The UK is in the middle of a mental health storm. The wrecking ball of lockdown wreaked havoc on the nation’s mental health. Economic inactivity due to long-term sickness is now at a record high, together with the number of people being prescribed antidepressants on the NHS.

As a doctor founded, patient-focused company, DCA offers people access to health services anywhere, anytime. With an impressive footing in the B2B market, DCA were keen to understand how to best launch a digital mental health subscription product for the consumer market.

We adopted a highly collaborative and iterative approach with DCA. Plugging into the business to understand the product and commercial opportunities from the perspectives of patient care, digital product, marketing and UX teams.

At the core of devising the optimal product was robust conjoint modelling. This gave us a sharp read on the prime features, pricing and bundling to drive higher uptake levels.

But conjoint only gets you so far. Seeing something simulated and asking what to pick isn’t as good as real life. A second vital component involved mocking up product webpages to bring to life how the product would be primed and how this would influence uptake. We tested comms, claims and the visual prominence of certain product features.

Qualitative interviews were also employed to enrich our understanding of uptake – something that data alone cannot provide.

Outputs gave clear direction as to the optimal product solution, pricing, comms and audience to position this with. An interactive simulator also gave DCA the power to tweak pricing and individual features to understand impact on uptake.