Usability Analysis
Consumer Financial Services Company
Business Challenge
After rising to the top of the credit card industry using its patented information-based strategy (IBS), this Consumer Financial Services Company turned to the Internet to expand its reach. Although they offered a full suite of products and services over the Internet, a majority of active members were not using the company’s website. To gain more information, they asked Acumen Solutions to assess how site usability impacted current member’s use of the site, new customer acquisitions, and overall customer satisfaction. To meet this challenge, Acumen Solutions developed personas (detailed theoretical profiles) of the client’s target users and conducted a persona usability test for their website using these profiles.
Solution
First, the Acumen Solutions team categorized all possible types of users of the client’s site, gathering profile data for each group -- age distribution, income, gender distribution, occupational sectors, marital status, computer ownership and time spent on-line. The establishment of these clear and distinct customer profiles then enabled development of detailed personas.
Personas, detailed descriptions of a target user, including name, personal details, motivations, goals and limitations, are critical to the development of a successful usability evaluation. The Acumen Solutions team worked with the client to identify and prioritize the key site segments for testing and then created detailed personas for the top four segments.
Next, Acumen Solutions conducted a usability evaluation of the client’s website. The evaluators examined the interface across several heuristics and judged how well it met the needs and behaviors of the personas that had been created in the previous exercise. Additionally, the site was evaluated for adherence to recognized usability principles.
Return on Investment
The results of the usability test gave the client a better understanding of how well their customers interacted with their current on-line offerings. Recommended changes were included to address usability issues, as well as a complete set of statistics for each persona’s performance. These results provided the demographic and behavioral data needed to understand the goals and objectives of the client’s target customers. Acumen Solutions’ analysis and recommendations provided the client with the means to structure the redesign of their site and prioritize future services and offerings.
Consumer Financial Services Company: Usability Analysis(PDF)