OVERVIEW
Powershop is a carbon neutral energy company, awarded by Finder as Australia’s greenest power company. However, the company is experiencing high drop of rates in their sign up form, thereby costing them new customers. Powershop believes that the sign up form's outdated design, clunkiness and lack of UX best practices (multiple pages, outdated methods of inputting data, inconvenient experience for mobile users).
In a period of 6 weeks, I collaborated with a team of four people to update Power shop's sign up form with the goal of increasing their sign up conversion rates and therefore, online sales. We worked together throughout the entire project stages including research, research synthesis, ideation, wire framing and usability testing. My team relied on me to prepare research materials for usability tests.
IMPACT OF PROJECT
- The sign up form experience gives a "it’s a cool company to be a part of" feel
- – Petra Davis, energy consumer
- How did my team and I achieve this outcome? Find out!
DISCOVERY PHASE
For research, my team and I came up with the following problem statement to hypothesise the underlying reasons behind the high drop off rates of Powershop's sign up form, beyond the visual design:
"How might we provide energy conscious consumers a balance of convenience, product knowledge and a seamless sign up process to give them the confidence to engage and commit to a new energy provider?"
Research methods used:
- 28 survey responses
- 8 user interviews (users were also invited to try out Powershop's sign up form)
- 1 heuristic analysis
- 10 competitors analysed
Research findings
- Lack of verification and clarity regarding green energy claims were a key pain point for interviewees who tested out Powershop's current sign up form. The survey revealed that an energy company's lack of renewable/carbon neutral options was the 4th major deterrent out of the 12 options for energy consumers to sign up to an energy provider.
- With cost being the number one deterrent for energy consumers to commit to an energy provider (according to the survey), Powershop's vague cost estimates meant that user interviewees felt concerned that they would end up paying more than usual. Furthermore, interviewees thought that the language of the form implied that they were automatically going to be charged once they signed up.
- Interviewees expressed concerns about the lack of contact and support options of Powershop's sign up form. They pointed out the lack of guidance of industry terms, such as kWh.
- Some interviewees lost confidence with the brand's legitimacy, because the form felt outdated and had various formatting issues. Creating an account with a password proved to be a frustrating experience. As revealed by the heuristic analysis, the form lacked guidance on how to make a strong password.
DEFINE PHASE
The aim of the define phase was to synthesise our research findings into a customer journey map, where we could see the issues current energy consumers face when signing up to an energy provider. The customer journey map would enable us to find which parts of their user journey we could start designing solutions from.
My team and I created an affinity map to divide our research findings into key themes, where we used them to create two personas. While Sara Newbie is less tech-savvy and requires more support when signing up to an energy provider than Matt Power, both personas believe that transparency of green energy claims and cost were important. Given how we saw some similarities between the two personas, we decided to consider both personas in our customer journey map.
DESIGN PHASE
"How might we provide energy conscious consumers a balance of convenience, product knowledge and a seamless sign up process to give them the confidence to engage and commit to a new energy provider?"
My team and I created a 'how might we statement' to reframe our problem statement into a clear opportunity that we needed to take advantage of. Prior to our brain-writing session, my team and I referred to our competitor analysis to get inspiration while finding ways to improve. Our final design solutions were:
- Affirmations of Powershop's green energy claims throughout the sign up experience
- - A chance for users to refine their quote estimate to give them greater transparency around cost, while assuring them that they would not be charged automatically
- - Phone and live chat options for customer support, and more guidance of what industry terms mean
My team and I kept the same user flow as the current Powershop form to keep it simple and within expectations.
DELIVER PHASE
My team and I individually sketched out wireframes to visualise how our ideas would be implemented in the user flow. One of my team members used our sketches as a basis to start creating lo-fidelity wireframes via Figma, which myself and other team members helped out with. My main responsibility was preparing the usability test structure and questions for the usability test.
Usability testing results | 5 energy consumers aged 30+
Testers liked how:
1) The form's branding and user experience was up to date, modern and simple to use.
2) The availability of help options catered for individuals who preferred text/email, vs those who preferred to call.
3) The explanation of Powershop not automatically charging users after signup alleviated payment concerns
However, key areas of improvement were noted, including:
1) The affirmation pages on the loading pages needed more transparency of Powershop's claims of being carbon neutral. So we included more specific information of how Powershop offsets carbon by investing in renewable projects.
2) The 'refine your quote' language was unclear in terms of it's purpose for the user to input their KHW usage (per day, week, month) for a more accurate quote. So we changed the term to "want a more accurate quote?".
3) The quote page was a lot to read. So we incorporated drop down options to reduce copy on the page
PROTOTYPE
Try out the prototype for yourself here
Key learnings
1) If I was to do the project again, I would have tried to do heuristic surveys for all competitors to compare against Powershop’s sign up form.
2) If I was to do the project again, I would have tried to be more resourceful in terms of finding energy consumers to interview.
3) If I was to do the project again, I would challenged the copy that the exisiting Powershop form had and consult with the client.