UX Research at Peer Collective

Summary:

I shaped the company's long-term business strategy by identifying Peer Collective’s customer segments and target users through mixed-methods research and developing detailed personas. The insights I discovered drove initiatives to increase our retention and conversion, and resulted in a ~59% conversion lift.

Introduction:

Peer Collective is a startup specializing in accessible online peer counseling. Counselors, although non-licensed, undergo rigorous vetting and training by a clinical psychologist. They bring diverse mental health backgrounds, such as social work, counseling, and suicide hotline experience, enhancing their ability to offer effective support. Additionally, Peer Collective provides a Wellbeing Assessment: a concise 6-question survey to help identify users' needs and preferences, ensuring optimal counselor matches.

This case study will be looking at:

Certain details will not be shared due to NDA and PII, but if you have any questions or would like to learn more, feel free to reach out! 

Initial Problem Space:

When I first joined Peer Collective, the MVP website had just hit its one-year mark. The primary business objectives were to boost the conversion and retention rates.

The company had collected some data on its users (ex: income, occupation, NPS survey feedback) and other telemetric and KPI data points, but the business did not have rich insights into who its users were, what were their needs, and how did users use the service.

  • The MVP was also designed for a broad audience, using assumptive based personas.

This gap made it difficult to enhance the product. Various new features were tested to boost the conversion and retention rates (ex: subscription model, booking reminders, testing hero images), but these had minimal impact on either metric.

We needed to learn about our users.

Research Goals & Who to Interview

Research Goals

There were 3 main research goals:

Who are Peer Collective’s Users?

What are their needs, motivations, and fears? How does Peer Collective fit into each of these aspects?

What has their experience been with Peer Collective?

Across the service and website:

  • What are users typically doing on the website? 

  • What has been their best and worst moments? 

What are users’ motivations, blockers, and constraints for using Peer Collective? 

How does Peer Collective fit into their day to day lives? 

  • When do users decide to book another session? 

Who to Interview - Quantitative Modeling

In order to determine which customers did I want to speak to, I segmented the customer base their session frequency (# of sessions / account tenure)

  • I then mapped the frequency out onto a bell curve

  • Took each standard deviation group and made it a quantitative segment

5 quantitative segments were formed from this approach, and I wanted to interview 4 customers from each segment.

Analysis & Findings

Segmentation Analysis

I segmented my data by first looking at users’ mental health needs. 3 key segments were formed, but it didn’t answer why some users within a segment used Peer Collective more consistently than others.

This led me to apply the lens of reliability.

  • How reliable is each user as a Peer Collective customer? Which users can we rely to get to 6 regular sessions?

This broke the 3 segments into 5 distinctive groups.

Developing Segments into Personas

I will not be sharing the key traits of each segment here, but I developed each segment into personas by taking into account users’:

  • Occupation & income

  • Geographic location

  • Hobbies, interests, pop culture spheres 

This resulted in Peer Collective’s 5 main personas.

AI generated headshots

The Target Users

We defined our Target Users as customers who consistently use the service to seek empathy. How these criteria are explicitly defined will not be shared in this case study.

I also discovered two factors that determine if a user will be a Target User:

  • Mental health needs determines a user’s desire to use the service

  • Income determines a users’ ability to use the service consistently

By mapping our existing customer base onto a matrix based off customers’ demographic survey, I was able to map each customer to their respective persona and accurately predict our customers’ behaviors.

Why Peer Collective?

To see why did our users choose Peer Collective instead of another mental health service, I mapped out users’ top 3 reasons for choosing Peer Collective.

  • Users were asked why did they choose Peer Collective during their interview.

I found that our ideal target users preferred Peer Collective because they valued sessions focused on being heard and reflecting, rather than the diagnosis-driven approach they felt traditional therapy often emphasized.

Transforming Insights into Tactical Initiatives

Keeping our target users in mind, I translated the insights I found in the previous section into tactical initiatives that tackled both conversion and retention.

Conversion

Comprehensive Product Redesign

  • Cater the website’s informational architecture and design to our Target User's’ standards and expectations

Branding & Positioning (marketing initiative)

  • Translated Peer Collective’s top emotional and functional benefits to become the Key Selling Points (KSPs)

  • Direct Peer Collective’s rebrand to cater to our Target Users

Retention

Attracting Target Users (cross-collab initiative)

  • Reposition Peer Collective to attract users who can afford regular usage

Address Counselor Booking Challenges

  • Empower users to coordinate and schedule sessions with their desired counselor(s) easily

Long term strategy: Attracting the right users

Peer Collective originally emphasized its affordability. As a result:

  • The service attracted low income users

  • Peer Collective was seen as a “dupe,” or cheaper alternative to traditional therapy

    • Source: Internet research, user interviews, heuristic evaluations

As a result, the Target Users took up a low percentage of the customer base.

We needed to attract and convert our target users. How?

Conversion: Branding & Positioning

Target User Challenge: Our target users were searching for a service like ours. How can Peer Collective position itself to reach these users?

Initiative: After Marketing came up with a brand ladder that acted as a framework to ideate on various positioning pillars, I conducted concept validation studies on each pillar to see which one:

  • Best reflected Peer Collective

  • Best resonated with our Target Users

  • Had the best purchase intent

The insights and themes from testing allowed marketing to refine and consolidate the messaging.

Our positioning pillar initiative

Conversion: Comprehensive Product Redesign

Retention: Address Counselor Booking Challenges

Target User Challenge & Insights: Peer Collective lost a high percentage of its Target Users on the landing page. By triangulating between heuristic evaluations, secondary qualitative research (screen recordings, heat maps, and telemetric data) and usability studies, I identified why users were abandoning the website:

  • The website did not reflect best in class mental health services catered to our Target Users

  • Website did not clearly communicate the service

  • Critical information architecture and usability issues

Initiative: I oversaw the product relaunch by directing the following initiatives - resulting in a conversion lift of ~59%

  • Modernize Peer Collective

    • Competitive analysis & heuristic evaluations on other best-in-class mental health services

  • Cater to Target Users

    • Based on users’ top 3 reasons for choosing Peer Collective - develop new Key Selling Points (KSPs)

    • Resonance testing and surveys to validate new brand identity

  • Improved website information architecture and usability:

    • Addressed by running usability tests, resonance testing on counselor bios, and A/B testing on checkout funnel

From user interviews, I discovered a phenomena I named “Wait & Wonder.”

The Wait & Wonder Loop was when users log into Peer Collective but don’t see their counselor. This loop turned out to be our Target Users’ biggest pain point, and explained why previous features failed:

  • Peer Collective’s subscription model gives users a number of session credits each month, allowing users to book sessions at their own leisure. However this did not guarantee users sessions with their counselor(s).

  • The booking reminder gave users a CTA to book another session if they have not had one in 3 weeks. However users received the reminder even if their counselor was unavailable.

Wait & Wonder Loop was caused by 3 factors:

  • Counselors are freelance gig workers who choose their own hours and when to update their availability 

  • Users may miss their counselors availability because the MVP defaults to only showing counselors who are available in the next 3 days

  • Users could not directly message counselors for safety reasons

Peer Collective would need both short and long term solutions to address the counselor booking challenges. 

Short Term Solutions: Not Sustainable

Drive Target Users to Customer Support

  • Encourage users to contact customer support for coordination assistance

  • Have support proactively reach out to Target Users who haven’t had a session in 3+ weeks

Encourage Target Users to discuss their next session with their counselor

North Start Ideations

How can Peer Collective empower users to coordinate and schedule sessions with their desired counselor(s) easily?

  • Allow users the ability to book multiple sessions in advance

  • Allow users to message their counselors. To protect our counselors:

    • Limit message character count

    • Limit the number of messages that can be sent

    • Use templated messages with certain customizable fields

  • Peer Collective Chatbot to assist suers

Impact & Conclusion

My work at Peer Collective was a testament to how foundational research and understanding our users’ needs leads to wins for both the business and its users. The insights on our user base allowed us to prioritize initiatives that would have the biggest impact on our business goals.

Peer Collective was no longer being designed for “everyone” and was no longer being marketed as an “affordable alternative to therapy,” but instead became known as a mental health service that focuses on empathy and reflection, with counselors that share your life experiences and can guide you through your challenge. 

I’m fortunate that I could use my skills in research and user-centric design to make mental health support more accessible. Thanks for reading.