The Children’s Mutual achieve 280% of their online business target through user-centred design

With a vast majority of Child Trust Fund accounts opened online, leading CTF provider The Children’s Mutual dedicated a large marketing and advertising budget on driving potential customers, in a highly competitive market, to the site to apply.

It became apparent however, that their existing application was experiencing a high attrition through the process. The reasons for high drop-off needed to be examined and a more user-friendly form to be developed to reduce CPA.

User centred design

Wireframe of a more user-centred application

Wireframe of a more user-centred application
A thorough review of the application system, analytics and customer behaviour revealed that users struggled with the complexity of the form which was heavily business orientated.

Working closely with Marketing and IT, form fields were critically challenged and those that weren’t business-critical as part of opening an account were removed. A new customer journey was designed and a more simplified, user-centric application form was developed. Form fields were grouped logically to allow the customer to mentally process and complete form as naturally as possible.

Results

By making the form simpler and quicker to compete, drop-offs of the application form were reduced by 40% immediately after launch. The new application form achieved 280% of online sales targets while maintaining the same marketing budget.

  • User-centred Design

  • Wireframing

  • Systems Integration

Customer

The Children’s Mutual

Objectives

Identify problems with the application form and why, and redevelop a more user-centric form.

Tools and methods

Extensive analysis of online behaviour and drop-off points and research into the target audience, combined with best practice experience of the target audience to develop a new system design.

Results

Numerous system and usability flaws were identified, with a new user-centred application form resulting in a 40% reduction of drop-off.