Human-centered Revenue Generation
Educational Product Sales
The challenge: focus on physician needs while keeping a non-profit association afloat.
Goal: generate revenue with a suite of new CME courses
The problem: new products, new formats, old structures
Live, in-person continuing medical education (CME) courses for physicians had long served the AAFP as the flagship of both educational quality and organizational revenue. But after the pandemic, inflation, travel nightmares, and an overwhelmed healthcare system hit them hard, family physicians didn’t want—and couldn’t afford—to leave their practices to sit in a hotel ballroom for three days listening to lectures. Suddenly, the mission-driven membership organization for family doctors needed to find an updated stream of revenue in order to keep existing to serve their membership.
Almost overnight, the organization shifted direction to develop over 40 new online CME courses. The website would be our primary storefront, with multi-channel promotions planned to funnel customers in a central landing page. But the website was structured for browsing and comparison, not quick, focused purchases.
The research: observe the purchase process in real time
The user experience team recruited 7-10 family physicians in different stages of their careers for a baseline test on the CME purchase process. We wanted to see how physicians used the website to buy CME in as close to a real-world setting as possible. Many participants joined us from their offices in between patients or rounds. We not only observed how they searched for and bought CME, but the environments and interruptions that they dealt with every day.
The next time you take a CME course, what topics do you plan to learn about? Try to find a course on [topic] using this website.
Try to purchase the course on [topic] that you found. How much will you pay for this course? What will you receive for the price? How much time will it take?
Physicians mentioned emerging topics like point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) or reducing stress. Participants struggled to find these courses amid the traditional, specialty/body system topic listings.
Product pages were text-heavy, too long, and still didn’t describe the education fully. Participants had to guess at the length of the course based on the credits offered, and could only vaguely describe what they thought they would learn.
Family physicians are frequently interrupted and always put their patients first. They often have to stop and start a task and are frustrated when they lose their place in a process.
Family physicians treat the whole person, so forcing them to select a specialty/body system topic before they can see their options is too limiting. Organize courses differently, such as “new trends” or “physician well-being.”
Online learning is primarily visual, and family physicians want to know what they’re getting for their CME dollar. Show pictures of the actual learning materials alongside the most important information: the number of credits, the time to completion, and the course price.
Don’t make physicians select a topic and/or format before they see any course options. Show them the best and newest options up front.
Task
Observation during all tasks
Finding
The process: clear the path to purchase
The product pages had to both support sales by delivering a clear path to purchase, and be built repeatedly using a blueprint that would work for all courses across the board. I used the Nielsen Norman Group’s Must-Haves for Ecommerce Product Pages as a guideline to analyze what the old template got wrong, and how to fix it.
Product Page: Original Layout
Limited in-house e-commerce and sales expertise resulted in a focus on product description instead of promotion
Text-heavy, rambly, unfocused, and too long
No product photos
Prices and purchase button pushed “below the fold”
Insight
Product Page: Updated Design
Clarified the product title and purpose using a title dek
Included screenshots of the actual educational material
Edited the product description to focus on the content and descriptive information
Moved the price and purchase option to the top for fastest access
Highlighted decision-factor features with styling and icons for quick readability
The process: curate collections
Customers needed a guide to help get them to the best, latest, and most relevant education—which didn’t always fit neatly into the existing topic categorizations. In order to promote the newer, innovative learning content, we helped the marketing team curate collections of courses based on different factors, such as “trending topics” for new or emerging education, or “intensive education” for content that focused in more closely on nuanced topics.
CME Category Home Page
Cohesive design balancing promotions and quick access to new and trending courses.
On-demand CME Landing Page
Focus on curated collections of courses, easily scrollable in a gallery carousel.
With a renewed focus on physician needs, compassion for customer’s time, and a more diverse offering of course types, the AAFP is well-positioned for a shift in revenue and poised for the future expansion of CME courses into a variety of topics and formats.