Web Optimization: How AARP Services boosted renewals by increasing usability
Eyeglasses launched across the table. A focus group member was irritated, experiencing difficulty reading the AARP Services website.
“‘I can’t see this content because you’ve got a grey background!” the member complained. “There is no place for me to increase the font size!”
This was just one of the observations that helped drive the optimization of the AARP Services website, making it more user-friendly for its senior demographic. At Optimization Summit 2013, two members of the company’s team shared AARP Services’ secrets to success.
In this excerpt of the presentation “How AARP Services increased referrals and membership renewals,” we learned how focus groups helped fuel the first test’s goal – make the site easy to read and share.
Preeti Sood, Digital Channel Manager, AARP Services, admitted that she was initially opposed to using a focus group. However, by observing frustrations of customers, AARP Services was able to use data from a focus group to convince management to perform additional testing around readability and social media sharing.
This short clip showcases how changing the background color, font size and placement of the “email” button resulted in a 12% decrease in page bounce rate and 7% increase in social sharing – all beginning with information collected from a focus group.
Gaurva Bhatia, VP of Digital Strategy, AARP, also said he was skeptical about focus groups, especially given the subject matter at hand. He thought that website visitors could easily just change font size through their browsers. Why waste time and effort on this? After witnessing the frustrations from the focus group, it became clear that this was an area that needed priority when it came to testing.
This left Guarva with a valuable lesson.
“Listen to the members,” he explained. “Test what they’re telling you versus assuming about them and doing what you think is right.”
Watch the full free session from Optimization Summit 2013 to discover:
- How AARP Services adopted a “teach and learn” culture
- The benefits that can come from focus groups
- Items to keep in mind with the “newspaper generation”
- And much more
