From day one of building policyexpert.co.uk, we’ve always placed great emphasis on customer experience. Even in the conception of our business idea, the focus has always been about delivering a customer-centric service that puts the user at the heart of our decision-making. From our overall proposition right down to our website navigation – we wanted to make sure we were always listening to our customers and continually acting on their feedback. This is where WhatUsersDo has been incredibly insightful.

Insurance is considered a traditional industry – sometimes even a little stuck in its ways, but with the popularity of online comparison sites, more and more customers are turning to the web to find insurance deals. Our mission was to go one stage further and create a next-generation online broker that would look after customers beyond the comparison stage and offer exceptional customer service from quote through to claim. This was a fresh way of thinking about insurance – so it needed a fresh approach to usability.

In the early days of our website build, we invited the general public into our London offices to trial various stages of the application. Their suggestions were taken on board and helped us shape the website during the initial build stages. However, there are limits to the scope of face-to-face user testing and we wanted to make sure we were consistently accessible to all customers so we could harness feedback from a wider user base.

Since our home insurance launch, we’ve found WhatUsersDo to be an extremely useful tool in helping us check in with our online customers, hear their feedback and adopt their suggestions where possible. It’s almost like an MOT for our website and application – we can see which parts are running smoothly and which areas require a little tinkering.

We were pleased to see an overall positive response from recent testing, with most areas of our site being highlighted as successful. However, this is far from being a back-patting exercise and has helped us focus on those isolated areas causing confusion for users. Gathering first-hand responses about our design, messaging and usability has given way to several immediate improvements and planned improvements to our site.

One such immediate change was simply to put our contact details in a more prominent place. Users felt it was important to instantly know how to reach us, as this information instilled confidence and offered convenience. With a small tweak to our landing page header – our telephone number is now much more visible. Equally, users commented that our hero images and text scrolled too quickly on our main homepage – something that was easy and quick to adjust.

With the day-to-day demands of a business, it can be very easy to get into a bubble – always striving to build the next great piece of functionality for your website etc. As such, sometimes very simple usability issues can be overlooked – which is why a regular health check is essential. For example, our recent user testing through WhatUsersDo revealed the need for further explanation of some particular insurance terms. In addition, we found that we need to work harder in ensuring a complete understanding of our actual proposition and where we sit within the market – something we hope to address in our proposed re-design. Increased understanding should, in turn, give rise to increased appreciation of the benefits our service can offer.

While we view our current design as fresh and approachable, some comments viewed the illustrative style a little over casual for the industry. Of course, we need to balance this with other positive feedback we’ve received – but this may too lead to some changes in our overall branding.

WhatUsersDo has also helped us address a few minor stumbling blocks in our question set, hopefully resulting in an even smoother journey throughout our form. This includes more detailed messaging on some of the more complex questions, improved button prominence and further explanation in the instance of an unavailable quote.

We certainly plan to continue usability testing in this way to ensure our customers’ voices are always heard and our website, and service, keep evolving for the better.

This is our latest blog post currently appearing in the Direct Commerce Association blog.

With over £6.8 billion spent online in the UK in the 2010 Christmas season and predictions that this will increase again this year, you need to be sure your website is up to the job. We’ve compiled five simple tips that will help website owners increase the number of Christmas visitors who become shoppers.

Here is the link to the full article

Here are our Top 5:
TIP 1: Get your FAQs into shape
TIP 2: Build trust with your returns policy
TIP 3: “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow” (please don’t)
TIP 4: Test website performance
TIP 5: Run a gifting usability test

If you have a different Top 5 or you can make this a top 10 we would love to hear from you!

1. Even more task templates

We just ran some usability tests on the order form (yes, a taste of our own medicine) and found that setting tasks was too hard for all but the most experienced users. So we have added in over 30 task templates that you can easily choose from and edit to get you started.

2. A choice of exit questions

We don’t believe in long exit surveys. Years of running usability tests shows that what people say afterwards can not be relied upon, is often inaccurate and subject to post-rationalisation. It’s about what users do (not what they think they did) after all!

BUT, asking a single question does have its merits – especially if it relates to perception rather than the specific interaction. You can now ask users a single (and simple) post test question that they type their answer to. By default we use a favourite of our friends at Conversion Factory:

“If there’s one thing that would have stopped you buying from us, what would it be?”

Of course, you can edit this question or even revert to the Website Usability Scale (a favourite of some of our corporate clients). And, if you’re a usability purist, you don’t need to ask a question at all!

3. Bigger Usability Videos

When you play videos they now size to your browser screen. This is one of those… “I can’t believe we didn’t do this before” enhancements. We hope it helps.

Please contact us or leave a comment and let us know what you think.

WhatUsersDo are looking for a Developer who is comfortable programming in both a “back-end” LAMP environment as well as crafting UI code from Photoshop mock-ups. We are looking for a bit of enthusiasm and a bit of passion and we can guarantee you will be working with like-minded people. We also want a problem solver who is looking for a bit of flexibility in their role (we don’t think we know it all – but we are looking forward to learning a lot on the way).

You will work in a small dynamic team that’s focussed on delivering the best possible service for our clients by implementing exciting new features as well as optimising current systems and processes – if the company is going to work we need to make sure our User Experience is the best we can make it.

You will have the following:
- at least 2 years commercial web development experience
- hands on experience of the LAMP stack
- the ability to construct compliant CSS and HTML (from scratch)
- experience of Javascript to improve the user experience of a web application or site
- ambition

Ideally you will have some experience of Ajax and an understanding of how cloud computing can help growing businesses scale.

Why Us?
Millions of websites don’t work for the user (they really don’t!). Users find them frustrating and often muddle through. Our service gives clients (big or small) the user experience insights to do something about it. We hope that like us -  you feel that “websites should work” and telling clients “what users do” on them and “why they do it” might just make all the difference.

Why us? (the more factual & slightly dull version)
WhatUsersDo (who will be based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne from September) is Europe’s leading online remote user experience testing & insights service. It was set up so anyone, in any size or type of organisation, can observe real people using websites quickly, easily and cost-effectively. It works by remotely recording, over the internet, users’ voices and screen sessions as they complete tasks, carried out in their natural surroundings on their own computers. Clients order online at www.whatusersdo.com and results are back within 12 hours – in video format showing what a user did and audio of their commentary and opinions. Pricing is £30-£70 per video with many of its mid to large clients (BT, TUI, Comet, DRL Ltd) testing on a monthly contracted basis with Enterprise discounts and advance features and functionality.

Interested?
Email: lee [at] whatusersdo dot com
T: 0845 302 4783

See our findings on Travolution the UK’s leading multi-media brand for the online travel industry.

In his wrap up report on the project, Tom Loosemore (Deputy Director, Single Government Website, Cabinet Office) openly and honestly shares some of the contributions to the project’s feedback forum at the end of three months, recognising them as ‘reactions’ from a non-representative sample; as one such contributor states: “we’re not real users. We’re a self-selecting group”. Fantastic then, to learn that the Government Digital Service (GDS) conducted “structured, demographically-balanced user testing … albeit in the inevitably artificial context of a user testing lab” to complement their forum feedback.

We decided to conduct our own user experience testing and asked users (all UK residents), from the WhatUsersDo panel to explore the Alpha.gov.uk prototype whilst thinking aloud, giving their first impressions, and carrying out typical tasks, all in the (more) natural setting of their own home, at their own computers. We recorded their screens and voices as they completed the tasks. We share some insights below.

What’s it all about?

From the home page, the purpose of the site and its target audience was not initially obvious to the users we tested with. Somewhat misled by the prominent image, coupled with the lack of a ‘description’ or mission statement, some users believed the site was specifically about the 2012 British-hosted Olympic Games.

Watch these short clips for a taste of users’ first impressions:

Lay of the land

In common with the GDS’ own findings, navigation and information architecture were the subjects of polite and constructive criticism from our users, with an acceptance that it is not yet ‘the real thing’.

The sheer volume of information and the way in which it is currently organised provoked comments such as “[people] might get bogged down”:

One user definitely agreed with two of the reported ‘Top 10 Problems’ that there was ‘no browse navigation’ and ‘too much below the fold’:

This user also hoped for design” from the user’s perspective”.

Clearly though, the GDS predicted this and have both navigation and information architecture in hand, drawing on findings from an earlier ‘citizen’s browsing behaviour’ study.

Most of the users we tested with liked the concept. They said they would recommend the site and are looking forward to its development – and having all their questions answered in one place.  Life Events such as marriage and the birth of a child would be an interesting and revealing test.  How easy will it be for citizens to deal with it all under one virtual roof?

Here are some of our users’ summary comments:

During these austere times where every penny needs to be working harder than ever  remote user experience testing proves itself as a cost-effective and agile method of getting to grips with users’ mental models, in turn facilitating good, user-centred design. Such in-depth research and analysis in the early stages is likely to reduce revisions further down the line, and produce a positive ROI. Whether that’s measured in increased online engagement or reduced (in-person) calls/visits or freeing up of front-line staff to serve those who can’t self-serve online.

Good luck team Alpha, we’re looking forward to seeing and reviewing the real thing soon.

What’s on where and when proved difficult to determine as well as struggling to select seats all make interesting viewing.

Click here where all is revealed in our latest Econsultancy blog

To start usability testing with users from across Europe simply select your target countries (or country) on the online order form and within 48 hours you’ll be watching videos of people using your site and hearing their spoken thoughts.

TIP: if you’d like the continental European users to speak in English simply add this instruction at the beginning of your tasks: “Please speak in English” or something like this, if you’d like users to speak in their native language: “bitte sprechen Sie auf Deutsch” (for Germany).

While we grow our continental European panel you can only select users by Gender (they are all 18+) but we’ll soon be adding more filtering options.

It is an unfortunate feature of these post-financial crash times that charities are feeling more than their fair share of the squeeze from people tightening their belts. Fund raising is a tough business in which every single penny must be made to count. These organisations do not have the luxury of inadvertently losing custom due to poor usability or underwhelmed users and are unlikely to experiment. We thought we’d take a quick look at this sector  to find out how people are rising to this challenge.

User Selection and Test Set Up

We decided to ask some potential users to test out Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day. We screened the users to ensure that those who responded would be open to the thought of donating to charity. This was an important step since we wanted the results to be as accurate as possible. A study performed in 2004 by “The Giving Campaign”  found that certain sections of society would never be likely to donate. (I was somewhat horrified but sadly not surprised to learn that these demographic types were “higher-rate taxpayers with expensive leisure interests and fashionable homes” and “well-educated, stylish young professionals”.)  Thus we ensured the screening questions revealed behavioural attitudes given that we could not go on socio-economic factors alone.

The task itself was simple. We asked people to explore the site and find some activities for Red Nose Day that they would genuinely consider undertaking.

The Site http://www.rednoseday.com/

The look and feel of the site is very graphically rich – with large photographs of the celebrities and others involved. The design elements are bright and bold but with an overlaid appearance on a grey background and plenty of  white space it looks clean and easy on the eye. The overall effect is that it is a cheery, approachable site. There are plenty of ideas for activities and events the organisers have thought hard how to make it easy for people who may not have experience of organising charitable events. The site also targets information at people who may be organising activities at work and in schools.

Findings

All of our users successfully found their way through the suggestions for fund raising activities and also to the free fund raising packs for order. They commented positively on the visual design and the overall look and feel. The site succeeded well in providing an engaging experience for these users.

Conclusion

As we know, usability testing is an extremely successful  way to revealing the problems in the UI , but just as important is knowing what works so the good stuff isn’t thrown away in the next redesign. Testing little and often is great way to ensure your designs are still on track. Just imagine filling those PowerPoint presentations with good news for a change!

Easily select different user profiles using the dropdowns

Now it’s even easier to get a balance of gender, age and Socioeconomic Groups when setting up online User Experience research with WhatUsersDo.

We’d love to know what you think – please leave a comment or contact us.