Reader Journey Improvement

What is OverDrive and a title details page?

OverDrive is the largest distributor of digital media to libraries and schools. Their website hosts their complete collection of digital books to search and browse. The title details page is a product description for these books, with context, author, and publisher, as well as a way to get connected to your library or school’s ebook site to access free books.

My Role

UI Designer II/Strategist
- Quantitative Data/Heatmaps/Analytics
- Research analysis & Strategy
- Prototyping

Additional Team Members

UX Analyst (Researcher)
Lead UI Designer
Front-End Developer

Target Audience

After discovering (through survey data and analytics) new users, particularly organic search traffic unfamiliar with OverDrive, had no idea how to check out a book for free. They expressed frustration when they thought the site was just for reading a sample.

The Initial Goals

Find pain points, reduce friction
Get users into one of our reading apps and/or
Increase library ebook site conversion rates

The Project Ask

Checkouts from these title detail pages to the library’s ebook site were low. The ask was to increase the number of conversions (book borrows).

Jump to results

Affinity Diagramming

Taking all the data we had already gathered (heat mapping & videos, analytics, open-ended survey results), we held an internal discovery meeting with stakeholders to help us sort users’ needs, the biggest pain points and common patterns.

Realizing our users' confusing journey

From there, we went through the user journey, step-by-step to pinpoint the areas of frustration people were experiencing. I mapped out the confusing journey as a visual for key-stakeholders.

Biggest Discovery

Since more new users landed on the title detail pages organically (by searching for free books online) and knew nothing about who OverDrive is or what they do/provide, the multiple call-to-action buttons/links were quite confusing.

Find in your library – “Does that mean I have to go to the physical library to get this book?”
In libraries nearby – “Again, do I physically have to go to the library to get this ebook?”
Read a sample – Ok, so I can only read a sample free?
Sign Up & Sign In – “Maybe if I create an account and get signed in, I can read the whole book free?”
Available to buy – Wait? I do have to pay?

The answer to all these questions was no.

Ultimately, the action we would have wanted our users to take was clicking the “Find in your library” button. Doing so would take them to a list of library ebook sites (based on the user’s local libraries who have that specific ebook) and clicking through to borrow the ebook from that site.

Since we knew this wasn’t the case, our initial goal was to simplify the title detail page with one clear call-to-action and add information on how the process works.

Our Proposed Change

Since I couldn’t do anything too dramatic as far as changing the entire journey, I stuck to our research, made the main call to action bolder, and clarified it to: “Check your library for a free digital copy.” I added a little information icon with text that stated, “How does this work?” This little popup explained how the service is accessible through your local library, and it is a digital copy you can read online; all you need is a library card.

It was not the ideal solution (having to explain how the process works), but it seemed like the only option at the time and we were willing to test it with users before going live.

Qualitative Research - Unmoderated Usability testing - UserTesting.com

We conducted a sort of split test with our new design against the original. Since we didn’t have any qualitative feedback from the original design, we decided to test users with that version (as the control) and other participants with the variant “one call-to-action” version.

It was clear the variant version was much simpler and encouraged users to click through more often than the control. Only half of the variant testers used the information icon to learn more.

The ah-ha moment!

When we asked participants if they had any questions or concerns to speak aloud, multiple testers said, “Why don’t you just put the list of libraries on the book page instead of making me click through to another page?” *insert mind-blown emoji*

I quickly pivoted our design and did such that.

The Final Design

I took all the components of the “Find in your library page,” including the search field, and condensed it onto the top area of the title details page.

I limited the number of results (with the option to see more) displayed if you happen to live by multiple libraries. I didn’t want to overload the user with too many options or clutter the page.

Results

As of August 2021, the user journey from OverDrive title detail pages to the library ebook sites:

Book borrows from all traffic sources increased by 59.78%
Book borrows from organic search traffic alone increased by 77.77%
Overall conversion rate increased by 250%

Ultimately, more users are accessing free books; the original intent as stated by our site visitors.

Watch me talk about this project!

In this Masters of Conversion webinar from VWO, I discuss the importance of having quantitative and qualitative data to make design decisions and cover this Book Checkout Journey project, as well as the K-12 Resource Center Project.