Bringing convenience and accessibility to pet care
Joii is a leading veterinary telehealth provider in the UK, offering 24/7 access to UK-registered vets through the app. They help 500,000 users connect with vets, check their symptoms, receive custom treatment plans and order products.
- Contributions
- UI & UX
- Research & testing
- Design system
- Prototypes
- User flows
- Team
The team comprised:- 4 Engineers
- 1 Product manager
- 1 Product designer
- Outcomes
- 51% increase in consultations
- 90% conversion rate
- 68% MoM growth
The Problem
Telehealth adoption is growing, but video consultations present friction points, particularly in pet owners who don’t necessarily know what care they need or if they even need it. We recognised that increasing engagement required a broader approach, one that considered not just video discomfort, but overall barriers to entry in digital vet care. To truly improve accessibility to vets, our challenge was to explore alternative communication methods beyond video.
Discovery
Survey
Objective: To understand why users were dropping out of the video queue and not completing their consultations
Approach: Early on, we suspected that video calls might not be the ideal solution for all users. Before running surveys, we analyzed drop-off patterns and benchmarked against other telehealth services, where chat had proven successful. Our survey with 136 users then confirmed that video calls were creating engagement barriers. Survey questions focused on comfort levels, perceived effort, and alternative preferences.
Approach: Early on, we suspected that video calls might not be the ideal solution for all users. Before running surveys, we analyzed drop-off patterns and benchmarked against other telehealth services, where chat had proven successful. Our survey with 136 users then confirmed that video calls were creating engagement barriers. Survey questions focused on comfort levels, perceived effort, and alternative preferences.
Key insights:
Impact: These findings confirmed that video calls created a barrier to adoption, supporting the need for a low-effort and accessible alternative.
- 81% of users didn't want to wait long to communicate with a vet
- 72% would prefer a quicker, less intrusive way to communicate with a vet
- 35% stated they didn't have their pet with them at the time of the video
Impact: These findings confirmed that video calls created a barrier to adoption, supporting the need for a low-effort and accessible alternative.
Definition
Lean UX canvas
During our definition phase we began with the Lean UX canvas and identified with the hypothesis prioritisation canvas that a live chat fell within the high perceived value and high risk category. Myself and the PM worked with the engineers, vets and stakeholders to align on feasability and operational impact. By balancing user needs with business constraints, we ensured that our solution was scalable, sustainable, and desirable for both users and the business.
We began with qualitative research which we relied on to give us some confidence that users would find a chat service helpful. This was in the form of a survey where 94% of participants said that a live chat would be a useful feature to access.
Develop
User flows
I mapped out the desired user flow and aligned it with the mermaid chart that the developers had created during their SPIKE. Once the squad was in agreement with the flow I was able to proceed with wireframing, and prototyping.
Wireframes
I began to align the flow with wireframes to ensure we weren't missing any considerations or user stories.
Deliver
Building our own live chat at this point was still risky, however we had laid the foundations to know that we were heading in the right directions to solve our problem. The final steps were to begin testing.
We made a two phase plan of low effort development experiments to test 1) user engagement & uptake and 2) Chat quality.
We made a two phase plan of low effort development experiments to test 1) user engagement & uptake and 2) Chat quality.
Experiment 1 - False door test
Objective: To evaluate user interest in a live chat feature for vet advice while retaining the video call option
Hypothesis: Users seeking veterinary advice are more likely to engage with a live chat feature, than the current video call option, due to its convenience and lower perceived effort on the users' side.
Results & conclusion:
Adding a chat option significantly boosted engagement and consult completion, driving revenue. Based on these results, we proceeded to phase 2 with a low effort chat implementation using a plugin provider.
Hypothesis: Users seeking veterinary advice are more likely to engage with a live chat feature, than the current video call option, due to its convenience and lower perceived effort on the users' side.
Results & conclusion:
- 118% increase in total CTA clicks (Variant B)
- 35% of users in Variant B chose chat - 2X more than those selecting a video call
- 89% increase in completed consults (vs 63% in control)
Adding a chat option significantly boosted engagement and consult completion, driving revenue. Based on these results, we proceeded to phase 2 with a low effort chat implementation using a plugin provider.
Experiment 2 - Trial chat
Overview: Building on our previous A/B test, we set the two-CTA setup (video call + live chat) as our control (Variant A). In Variant B, we replaced the live chat CTA with "Chat to an AI Vet" to gauge user interest in AI-driven consultations as the company explored investing in an LLM for triage.
Objective: Understand how users and vets interact with chat, including common user concerns, chat duration, and vet capacity. This test focused on learning rather than validating AI chat.
Hypothesis: Giving users the option to live chat with a vet, alongside the video call option will drive additional consults.
Results & conclusion:
Explicitly mentioning an AI vet reduced engagement and completion rates for both CTAs. This insight guided our next steps in refining AI chat implementation as part of a future phase.
Objective: Understand how users and vets interact with chat, including common user concerns, chat duration, and vet capacity. This test focused on learning rather than validating AI chat.
Hypothesis: Giving users the option to live chat with a vet, alongside the video call option will drive additional consults.
Results & conclusion:
- CTR: Control variant outperformed Variant B (Chat CTA +5%, Call CTA +2%).
- Completion Rate: Higher in the control (Chat +8%, Call +6%).
- Insights: Users preferred human chat over AI, leading to higher engagement. Most chat inquiries were non-urgent, with an average chat time of 7 minutes, and vets managing 3-5 chats simultaneously.
Explicitly mentioning an AI vet reduced engagement and completion rates for both CTAs. This insight guided our next steps in refining AI chat implementation as part of a future phase.
Experiment conclusion
After relaying the results of both experiments to stakeholders we were all in agreement that we had validated a live chat enough to warrant the development time needed to build it. We were up against a small time frame of two months to fully design, build and ship the live chat.
What we shipped
Since we had only a limited time to design and deliver and we knew which chat platform we were going to integrate with, I used the chat provider's component library and made adjustments to them to enable them to fit more seamlessly into our UI.
Landing Screen
I received a brief to redo the landing screen which was also the entry point into the chat. The landing screen at the time was quite jarring and limiting. At the time we were in limbo with our branding, with some stakeholders wanting to hold off bringing the branding more into the UI because there were talks of rebranding. However after presenting the screen to the C-Suite, we were in agreement that we couldn't afford to stay with a limited screen when this was our landing screen, which should grab the user's attention and drive our main revenue stream.
The results
51% increase in consultations
The barrier to entry into a consultation was completely lowered as we introduced a more accessible means of communication with a vet
90% conversion rate
Across our users with access to the live chat
68% MoM growth
This figure is predicted to grow as we roll out marketing initiatives
Next Steps
Post launch
With chat adoption validated, we focused on improving continuity. Our first problem to solve was to allow vets to switch between chat and video seamlessly - this meant that we could provide extra caution and care with our consultations and allow a better experience which left users feeling confident with our care.
What's next for Joii chat?
While chat was a key first step, the future of pet telehealth lies in AI-assisted triage, and asynchronous messaging. As Joii expands, there’s an opportunity to explore predictive vet care, using chat history and AI to preemptively address common pet health issues before they escalate. This positions Joii as an innovator in proactive pet healthcare, beyond reactive consultations.
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