Bringing you the latest news from our service development team on our next phase of development: information and support on all things sexual and reproductive health including contraception, genital health, more STIs, fertility and pregnancy.
Home STI test kit orders hit 3,000 and return rate rises to 68%
1,300 orders and 95% completing the ordering process
SH:24-ers use tools like Kissmetrics, Google Analytics, and sticky notes on a daily basis to analyse our data - helping us to work out how we can further promote the service and improve it for users.
Since it was launched, 1,300 people have ordered an STI test through SH:24 - 60% by women and 40% by men (broadly reflecting the gender split of clinic users) and 60% people have returned their test (higher than other online testing services). 95% of the people starting the order process go right through it to complete an order.
Busy lives and busy services
I recently spoke to a user of sexual and reproductive health services in London who had some difficulties finding and accessing services. It is a story about a woman seeking help about a coil she had fitted.
SH:24 currently only delivers sexual health services but our next phases involve the development of user support options and elements of reproductive health (emergency hormonal contraception (EHC) and oral contraception). The user’s story highlights some of the difficulties that can be experienced when looking for and trying to access services, but the high quality care and professionalism that is delivered when you do.
Talk to us by text
Over the next couple of months we hope too add to and improve the support and information available to SH:24 users. One opportunity is via text messaging and arranging call backs.
Text messages are already an integral part of the SH:24 user journey, we send notifications when a kit is dispatched, when the samples are received at the lab and a results notification a day or two after that.
So for the first time since our launch, Chris and I set out to spend an afternoon in waiting rooms exploring with clinic users, what they might want or need.
What our users tell us
In Glyn’s last blog post he talked about our love affair with data. My favourite type of data is qualitative. That’s not to say that quantitative data isn’t important or insightful, it’s crucial – particularly for highlighting behaviours, choices and cliff edges, but I find what people tell us about their experiences (generally unprompted) is far more exciting, especially as we can instantly talk to them about their thoughts and experiences by text message.
We’ve had some great feedback to date, some good and not so good… but thankfully mostly very good.
A number of users have posted their experiences on social media (again, good), whilst other users have sent us quite candid feedback via text message.
Love data
Since launching in March SH:24 has become a team of data geeks – tracking usage of the service on a daily basis to inform ongoing development of the service and our emergent engagement with users.
To date we have received 735 orders, 61% were ordered by women and 39% by men broadly reflecting the gender split of clinic users. Our user research indicated that the majority of users would be accessing SH:24 using their mobile phone, which shaped design of the website. This has been confirmed with 70% of people using their phone to order a test.
The website has received 2,885 visitors (70% of which are new) and 14,422 page views. This reflects SH:24’s continued soft launch activities, including the growth of its online presence.
Evaluating the impact of an online service
Alongside the development of SH:24, the evaluation team is looking at the outcomes of online sexual health services. We are asking: what works, for whom does it work and how does it work? We are looking at every element of the service.
Right now we are researching who needs help completing the testing process and what help they need. Sharmani Barnard will be interviewing users who did not return the test to understand why.
314 test orders and counting…
Since launching in March, we have received 314 orders, 59% were ordered by women and 41% by men.
The website has received 1,345 visitors, 71% of which are new and 6,340 page views.
As a lean start-up we have veered away from a hard launch (vigorous marketing and advertising campaigns). Instead we have softly launched the service, testing out various ways of raising awareness. We are therefore really encouraged by these early take-up figures.
To launch or not to launch?
With beta MVP#1 ready, our attention has recently swung towards how we tell people about the service; how we get our message out - that it exists and is there to be used.
Having adopted an iterative approach to designing the service, we chose to follow exactly the same philosophy in telling people about it.
Our idea was to start engaging people with basic ‘vanilla’ messaging – messages about our proposition that we have already tested with users, so we knew would work for the majority whilst not upsetting or alienating any specific groups (who we know would benefit from some tailored messaging in the future).
So we decided not to ‘launch’ but instead softly play these vanilla messages out in a select few places, online and offline across Southwark and Lambeth. Some would call this a pseudo product launch, but we have always shied away from a traditional marketing launch for the following reasons;
After many post-it notes…MVP#1 beta demo’ed to advisory board
Beta phase complete
Beta brand
Beta sprint 1
Four beta sprints are scheduled to implement a beta version of the service. This will entail two streams: a continuation of the user led design process carried out in the alpha phase and a SCRUM process to deliver digital elements robust enough to support the delivery of a live beta service to approximately 4,000 users.
Alpha sprint 4
Made in Lambeth hackday
Alpha sprint 3
Alpha sprint 2
Between 26 June and 9 July we began to experiment around the basic order form created in sprint 1 and remove a few of the hurdles for the project as a whole identified during the previous sprint.