also incorporated metadata to optimize keyword searches.
