Challenge

Affinity Group had two simple tasks it wanted users to perform on the website: search and consumer listing sales. In order for that to happen, users had to successfully interact with search features, validate search results, view vehicle details, explore service details and then sign-up. Since Affinity Group was redesigning it's look and feel (including a new logo), it was imperative to include users in the early redesign stages to not only learn about their preferences, but also to build loyalty and awareness for the new site launch.

Using our powerful online survey, we launched interactive interviews utilizing "logic branching" to probe deeply in areas of interest. The survey asked users to vote on new logos, to describe ideal pricing structures and identify potential features, content and layout that would motivate them to purchase. In three days 750 opt-in responses were returned and results instantly delivered to the development team.

"With Experience Dynamics help, we were able to get fast answers to important questions about what users thought, what was important to them and even their impression of design mock-ups. Beyond yes/no answers, we gained in-depth insight into what our customers thought about the new design, what they liked/disliked and why, and what information was critical to them." - David Scifres, VP Internet Services, AGI

Users were pleased they were being included in the redesign effort and opt-ed in to join an advisory panel. Affinity Group's developers were glad to get real-time feedback from the users directly. At the same time, we conducted a competitive usability analysis of features, functionality and assessed 'ease of use' of top competitor sites in order to determine usability requirements for the site.

"Experience Dynamics helped us to see how our users thought about our new design ideas and what areas of importance we needed to fix in a short time frame. In three weeks we saw a 33% jump in revenue on the site from the pricing analysis piece alone". - David Scifres, VP Internet Services, Affinity Group

We worked closely with Affinity Group's internal development team who were designing the site to steer them toward usability best practices and provided ad-hoc expert reviews to optimize search, log-in and vehicle details screen layouts. Experience Dynamics provided rapid mock-ups of content and page layouts. When iterations were complete, Experience Dynamics went back to the survey opt-in panel to ask them about alternative layouts for the home page, search pages and product detail page content and features. Again 70% response rates from the online surveys meant that strategic decisions about search functionality and results, for instance, were made quickly and with statistical significance.