McKesson — Revolutionizing Pharmacy Access: Health Mart's Innovative Portal Design
For McKesson — #9 on the Fortune list — the studio designed the Health Mart portal platform: white-label websites that independent pharmacies build and manage themselves. The work spanned a flexible site platform, a dedicated marketing site, and an admin tool, all across desktop and mobile.
Role: UX Design
Overview
McKesson's Health Mart brand offers white-label pharmacy services to independent pharmacies — and it needed a web platform to match. The studio designed the Health Mart portal system: a flexible website platform for independent pharmacies, a dedicated marketing site for McKesson, and an admin tool that lets third-party pharmacies build and manage their own sites. Every piece shipped with desktop and mobile web versions.
Challenges
A company of McKesson's scale means many stakeholders and many revision cycles. The work demanded constant, clear communication and disciplined project management to hold the timeline and budget.
Role
The studio owned experience design end to end — collaborating with McKesson's marketing staff, stakeholders across the organization, and outside vendors to hit the project's objectives.
User Insights
Pharmacy was new territory for the team. Close collaboration with knowledgeable colleagues — a marketing director in particular — surfaced what pharmacies and their customers actually need.
Key Features
As a B2B2C product, the design had to serve two audiences at once, so persona mapping covered both: pharmacies managing medications and promoting their business, and customers finding the right medications at reasonable prices. Key features included:
- Marketing and promotional tools for pharmacy visibility
- Vitamin finder for locating specific products
- Newsletter integration for customer engagement
- Drug search by name and physical description
- Prescription management and history for customers
- About Us and specialty pages for a personal touch
- Photo carousels showcasing each pharmacy's offerings and services
Results
The engagement produced a refined set of UX specifications and detailed wireframes that fed the larger design cycle across creative, marketing, and engineering teams. McKesson reported the designs were well received and met project requirements.
Key Takeaway
Define the problem carefully, then iterate — from low-fidelity to high-fidelity work. That discipline, paired with knowing how to collaborate across a diverse set of professional expertise, carried the project.