Supercharging UX research by understanding customer needs
Helping British Gas reduce drop-out and lift sales on its boiler marketplace.
The challenge
British Gas asked for our help to improve the user experience of its ‘boiler marketplace’ website, to reduce drop-out and increase sales.
Our approach
By combining traditional user experience research with upfront desk and customer needs research, we are able to provide far more detail – and generate far more comprehensive solutions – than single-stage UX projects.
The upfront research
- Provides a thorough understanding of the market
- Identifies barriers to using the service (in terms of brand, product and experience)
- Describes the different customer need-states when visiting the site
- Generates new ideas that can drive desired outcomes
The UX stage pinpoints the optimum execution
- Ensures the website meets real needs and overcomes latent brand or purchase barriers
- Suggests additions that improve the experience and encourage desired outcomes
- Finds executional fixes that make the site more user-friendly
The strategy
We identified three distinct need-states when visiting the site (efficiency-driven, brand-driven and distress-driven) and recommended specific pathways to bring each audience closer to purchase.
More broadly, people were initially uncomfortable with the idea of buying a boiler online and needed extra reassurance about in-home measuring, the availability of expert advice and guidance on comparing and choosing products.
Our report provided specific recommendations for each key page, as well as an overall framework of who the customer types were, their specific barriers and how to best lead them to purchase.
