In
February 2003, The Usability Company was asked to undertake
usability research on three financial services sites by Financial
Marketing magazine.
The purpose of this research was to gauge the usability of some
of the top financial services sites and to gain an understanding
of some of the customer issues for the over 50s or "silver
surfers". The Usability Company was interested in
understanding if this often ignored part of the online community
had any specific problems in finding suitable products in the
financial services market.
The Usability Company's standard and methodical approach to
Usability Evaluation was used for this study. This research
comprised giving the task of finding a suitable car insurance quote
to over 50s, who are part of the sites' target audience. Each
participant was given details of a retired person age 65 with a
modern car. The Usability Specialist, when analysing and
interpreting the results of the testing, also employed some
Usability Audit techniques, such as comparison with best practice
on the web and standard design heuristics.
The three key areas of site design identified and assessed that
might affect silver surfers were:
- The
categorisation of products suitable for potential
customers who are over 50
- The impact of
site design and data entry methods on potential
customers who are over 50
- The ability to
contact the organisation for help if confused
The sites covered by the study were
www.saga.co.uk
www.legalandgeneral.co.uk
www.bankofscotland.co.uk
The results were highly informative, especially with regards to
functionality and design. One of the most interesting discoveries
was that not all of the potential customers would have
successfully accessed a quote from each of the companies involved
in the testing. Although the general process of each site was
quite simple, small design elements caused big usability issues
and in some cases caused potential customers to fail in their
goals. This was either through general frustration or simple
failure to know what to do next. Fashionable designs and use of
technology often caused older potential customers to fail in what
should be simple tasks. The Legal and General site was
unfortunately let down by some design faults on the home page that
would have prevented all but one of the potential customers
finding the quote process at all.
The potential customers were asked to perform tasks on the home
page illustrated below. It was clear from observing potential
customers that the horizontal menu across the top of the screen
was not noticed or thought to be navigation initially. After a
while, potential customers would try to click on these words
expecting pages to load into the main content area. When this did
not work, potential customers tried clicking on the white options
in the green drop down lists. This action also did not produce a
response from the site. Confused potential customers would then
try clicking on the individual small white arrows at the end of
the words. It was clear by this time that the yellow rollout menu
options were hard to see and even more difficult to click on.
Whenever the potential customers tried to get the mouse onto a
yellow option, it would disappear or the options would change. The
reason for this was a lack of accuracy with the mouse, something
that over 50s potential customers are consistently poor at. In
this case, the design of the site and the technology used
conspired to undermine the user and prevented them from achieving
their goals.
Figure: Legal and General website navigation.
On the up side, companies appear to be improving the forms on
their sites. Although there are still very complex forms on some
sites and some aspects of each of the sites tested in this study
were very confusing, the overall standard seems to be rising. This
is a general observation of form element design from both this
testing and previous studies undertaken in the financial services
sector by The Usability Company.
The potential customers found the quote procedure on Saga
simple to follow because there was generally only one thing to do
on each page. This did not make it the most usable or the most
liked site, however. The potential customers found the Saga
homepage well laid-out and that the "shortcuts" section
represented user goals. All potential customers chose this route
to start a quote for car insurance.
On the other hand, the main areas of confusion for potential
customers on the Bank of Scotland website were the forms and the
functionality that fed back to potential customers what had
happened in the last stage. It was impossible for the potential
customer to tell which of the fields were mandatory. In the
testing, it was observed that this caused potential customers to
encounter errors.
Good use of space and labelling combined with a simple process
flow and easy to follow instructions allow potential customers to
easily navigate through complex quote processes. The quote process
in the Legal and General site was by far the shortest of all the
quote processes and potential customers appreciated that. All the
information required for a simple quote is requested in one
screen. This means that the amount of fields the user has to fill
in is reduced and the amount of time the user has to spend waiting
for each page to load is minimized. The action points (buttons to
move the user back and forth in the process) were also clearly
defined and well labeled.
Those sites that offered their product range in categories that
reflect the way that potential customers think about financial
services product ranges rather than internal business structures
allowed potential customers to find out about their services
whereas the others did not.
Finally, All the sites were found to be verbose with regards to
copy, instructions and terms and conditions. It would be wise to
cut down on copy as it is the general perception that potential
customers, when attempting to get an insurance quote, do not wish
to sit and read a great deal and this particular group of
potential customers often found it difficult to read text on
screen. Concise bullet points work better than verbose prose.
Return to
newsletter |
