Phonics, Not Friction: Rethinking the Checkout Experience
A usability case study of Hooked on Phonics' checkout process.
Overview
Project Type
Group project - research, user tests evaluator
Timeline
April - May 2025
(One month)
Tools
Figma
Panelfox
UX Consultant Team
Sara Her, Matthew Thien & Nallely Martinez-Almonte
Framing our Problem
Project Goal: The goal of this research was to identify usability issues that might prevent parents from subscribing to a service that is marketed to help children improve their reading. Through thorough user tests that gave us crucial insights, several key usability concerns were discovered and addressed to improve the overall user experience.
Our Problem Statement: Users navigating the checkout process of Hooked on Phonics fall off due to information overload and confusion about the process
Preview of final landing page redesign.
Hooked on Phonics: A Usability Case Study
To continue enhancing Hooked on Phonics’ impact around the world, our team at Pratt Institute, in collaboration with Hooked & Company, conducted six remote usability tests to evaluate the usability of the current website’s landing page and checkout process. Key recommendations for user experience improvement included combining multiple upsell webpages, reducing information overload, making clear what’s being purchased, and renaming CTA copy.
Our Process: Defining our Direction
A kickoff meeting with the representatives from Hooked & Co established a foundation and familiarity with the platform, client goals, and questions they had around how users engaged with the product. The following steps were completed to conduct our user tests, which then generated four recommendations:
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Define and recruit test users
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Moderate remote user interviews
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Results and recommendations
Defining and Recruiting Test Users:
As established by the client’s understanding of the most common user personas using their service, a screener survey was developed to identify parents with at least one child between the ages of 3-8 and no current usage of Hooked on Phonics. Individuals in a participant pool used by Pratt Institute, called PanelFox, were used to invite individuals to take the screener survey. In addition, evaluators reached out to the community to find additional potential participants who met the user test criteria. Those who met the screening criteria were then invited to participate in a remote, moderated user session with the team.
Ultimately, six users with the following characteristics were tested:
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Parents between the ages of 18-45
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1 man, 5 women
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All had at least one child between the ages of 3-8
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None had ever used Hooked on Phonics, but may have heard of it before
MODERATED REMOTE USER TESTING
To identify areas for improvement, six usability tests were designed and conducted. Each user was asked to imagine themselves in a scenario of seeking a reading resource for their own child, and to complete four tasks to learn more about the service, its benefits, and product reviews, before ultimately purchasing the service for themself. Users rated the ease of use for each task after completing it to define the difficulty or ease of navigating the website, and were directed to utilize the think-aloud method and express any thoughts regarding their experience.
Results and Recommendations:
User quotes, behaviors, and ease ratings guided the interpretation of findings and recommendations. Four problems around confusion in the checkout flow, information overload on the landing page, confusion around the copy used for call-to-action buttons, and lack of clarity around what items are being purchased.
The user data collected found a 100% user success rate across all four of our tasks and an average ease rating of tasks of 1 - 1.83. Although completing tasks seemed simple enough, improving the clarity and brevity of information on the website would improve existing user experiences.
Finding 1: 50% of Users Expressed Negative Frustrations While Encountering Multiple Confirmation Pages
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Currently two upsell pages that appear after the payment page to sell further items
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The two extra pages not only increase the steps required to complete the process but also increase the chance for user frustration.
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The current design is generally unfamiliar compared to other websites…
“Being offered even more stuff, and especially in a different format than the previous page, is a little bit confusing.”
Current checkout process. Above left: first upsell page seen after the payment page. Above right: second upsell page.
Recommendation 1: Combining Upsell Pages to Reduce Negative Experiences
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Merge the two different pages to reduce the number of steps in the checkout process
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Users can see every additional item they can purchase on one page, including one-time purchases.
Redesigned checkout process. Above: Only one upsell page exists, combining the prior two.
Finding 2: Only 33% of Users Skimmed Beyond the First Third of the Landing Page
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Currently two upsell pages that appear after the payment page to sell further items
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The two extra pages not only increase the steps required to complete the process but also increase the chance for user frustration.
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The current design is generally unfamiliar compared to other websites…
“What do I look at first?”
Above: The current landing page holds eight different content sections
Recommendation 2: Reducing Landing Page Content in Half
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Given that users only skimmed the first third of the landing page, we aimed to reduce the page to roughly that length
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Sections kept were either easily found in user tasks or seen to be significant for users proceeding to the checkout process
Our redesigned landing page is reduced to only five content sections.
Finding and Recommendation 3: An Understanding of What’s Included in a Subscription Came Too Late
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Users would get to or past the payment page before realizing they didn’t know precisely what they were purchasing
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An overwhelming amount of text and images led to users skimming over these crucial details
“I’m not really sure what’s included…”
“I had to scroll a lot and read through everything to understand what I was getting.”
Above: The current "Everything you'll get" content section.
Finding and Recommendation 3: Improving Clarity in What A User is Purchasing
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Redesign the visual hierarchy in the “Here’s Everything You Will Get” Section and the Checkout Page Sidebar to make clear what users are buying
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Provide opportunities to learn about this both in the landing page and at the payment page
Our redesigned "Everything you'll get" page more clearly notates items included.
Finding and Recommendation 4: Updating CTA Copy to Increase User Trust and Understanding
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50% of users described the buttons and some of the copy on the content of the page as ad-like and creating some doubt.
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Users felt highly aware of Hooked on Phonics’ attempt at persuading them to purchase the product.
Above: The current landing page's CTA copy
“I was thrown off by the subscribe button being named
or related to discount.”
“94% off sounds almost too good to be true.”
Finding and Recommendation 4: Clear CTA Copy to Increase User Confidence
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Update CTA copy to “subscribe” to better encapsulate the payment process for the service and reduce user confusion on how to proceed beyond the landing page.
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Remove the current ad-like experience and allow the features and reviews about the product to speak for themselves.
Our redesigned landing page CTA copy is changed to "subscribe" to reduce user confusion.
Conclusion:
In a final presentation to our clients at Hooked & Co, four findings and recommendations for the website’s landing page and checkout process were shared. While the site conveys a strong and beautiful layout that gives parents a sense of hopefulness, trust, and educational value, our recommendations addressed issues of information overload and user confusion. Our clients highly agreed on our findings and appreciated receiving validation of user problems from external consultants. Additionally, they were eager to hear about users’ utilization of the landing page and they were excited to think about ways to incorporate or build upon our redesign of the upsell pages in their next stage of redesign of the checkout process.
Final meeting between the Pratt consultant team and the client team.
See It In Action
Next Steps:
Although our partnership with Hooked & Co ended, we would recommend the following ideas to our client for further consideration.
Our client mentioned the need for Marketing to keep the copy around “94%” and other language around the discount. If kept, we would highly encourage details or a link to details nearby to provide clarity about the cost of the subscription service without the discount.
Further user testing would also be essential to determining what content to keep, tweak, or remove from the current landing page. Findings around which areas are most helpful to users would support decisions, but also could guide further tweaks around how to present information on the landing page in a clear and concise manner.