Overview
The UK based insurance and travel company launched their membership programme dedicated to over 50s existing customers just six months before I joined the Digital Marketing team as a Digital User Researcher. They needed to understand their target age group digital behaviours and preferences, and hired me to find out more and to support the team with informed decisions. In addition, I was asked to translate recommendation in design improvements.
The membership programme is delivered to their members via a large/medium/small screen responsive website.
Approach
If on the one hand the Digital Marketing team was very well set and enthusiast about the membership programme, they lack in real insights from users to create targeted offering and to improve the website design. To achieve this, I’ve elaborated a plan that I’ve shared with the team with the follwoing purposes:
- Getting on board the whole team and their stakeholders
- Create a tool to gain direct access to users for regular research studies
- Provide a deeper knowledge of the programme members needs and preferences
- Move the team from opinion to evidence-based approach
- Enable the team with methods and data to make informed decision for improving the digital experience
What I’ve done
Initial Desktop Research: Engaging Stakeholders
Sourcing information from International and National stats, I have initially run a desktop research to understand over 50s consumers digital behaviours and preferences. I have then presented the outcomes and the analysis along with recommendations to the Digital Marketing management board the engage them with following research steps.
Direct and regular access to users: Creating the User Research Panel
The company wasn’t able to getting in touch with real users to measure satisfaction and to gather needs and preferences. The CRM team was in place and efficiently pulled out news and information. However, there was no plan to gather users insights.
When I joined the team, I’ve suggested to create a User Research Panel to enable targeted and regular contact with users.
As a first step, I’ve anlaysed the programme members demographic composition then sent out batches of invitation to the panel to create a proportional composition. Finally, I’ve recruited around 300 real customers willing to take part to user testing, surveys, product trials, etc..
Improving knowledge about users: a 360º view
Once the User Research panel has been created with real customers, I’ve planned and launched targeted online surveys to provide a deeper understanding of behaviours and attitudes of demographics and product related features as discussed with the digital marketing team.
Cusomters needs and preferences insights to personalise and target offers
To understand customer preferences about membership offers, with the purpose to improve the website categorisation and navigation, and to support the marketing team with a more personalised offer, I’ve run a series of surveys to identify products preferences and opportunities.
Devices: User Research to correct bias
Despite the team belief that over50s don’t use a mobile device, a research results proved that panelist do prefer to use a mobile device rather than a desktop computer to explore the membership programme offering. As a result we’ve run a specific survey to understand what tasks they run mostly when using the mobile device to define the experience accordingly.
The results of the survey led to a revision of the current mobile device design and suggested the development of a dedicated native app.
Final steps: Design & User Testing
As a results of previous research studies focused on devices and offer categorisation, I’ve provided recommendations about information architecture, navigation systems, and then designed relevant user journeys and wireframes on small screen mobile device.
Finally, using clickable prototypes on mobile device I’ve run in house user testing (Lookback.io) and provided final feedback to Digital Marketing team and design relevant improvements.
Conclusion
After six months, as a result of the approach and activities, teh team was provided with deep understanding of their cusotmers and membership programmes, using the panel they’ve been able to launch further studies to gather specific insights and engage their stakeholders with highly qualitative and quantitative data.
They have said
Anna worked for us at … as a UX research contractor on one of our high profile projects …. She provided us with invaluable insight into our niche customer segment allowing us to pre-test any developments on the website and app before deciding to put ideas into practice. Anna’s work is very structured, clear and well thought thorough. Her sound recommendations contributed to the success of the project.
Claire H. – Digital Marketing Team Manager
anna nicoli 