Using Remote Research to Get Actionable Insights

Imagine—the economy is in recession, budgets are t-i-g-h-t, yet you still need to provide recommendations that are based on more than a hunch. What’s a digital agency to do? Thank goodness for that word, “digital,” as the advent of new technologies has made it possible to get actionable insights at a lower cost, often with even better data quality. This will be the first of several posts on how we at ZAAZ are using Remote Research methods to get great insight and ensure that the Voice of the Customer informs our recommendations.

Would the Best Performing Label Please Stand Up

In this post we’ll look at a project we did for our long-time client, and one of the largest Credit Unions the nation, BECU (Boeing Employees’ Credit Union).

The project was designed to answer just one important question, “What is the best navigation label for people who are looking for Internet and mobile banking options?”

We created five different designs of the BECU homepage, each with a different label or label placement, and hosted them on a staging server. The alternative labels were:

•  Remote Account Access
•  Mobile & Online Banking in the primary and global navigation
• Remote Banking
• Online Banking

We then asked five groups of 30 people per group to accomplish the same task, each using a different version of the label on the home page. The task was:

“Use the site to find how to view your banking information using your Internet-enabled cell phone.”

Four follow-up questions were asked.  They were:

1. How difficult was it to complete this task?
2. How certain did you feel that the name of the section would take you to the information you were looking for?
3. What specific information would you expect to see when you click on the name of the section?
4. What, if anything, would be a better name or label for this information?

After only 48 hours, the results showed that ALL the suggested labels performed better than the original label (“Account Access”). And the study suggested a winning label, “Mobile & Online Banking”, as well.

Remote Research helped answer a key navigation question using more than an educated guess or emotionally-driven opinions. And because it was an unmoderated study (e.g., participants completed the study without a researcher present), and the tool did most of the analysis, we were able to find the best solution very quickly.