How to simplify the online experience — a case study
Content designer Ben Skelton takes us from content audit to iteration to measuring impact with a case study that looks at the EE customer benefits experience.
Our squad’s brief was straightforward. There were 70 pages in the ee.co.uk/why-ee information architecture (IA) on the website to be condensed into as few pages as possible. Repetitive content was cannibalising SEO. Site governance had spiralled out of control. And, most importantly, customer satisfaction scores (known as CSAT), exit rates and journey flows were showing that our customers were having a bad experience in this part of our website.
We knew any new designs should be user-focused, daring and could be built with creative freedom. But we were also told that our squad capacity was ringfenced for limited time, so we had to work quickly.
Auditing and analysing
We were lucky to inherit a content audit from 2020. Pages in the ‘Why EE’ IA had been catalogued and ranked by content designers Frances Whinder and Luke Liles and user researcher Terika Seaborn-Brown using a content value metric that combined dwell time, visits, exits and conversions. So, when our squad’s sprint began, we already had data showing which pages might be relevant to a user.
But we still needed more detail. We needed to find out what information users were finding useful, what user needs were being met, what might be missing, and what the business wanted to tell our users about why they should choose us.
To get the detail we needed, each squad member took responsibility for an area of analysis. Together we:
- mapped all content across the Why EE? IA in a content scrapbook
- identified user needs using a web survey (with 2500 respondents)
- analysed end-to-end Why EE? journey flows to find out where users were going
- catalogued the user needs the current Why EE? content seemed to be meeting
- assessed page hierarchies and user behaviour using Activity Map and Decibel
- used Medallia and Live Chat data to understand customer experience
- worked with our in-house SEO team and our SEO agency to help us understand traffic and which pages were irrelevant
- spent time undertaking competitor and market research to set a benchmark for Why EE? to surpass
- met with brand, accessibility, and user research to understand business and user goals and how the pages had been governed in the past
- deep-dived into past research and user testing.
Our discovery showed there was A LOT of repeated content. Pages had not been updated for months. What mattered to people were deals, network coverage, plans, benefits, and SIM. But users were leaving the Why EE? homepage in random directions. They weren’t always finding the content they wanted. Some went into the funnel, some off the site, some lost in a maze of irrelevant pages.
So, when we reached a squad consensus that pages had low-value SEO, out-of-date content, a poor user experience or content repetition, we closed the pages and put a 301 redirect in place. And by being ruthlessly user-centric, we reduced around 60% of the Why EE? IA in the first two weeks of the project.
Extreme simplification, lots of ideation
Deciding what to do with the useful content we had left was tough. We had to meet the business brief of a simplified user experience but give enough detail to encourage a customer to choose EE. What’s more, some of our competitors were showcasing similar ‘why choose us’ information on one page. For our squad, getting 70 pages of information into one was an intimidating prospect. But then again — if EE can’t say in plain English why a customer should choose us… maybe customers shouldn’t?! So, we aimed for one page, too.
At least our discovery had given us a clear content hierarchy, and a clear idea of user needs. Crucial to our planning was that our data told us:
- 33% of people would be more likely to buy a phone if there was more information about handsets, plans and pricing.
- complex sales propositions may put off users who want to shop online
- 53% of users wanted faster checkout
So, armed with extensive data and our user research, we began ideating.
Our solution took at least four iterations, countless crit and show ’n’ tells, input from directors, from our accessibility specialist, from the brand team and SEO experts. And finally… we built a prototype that housed all content on one page. And user testing showed it could work. Take a look at the page!
In terms of design, we solved the somewhat inevitable problem of page length with a ‘Sticky Nav’ — anchor links that follow a user down the page and allow them to navigate to the content they want to see at all times. And we used overlays to house all the content we had to cover, rather than displaying it all on the page and creating an overwhelming cognitive load.
We are aware users can be annoyed by pop-ups, but our design allows users to choose if they want more information — they are not automated and are accessible. We also know that pop-ups aren’t good for SEO (the content isn’t indexed by Google’s crawls). But we believe that keeping customers in one place rather than creating wider journeys is worth testing — it’s now just one click for information rather than five. Would the extra traffic we’d generate with a more SEO-led design, and therefore more pages, do anything for sales if there wasn’t a clear route to purchase?
With our design, we think our users’ needs are matched more closely. That they can focus on what important — finding information and making a purchase decision. And if the test doesn’t work, we know we can explore alternatives and are actively making changes to mitigate the SEO impact.
And finally, as well as updating the content in the Why EE? journey and simplifying terminology where we can, we’ve been testing a pop-up to make up for the information deficit our Why EE? page removals may have caused. Our FAQ Wiki is an overlay written in plain English that’s being tested on the Shop homepage.
Research shows customers are often confused by our terminology and propositions and need a tool to give them answers quickly. We believe the Wiki will increase conversion. Customers can choose to view more information if they need it, reducing the time they’ll take in the sales journey because they stay in the purchase funnel. And we believe that having all the information they need in one place will give our online customers the same confidence they have in offline sales journeys, reducing call rates. But we will iterate designs based on data after the tests — we know FAQs are not always an ideal design solution.
2 months on and the new Why EE? page seems to be working well (so far)
The Why EE? page has been live since 7 July.
In summary, there’s been:
- A clear increase in weekly traffic to the Why EE page since the page was updated (about +9,000 visits a week) *
- A clear increase in the average of weekly mobile sales (+200 per week).
- A 0.8% increase in conversion rate.
- More visits to the checkout and PDPs from the Why EE page, showing we are successfully guiding users into the purchase funnel rather than losing them on the site.
- A decrease in exit rates from 65% to 50% and a decrease in bounce rate from 57% to 41%, implying the content is more engaging.
- Scroll depth shows adding anchor links on the page is working. 76% of users are getting to the ‘entertainment’ section, and 54% to ‘plans.’ Conversion, click rates and dwell time shows this is better quality traffic, as they engage with the content more.
- The number of clicks on the network ‘coverage checker’ link has increased. Since the new iteration, ‘check your network’ has changed from the 18th to the 6th most clicked link. Our discovery process identified the network coverage checker as a user need, and this improvement shows our page hierarchy is giving them what they want.
- Users using the internal ‘search’ function has decreased in the new iteration, dropping from 4th most-clicked link to 9th. The inference here, combined with the increased click through rate, is that users are finding what they want on the page and are not having to use the search function as frequently.
- Crucially, SEO has not been affected as badly as we thought it be when removing so much content. There’s definitely still changes like keyword mapping and internal linking to make to improve our ranking and impressions performance, BUT the average click through rate is up by +0.11%. That’s 5,819 more clicks per week since the new iteration.
What’s next?
We are keeping a close eye on data to tweak page hierarchy and content. Page loading times have increased significantly, so we’re investigating how to reduce this. We are writing new, user-specific content for Features and Articles to boost SEO and plug any content gaps. We are editing content in our journeys to create clearer purchase funnels, and we’re removing or improving any ‘Why EE’ pages left behind like some of our 5G content. And rather than take up every marketing push or sales offer, we’re keen to see if processes can be put in place around the Why EE? page to make sure content is always relevant to users and remains easy to find.
Do you have any suggestions for further performance metrics, or any questions about the project? Please let us know in the comments.
*It’s worth noting here that the week of 19th July saw a huge peak in orders, so some of this impact may be driven by promotion.
