Verizon is a leading telecommunications provider in US offering mobile and home internet services to millions of customers. This project focused on auditing and prioritizing friction points across the home internet plan selection and Mobile + Home bundled purchase experience, laying the groundwork for the redesign that followed.
Project Overview
Home internet consists of two types of services FWA(Fixed Wireless Access) and Fios (Fibre Optics Service). Within the home internet sales portfolio, we conducted a comprehensive audit of the end-to-end customer journey, from initial address entry to final purchase. The objective was to systematically identify customer-facing friction points and foster organizational awareness through centralized, accessible documentation.
Problem Statement
The home internet plan selection experience overwhelmed users with too many options, unclear jargon, and layouts that made comparing plans or finding key details difficult, especially on mobile.
Verizon's Mobile + Home bundle is a strategic priority — bundled customers show higher retention and Life Time Value. But the purchase experience across Mobile + Fios (Fiber Optic Service) and Mobile + FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) flows had never been holistically audited.
Fios purchase experience has been built on legacy code bases that disables customer to buy Mobile + Fios in a joint cart although customers have shown strong intent to purchase both in same cart. (28.4% customers)
Bundled purchase rates on Mobile+FWA were significantly lower (5%) than single-product flows, and customer sentiment on community forums pointed to recurring confusion and frustration.
Considering these scenarios, which are a mix of major and minor issues, the requirement from leadership was to capture all these issues in an organised and systematic manner so that it can be evaluated.
As Senior Experience Designer, I audited customer friction across the Mobile + Home and Home Internet sales funnel, uncovering both experience gaps and systemic UI issues. I turned these findings into clear, centralized documentation and worked cross-functionally to get leadership aligned on the problems. This case study covers that audit and prioritization phase of top 3 critical issues; the resulting plan tile and purchase flow redesigns are detailed separately.
Research & Discovery
Key Findings
67.8% of customers dropped off directly on the plan tile page; before even reaching the cart, signaling the friction starts at plan selection itself, not just at checkout.
Nearly all customers who reach the joint mobile and FWA cart leave without completing the purchase.
About 1 in 4 mobile customers eventually add Fios, but only through separate nudges over time, since a joint cart option doesn't exist for Mobile and Fios yet.
Intended Outcome
Quantifying Customer Friction
Centralizing issue records revealed recurring friction patterns across the journey, exposing systemic risks that a piecemeal view had been hiding.
With every finding in one place, we could rank issues by severity and frequency, and put resources against the pain points that actually mattered most.
Informed Strategic Trade-offs
Centralized records made the "cost of inaction" visible, giving leadership clear evidence for what's at stake whenever new features get prioritized over fixing broken experiences.
Audit Landscape
Heuristic Analysis
Evaluation using usability principles to identify gaps, reduce cognitive load, and simplify user decision-making throughout the journey.
Visual Quality Audit
Production audit to catch visual inconsistencies, ensure design system adherence, and maintain brand quality across all devices.
CMI Research Findings
Synthesis of qualitative studies and testing to validate mental models, measure success rates, and align the experience with user needs. Reddit community reviews were also looked into to inform the issues.
Heatmaps / Quantum Metrics
Analysis of real-time behavior to pinpoint navigation hurdles, identify "dead clicks," and track customer interactions with specific page elements.
1 - Home Internet Plan purchase
Verizon is the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., offering home internet through two services - FWA (3 plans) and Fios (5 plans). Picking a plan is a tough decision: customers compare options both within Verizon and against competitors, weighing benefits against price. Despite the competition, we found that 67.8% of customers dropped off right on the plan tile page, before even reaching the cart. This showed the real friction wasn't at checkout, but earlier, during plan selection itself. Digging deeper, we found four issues behind this drop-off:
Current Fios plan purchase experience
Heuristic : Aesthetic & Minimalist Design
Cognitive overload & decision fatigue
Every extra plan/spec shown without hierarchy competes for attention — violates keeping interfaces focused on what's relevant.
Heuristic : Match Between System & the Real World
Jargon-heavy descriptions
"Whole-Home wi-fi" is internal/technical language, not the customer's own vocabulary or framed as a benefit — breaks the principle of speaking the user's language.
Heuristic : Flexibility & Efficiency of Use
Horizontal layout constraints
The layout works for one context (desktop) but doesn't adapt to another (mobile) — fails to accommodate different devices/user needs equally well.
Heuristic : Recognition Rather Than Recall
Fixed viewport bottlenecks
Forcing scroll/click to see key details makes users hold information in memory or dig for it, instead of surfacing it directly — increases cognitive burden.
2 - Mobile + FWA Joint cart purchase drop off rate is 95%
Verizon's prospect mobile and FWA customers can purchase both in a single cart as joint cart customers are eligible for a $15 M+H discount. Even after getting a $15 discount there is 95% drop off on the joint cart.
3 - Mobile + Fios Sequential cart purchase rate is 28.4%
Unlike M+FWA, Fios can't be purchased in a joint cart. Customers must complete their Mobile order first, then continue to Fios from the confirmation screen. Even though sequential purchase rates are high, Fios's legacy codebase prevents a single joint transaction.
Top Customer Feedback
Customer sentiment for Mobile+Home queries from Reditt and Verizon community forums.
Based on a quantitative content analysis of the 7 primary discussion threads and ~80 user interactions contained within the provided reliable sources. - Gemini
Mobile + Home MLP heatmap analysis using Quantum Metrics.
Heuristic : Consistency and Standards
The M+H discount messaging is inconsistent and often hidden across the user flow. Users see different savings information depending on the screen, with the $15 monthly discount missing or changing in different regions.
Heuristic : Visibility of System Status
The systems fails to recognize the user's logged-in status. Even though users arrive signed-in from the Mobile UAD, a banner asks them to "sign in" again to get a discount. There is no visible link for help.
Heuristic : Visibility of System Status
FIOS confirmation page lacks any mention of the Mobile + Home (M+H) discount, despite the user being enrolled and the discount being applied to future billing cycles.
The broader Home Internet design team identified over 100 friction points across the customer journey. My work focused on the Mobile + Home and Home internet portfolio, identifying 25 issues, 3 of them critical, before expanding to the full Home Internet experience. I secured executive sponsorship and funding for key fixes: refined plan selection tiles, better landing page content, and a streamlined purchase journey. This work became the foundation for a from-scratch redesign of the purchase experience, resolving core UI and UX issues while staying fully compliant with Verizon's Design System.