Case Study: Teacher Registration
Overview
With an average of 26,000 new teachers registering each year, teacher registration is one of the most important workflows on the Yoga Alliance website and represents an important part of the organization’s annual revenue. It also hasn’t been revisited since it was deployed in early 2014, and results in the largest volume of calls and emails to their Member Services team - almost 10 percent of all questions logged.
Goal
Solve the biggest pain points in the teacher registration process to:
The Yoga Alliance Member Services team began logging all calls and emails they received by category during the last quarter of 2017. In the first two quarters they tracked this data, they received over 2,400 questions about RYT registration.
With an average of 26,000 new teachers registering each year, teacher registration is one of the most important workflows on the Yoga Alliance website and represents an important part of the organization’s annual revenue. It also hasn’t been revisited since it was deployed in early 2014, and results in the largest volume of calls and emails to their Member Services team - almost 10 percent of all questions logged.
Goal
Solve the biggest pain points in the teacher registration process to:
- Reduce the number of incomplete registrations
- Reduce the amount of time needed to complete registration
- Reduce the number of questions received about registration
The Yoga Alliance Member Services team began logging all calls and emails they received by category during the last quarter of 2017. In the first two quarters they tracked this data, they received over 2,400 questions about RYT registration.
The UX team conducted interviews with our Member Services team to discuss the top questions questions they received. These included:
- Users weren’t sure how to even start the registration process. There were four options to choose from, which were hidden below the fold on mobile and tablet
- Yoga Alliance uses its own jargon rather than yoga industry terms. Users don’t understand core terminology like designations, programs, etc.
- School search often returns irrelevant results
We also used our Member Services team to identify users who were stuck in the teacher registration process that were willing to let us remote view their screens as they tried gain, as well as recently registered teachers who were willing to talk about their experiences.
The main takeaways from the remote viewing sessions and new teacher interviews were:
- Users couldn't remember their training end dates because it wasn’t listed on their certificate
- Users were unsure what to do after submitting certificate request. One user submitted two requests because she didn’t realize the first went through successfully.
- Lack of clarity around how long it takes for a request to be processed
We printed out the current teacher registration process and added post-it notes to identify the biggest pain points. While I don’t have a picture of this process, I do have a picture of the identical process we used to evaluate school registration.
I also worked with a back end developer to create a report to determine how many users a month had a confirmed teaching request but did not come back after it was confirmed to pay and review their school. In 2017, about 100 users per month had a confirmed certificate but didn’t complete registration, which amounts to about $138,000 in lost sales.
Design
Initially, we did not have a timeline or budget for this project. Our team decided to sketch out a “blue sky” process that included a landing page to outline what the registration process includes, and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable steps.
We quickly realized that simplifying the process the way we wanted to would require development work outside of the scope of this project.
Therefore, we decided to focus on the biggest user pain points within the existing business requirements and design standards on our website. Rather than changing the steps themselves, we would add more information before starting the process and make the flow more logical. Using screenshots of the existing process, I quickly mocked up the following changes in Sketch:
- Removed unnecessary content from top of page
- Added written descriptions of each designation with a “Select” button
- Switched the order of the steps so a school is reviewed before payment
The designs ultimately went through about 10 iterations, completed by another designer on our team, making small adjustments to language and flow after each round of feedback. The biggest changes between the initial version and final version include:
- Keep the original design when selecting designations, but add the explanations to the first step
- Allow the user to review school and submit payment before confirmation
- Shorten school review to three questions
Delivery
This project was fully developed, tested, and ready to deploy, but ultimately wasn’t deployed because of a change in organizational strategy. However, the knowledge gained during this process will directly inform how we want the teacher registration process to work when the website redesign begins next year.
This project was fully developed, tested, and ready to deploy, but ultimately wasn’t deployed because of a change in organizational strategy. However, the knowledge gained during this process will directly inform how we want the teacher registration process to work when the website redesign begins next year.