Hum by Verizon had a real product and a real market. What it didn’t have was a website that could sell it.
Online sales were stuck at 1% of monthly volume, with the channel projected to hit just 9.5% of its annual goal. I came in after that diagnosis to find out why, and to rebuild the experience before the Hum Self-Activated (HumSA) launch and Black Friday window — eight weeks out.
The numbers were hard to ignore. Online orders sat at 1% of monthly sales. Conversion was 0.15%, almost entirely driven by earned media referrals. The channel was on pace to hit 9.5% of its annual goal. With 70-80k monthly visitors generating only 2-6 purchases, something fundamental was broken.
Behavioral data pointed to where. Only 13% of users took any meaningful funnel action, and less than half of those moved into actual shopping behavior. Visitors were hitting the site curious but leaving to find answers elsewhere — and not coming back. The ones who stayed couldn’t figure out which version of Hum did what.
Traffic wasn’t the problem. The experience was.
No Category Orientation
Users didn’t understand connected-car devices well enough to evaluate Hum, and the site wasn’t helping them get there.
Fragmented pathways
Product, feature, use-case, and pricing content lived in separate silos. Instead of building toward a decision, the site created churn.
No memory of returning visitors
Pricing shown too soon
Top-funnel traffic was strong. But, when users tried to learn more, they cycled around the site hunting for information.
I led UX strategy and collaborated across analytics, research, content, creative, and engineering to deliver:
- A rebuilt information architecture
- Pricing + comparison frameworks
- Site intelligence for revisits
- Revised home and product detail pages
- Better contextualized integration of testimonials and social content
- Conversational, user-friendly UI and copy across the site
We moved from strategy → UX → design → copy → FE build → QA → launch in just 8 weeks, relaunching Hum.com in time for the HumSA release for Black Friday.
Up from 2-6 per month, still modest, but a meaningful improvement.
Reflection
Retail sales represented the majority of Hum sales, but commission-driven upselling created buyer confusion, resulting in return rates as high as 44%. In contrast, online buyers who moved through our redesigned flow showed stronger activation and retention.
Our improvements clarified the experience, boosted engagement, and exceeded sales share expectations. But data revealed a deeper truth: Hum lacked a compelling, durable value proposition for modern car owners, no amount of UX rigor could change that trajectory.
Retail misalignment created confusion; product-market misalignment created regret. We fixed the funnel but the product itself was already losing relevance.
In Sept 2025, Verizon announced it was discontinuing Hum.
