Invocare — Sean Valadao Duarte

Sean Valadão Duarte

Sean Valadão Duarte is a Senior Product & Experience Designer based in Lisboa, specialising in clear, scalable digital products across UX research, strategy and systemised UI. Outside of work, he can usually be found watching Arsenal on the weekends, making ambient tunes in the evenings, and practising his questionable Portuguese whenever he can.

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Work

Exceptional ALIEN
Venues NSW
McGrath
Optimize Mind Performance
Novii
Constantinople
Sportsbet
Invocare
Finstro (Coming soon)
Redback (Coming soon)
Powershop (Coming soon)

Invocare

Index

Role: Lead UX/UI Designer
Industry: Funeral services
Time: 4 weeks
Delivered: Web product strategy

We redesigned Invocare’s digital experience to support clearer, more proactive decision making during emotionally complex moments.

Overview:
Invocare provides end to end funeral and memorial services, supporting individuals and families at some of the most emotionally demanding points in their lives. As digital expectations evolved, there was a growing need to create an experience that balanced empathy with clarity, enabling people to explore options, understand trade-offs, and progress with confidence, at their own pace.

Task:
Design a modern, intuitive lead capture and nurture experience that drives growth, builds trust and reduces friction, serving as the first step toward enabling online purchase for Guardian Plan.

Problem:
Existing experiences were fragmented and reactive, relying heavily on direct consultation and placing pressure on users to make complex decisions quickly. Information was available but not structured in a way that helped people understand choices, compare options or feel in control during moments of stress.

Approach
Understanding where people dropoff

Analysis of enquiry data showed that most users disengaged at the very start of their journey. 74% of enquiries were first time interactions and 41% of users indicated they were not ready to buy.

Despite strong traffic and enquiry volume, engagement consistently stalled after initial price exploration. This revealed a clear disconnect between user readiness and the expectations of the experience.

Approach
Recognising the real audience

The primary audience was not preplanners, it was price led enquirers.

Most users arrived to “get a sense of cost” rather than to make a decision. They asked one question, received an answer and left. Few progressed into planning, comparison or follow-up.

This behaviour wasn’t a lack of interest, but a lack of readiness. Users were curious, cost-conscious, and risk-aware, but without the context needed to move beyond price into consideration.

Approach
Designing for intent, not readiness

The data made it clear that readiness could not be assumed.

Treating early enquiries as sales ready moments created friction and premature drop off. Many users needed time, reassurance and information before they could meaningfully engage with planning.

The approach reframed success at this stage as:

Extending engagement beyond first contact
Supporting understanding before commitment
Allowing people to progress at their own pace

Approach
Framing the opportunity

Prepaid funerals remain a low engagement and low understanding category. However, the volume of early, price led enquiries revealed strong latent demand.

The opportunity was to shift behaviour:

From price enquiry to informed consideration
From one off interaction to ongoing engagement
From avoidance to preparedness through education

For customers
For customers, this work aimed to normalise prepaid funeral planning as responsible life administration, something to be understood and considered early and not deferred until crisis (reactive). A digital experience needed to offer the same empathy, clarity and professionalism people already experienced through consultants, without requiring a phone call as the first step.

For the business
For the business, success depended on creating earlier, more meaningful engagement and measuring progress beyond immediate conversion. Key indicators included:

Increased awareness of prepaid funerals as a concept
Growth in prepaid enquiries from people under 65
A shift in average purchase age over time
Reduction in manual follow up calls through structured CRM journeys
Stronger funnel progression and revenue performance
Scalability and mobilisation across all of Invocares brands (Simplicity, Guardian Plan).

This framing set the foundation for the solution that followed, one focused on confidence, continuity, and long-term value.

Solution
Redefining early engagement

The work focused on reshaping the earliest part of the prepaid funeral journey, where most people arrive with questions rather than decisions.

Instead of treating entry as a sales moment, the experience was designed to support exploration first. It helps people understand the category, make sense of what they can control, how much it would cost and build confidence over time. Planning was broken into smaller, more manageable steps, with space to pause, return and progress when ready. It needed to be indicative of the support, patience and understanding.

This created a self service pathway that could handle early stage education and orientation, while reserving human support for moments where reassurance or commitment mattered. The result was a calmer, more credible starting point for users to learn about funeral pre-planning and a more sustainable model for the business.

Triaging service & support

To help users learn more about funeral planning, the planning flow was embedded alongside quotes and tiered services, allowing exploration and action to happen in parallel.
Planning prompts were introduced throughout the quote journey, consistently reminding users they could begin planning on their own terms, at any point.
Planning was positioned as the core narrative, supported through content strategies that educate and reframe funeral planning as everyday life admin.

Guided planning flow

The planning onboarding flow guides users through financial, emotional and needs based considerations, helping them understand what is involved in funeral planning in a clear and supportive way.
Support is available throughout the journey, with options to contact a consultant for human connection, restart a plan or save progress for later follow up or completion.
The experience is deliberately simplified, using gentle interactive cues such as large, clear actions and a growing visual motif to help users progress comfortably and without friction.
Facts and information were surfaced between steps to help users understand the benefits of planning a funeral ahead of time.

Contextual tooling

Quick filters were introduced at key points in the planning flow to help address common uncertainties, such as environmental impact, cost, and commonly chosen options.
An AI chatbot was provided as an additional support tool, giving users a way to seek clarification or deeper context as questions arise, helping them feel informed and confident in their decisions.

The portal / vault

A secure portal and vault that acts as a digital home for plans, preferences, documents and family access, rather than functioning as a static contract.
Framed as “The place where your final piece of life admin lives”, designed to sit naturally alongside a will, super and insurance.
Users can access standard quotes aligned to their plan, giving a realistic view of costs based on the choices they have made. Plans can be adjusted at any time, allowing users to explore trade offs and manage costs as their preferences evolve.

Solution
How content, digital human work together

The experience was designed as a coordinated system, where content, self service tools, and human support reinforce each other rather than compete.

Always on content and simple tools help people move from vague concern into informed consideration, normalising planning as everyday life admin before asking for commitment. As users progress, a shared planner and vault create a single source of truth, accessible to both customers and consultants, removing repetition and preserving context.

Digital journeys handle early education, qualification, and pacing, while smart triage determines when self service is enough and when human reassurance matters. When users move between digital and human support, the handover is seamless, with consultants able to pick up exactly where the customer left off.

Ongoing, content led nurture keeps the topic present over time, supporting gradual decision making rather than forcing urgency. Together, this creates a calmer, more credible experience for users and a more efficient, sustainable model for the business.

Outcome
From concept to commitment

The proposition resonated strongly with Invocare’s digital and marketing teams. The onboarding strategy reframed prepaid funeral planning in a way that felt both commercially credible and culturally right for the category, giving the organisation confidence to move from concept to delivery.

Given Guardian Plan was mid redesign, the team identified an opportunity to launch the approach through Simplicity, Invocare’s largest brand and the source of approximately 70% of group revenue. This allowed the strategy to move forward quickly, grounded in a brand with both scale and momentum.

The work has since been presented with senior stakeholders and received approval to proceed. Planning is now underway to commence delivery, with rollout sequencing, technical requirements,and testing considerations actively being defined.

While live performance metrics are not yet available, the project has been considered a success to date based on internal alignment, stakeholder confidence and the decision to progress immediately into build. The work has shifted how Invocare thinks about onboarding, early engagement and the role of digital in shaping planning behaviour, setting a clear foundation for future measurement and iteration.

Team
Head of Product - Russel Privett
Lead Strategist - Alex Vitlin
Lead UX/UI Designer - Sean Valadão Duarte

Tasks
Discovery
Ideation
Strategy
Indicative UI Design