uSwitch.com is a free, impartial online and phone based comparison and switching service that helps customers compare prices on a range of services including gas, electricity, home phone, broadband providers and personal finance products.
uSwitch recently enhanced its website as part of a brand refresh and new direction. During the process, we were commissioned to work on ensuring the best possible user experience for the new site developments.
Strategy
The main objectives of the project were to:
• Establish the user experience requirements of target user groups as identified by uSwitch
• Understand users’ precise needs and goals
• Improve the user experience of the site in line with meeting business objectives
• Provide a platform for future site strategy and developments
We carried out a comprehensive information architecture and interaction design project to help ensure that the uSwitch site developments were focused around the needs of their users.
Execution
As part of a user research programme, we designed, deployed and analysed an online survey to establish user groups and goals. We followed this up with a series of in-depth interviews with representatives from each of the user groups, to further explore the findings from the online survey.
We then created a set of personas – fictitious characters representing each user groups – based on the outputs from the research.
A key finding of the user research was that uSwitch’s users are heavily task focused paying little attention to the wider money-saving content either before or after the switch. As a result we created wireframes focused on answering questions and reassuring users, but also providing clear, well-placed calls-to-action. We then worked with uSwitch to develop, implement and test the new wireframe designs.
Results
The site developments were undertaken as part of uSwitch’s brand refresh, aligned with the new company direction and ensuring the best possible experience for its users. The changes have been made to simplify uSwitch’s online service and the user research has ensured that uSwitch know exactly what each user group wants from the site.