In Brief
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Pharmacy on the couch: medicine delivery and booking have become a familiar part of life in major cities of Kazakhstan, but service quality suffers greatly at the search and alternative selection stage.
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Information chaos: the lack of a clear search by active ingredient, confusing instructions, and outdated product availability at sales points cause stress for users.
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Victory through care: user loyalty will be won by the service that offers smart alternative searches, instant prescription verification, and transparent delivery without unnecessary operator calls.
Buying medicines is a highly sensitive scenario where the user is often in a state of stress, anxiety for loved ones, or feeling unwell. Despite the abundance of pharmacy apps, the customer journey from searching for the right pill to receiving it remains complex and opaque.
The Rocket Tech team analyzed the UX/UI problems of pharmacy retail in Kazakhstan and highlighted the barriers preventing people from seamlessly taking care of their health.
Key barriers: phantom availability and the fear of making the wrong choice
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Outdated stock and order cancellations The most painful scenario is when a user fills a cart with rare medicines, pays for the order, and half an hour later receives a call from an operator saying that half the items are out of stock. This undermines trust in the service and forces customers to return to traditional offline pharmacy visits.
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Difficulty finding alternatives (generics) When the required drug is unavailable, the user looks for a replacement. Most apps do not offer automatic substitution by active ingredient or dosage. The buyer is forced to google alternatives themselves, experiencing anxiety about the correctness of their choice.
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Confusing product cards Medicine cards often lack readable instructions, clearly highlighted contraindications, and usage methods. Instead of structured text, the user is shown a solid block of fine print copied from medical directories.
Behavior models: from panic search to regular supply
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Emergency search model (Panickers): Buy medicines here and now due to sudden illness. They do not look at discounts and bonuses—delivery speed (up to 1 hour) and guaranteed availability are important to them. Any hitch in the interface or courier delay causes them rage.
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Planned purchase model (Chronic and Caring): Regularly buy medications for themselves or elderly relatives. They carefully compare prices across different pharmacy chains, look for deals, build carts in advance, and value the one-click “repeat previous order” function.
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Anxious self-medication model (Doubters): Spend a long time studying reviews, reading instructions directly in the app, and trying to decipher the doctor’s handwriting on the prescription. They are afraid of buying the “wrong thing” and often refuse online payment, preferring to consult a pharmacist in person.
How it looks in practice
A child’s temperature rose at night. Asel opens the pharmacy section of a superapp, puts together a cart with a fever reducer and a prescription antibiotic, pays—and half an hour later she gets a call: half the items are “out of stock,” even though the card showed a green status. The app did not suggest an alternative—she had to search for a replacement by active ingredient herself, anxiously double-checking the dosage. As a result, Asel got dressed and drove to the on-duty pharmacy near her house. Since then, she considers ordering medicines online a lottery and only uses it for planned vitamin purchases.
At the same time, the same user willingly returns for planned purchases if a service has once proven its reliability. Chronic patients and caring relatives value the “repeat previous order” function, price comparison across pharmacy chains, and honest availability status at a specific location. The winner is not the largest catalog, but the “smart cart”: it selects an alternative by active ingredient, warns about incompatibility, and guarantees that the paid medicines will actually be in stock when the courier arrives.
Why it matters
Medical UX does not forgive mistakes and negligence. The market leader will be the pharmacy marketplace that takes on the role of a caring assistant: suggesting a more cost-effective alternative, reminding users about regular medication intake on time, and delivering them exactly on schedule.
FAQ
What annoys users the most when ordering medicines online?
The mismatch between actual stock in the pharmacy and what is displayed on the screen. Canceling items after the order has been paid is the main factor driving customers to competitors.
How to make a medical product card user-friendly?
It is necessary to restructure the instruction text: move the dosage, method of administration, and key contraindications into separate, easily readable visual blocks with large accents, abandoning continuous fine print.
Why does a pharmacy app need a search by active ingredient?
Users often look for alternatives (generics) due to the lack of the original medicine or its high cost. A direct suggestion of alternatives saves time and reduces buyer anxiety.
Why does online medicine ordering lose users after the first failure?
The cost of a mistake in pharma is health, not money. One “half is out of stock” call or confusion with the dosage destroys trust more strongly than in any other category. Users are brought back only by guaranteed availability, alternative suggestions by active ingredient, and readable instructions in the product card.
Original source of the research: Rocket Tech: Designing medical interfaces and pharmacy marketplaces in Kazakhstan
