four country mobile operator study: a competitive benchmark of leading mobile operator sites1

Webinar

Four Country Mobile Operator Study:a competitive benchmark of leading mobile operator sites

19th January 2011

Overview

Introductions

Study Background

What do we mean by UX Benchmarking? Why is it important?

Methodology and Technology

Findings and Opportunities

Questions and Comments

UserZoom and UX Alliance Partners at a glance

Introductions

Arthur Moan

Country Manager UK & Ireland

at UserZoom

Martje van der Linde

User Experience Consultant

at User Intelligence

Louiselle Morand

User Experience Consultant

at Telono

Javier Darriba

Managing Director

at Xperience Consulting

Today’s Session Goals

See how users in four countries look for:

the monthly cost to surf the internet daily with an iPad

the fax number/address for a high street shop

To gain insight into the European mobile operator market

Introduction and review of UX Benchmarking methodology

Introduction and review of UserZoom software solution for conducting this type of research

Study Background

What is UX benchmarking and why is it important?

OK……. So how do we define UX benchmarking?


Definition of Benchmarking: The process of comparing the

business processes and performance metrics including cost, cycle time, productivity, or quality to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard benchmark or best practice.

It provides a snapshot of the performance of your business and helps you understand where you are in relation to a particular standard.


Definition of UX: It’s about how a person feels about

using a system. It highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of HCI and product ownership, but it also covers a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system.

User experience is subjective in nature, as it is about an individual’s feelings and thoughts about the system. User experience is dynamic, because it changes over time as the circumstances change.


Some may wonder: is UX benchmarking:

?

Not really…..

Here’s how we’d define UX Benchmarking:

• The process of comparing a website’s performance, specifically in relation to UX metrics, including among others effectiveness, efficiency, overall satisfaction and quality perception (ISO-9241-11 standard), to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard benchmark or best practice.

• UX benchmarking provides a snapshot of the performance of your website and helps you understand where you are in relation to a particular standard.

10 must-dos with UX Benchmarking

1. Define measurable & comparable UX-related KPIs (key performance indicators)

2. Select competitors to benchmark against

3. Define target audience

4. Identify common site activities/tasks (between-subjects design)

5. Conduct research using scenario-based testing

6. Gather both quantitative & qualitative data

7. Use the quantitative data to test for statistically significant differences between means or proportions

8. Use qualitative data to support your findings and understand the why

9. Research at least twice a year to measure design changes and trends in expectations

10.Use the right research solution/tool


‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure’

Attributed to Peter Drucker, Mgt Guru

The question is:

How are you actually measuring UX and defining your benchmark?

Methodology and Technology

Common UX research challenges

Difficulties obtaining objective, statistically significant,

actionable data

Obtaining idea adoption from stakeholders

Geographic/demographic limitations

Research is costly and time-consuming

How does UserZoom add value?

By allowing you to see the BIG picture

Testing large samples of geographically spread participants

Combining statistically-significant usability + user behaviour data

Measuring Customer Experience cost-effectively

Getting actionable insights

Usability Lab Studies

Web Traffic Analysis

Online UX

Studies

Online SurveysFocus

Groups

Qualitative

Quantitative

Online Usability Testing Solution

UZ Self-Serve Edition

100% on-demand, web-based software solution

To manage & conduct various types of online UX research projects

• Hundreds of users participate in a study

• In their natural context

• From geographically spread locations

• Users try to complete tasks (or goals) + answer questions

• No human moderation needed

• Our browser bar connects users with our secure servers

Our method

Analyze data real-time using UZ Analytics

Effectiveness + efficiency ratios

Analyze data using UZ Analytics

Qualitative feedback collected. Easy visualization through ‘text clouds’

Analyze data using UZ Analytics

UserZoom Results - Behavioural

Study structure

Introduction:

For each study, participants were randomly assigned two tasks on two popular mobile operator websites (four tasks in total)

Task: Find a monthly iPad data plan

Task: Locate a store address/fax number

Post-task:

Mobile operator site evaluation ratings included -

Ease of use

Perceived complexity of sites

Perceived consistency of sites

Clear where to start

Confidence in using the sites

Usability Satisfaction (SUS score)

What was liked most about the sites

What was liked least about the sites

Wrap-up:

Mobile Operator Site Preference

Likelihood to recommend: (Net Promoter Score)

Switzerland Study – Participant Demographics

Participants:N= 78 participants

Demographic data collected:• Gender• Current mobile operator• Age

• Individuals between 18-55 years of age were invited to complete the study.

GENDER45 females completed the study33 males completed the study

Switzerland Study – Participant Demographics

AGEThe highest percentage of Swiss participants are 36 - 45 years of age.

• 14 participants are 18-25• 19 participants are 26-35• 25 participants are 36-45• 20 participants are 46-55

MOBILE OPERATORSwisscom, Sunrise and Orange were the most common current providers among participants.

• “Other”: yallo, vtx, Vodafone

Netherlands Study – Participant Demographics





Netherlands Study – Participant Demographics

MOBILE OPERATORVodafone, KPN and T-Mobile were the most common current providers among participants.

•“Other”: hi, simyo, lebara, ziggo, rabo mobiel

AGEThe highest percentage of Dutch participants are 36 - 45 years of age.


Spain Study – Participant Demographics





Spain Study – Participant Demographics

AGEThe highest percentage of Spanish participants are 26-35 years of age.


MOBILE OPERATORMovistar, Vodafone and Orange were the most common current providers among participants.

United Kingdom Study – Participant Demographics





United Kingdom Study – Participant Demographics

AGEThe highest percentage of UK participants are 36 - 45 years of age.


MOBILE OPERATORVodafone, O2 and Orange were the most common current providers among participants.

• “Other”: Asda, Tesco, Virgin

Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Orange UK and Orange Switzerland (CH) had highest task success rates for both iPad (UK 75%) and Address (CH 87%) tasks.

Orange Spain (SP) had the lowest success rate across tasks 24%, the lowest participants satisfaction scores, and substantially lower preference (25%) vs. Vodafone (75%).

All mobile providers tested in each country received low usability satisfaction scores by participants.

The lowest system usability scale scores (SUS) were received by Vodafone Spain (51) and Orange Spain (40).

All four mobile providers received low Net Promoter Scores (between -46% and -75%). There were more detractors than promoters in every instance.

Findings and Opportunities

Top level overview of Task 1 across all countries with deep dive into Switzerland & UK results

“Find the monthly cost to surf the internet daily with an iPad”

Task Metrics: iPad Monthly Plan

Switzerland: Swisscom Successful process

“Internet” “Internet with your

Notebook” “iPad tariffs”

Can be found in 3 clicks if browsing

Heatmaps First Click: Swisscom - Switzerland (DE)

Overall 30% were successful- 6% used the search bar- 40% rolled over to the side navigation bar and then clicked on the links on the right - 15% clicked “Kombi-Angebote” on the side navigation bar

Task: iPad Monthly PlanTask: iPad Monthly Plan

Heatmaps First Click: Orange – Switzerland (DE)

Overall 24% were successful- 14% used the search bar- 16% clicked “Mobile” on the top navigation bar- 14% clicked “Internet” on the top navigation bar


Heatmaps First Click: Orange - Spain

Overall 28% were successful- 21% used the search bar- 14% clicked “movil” on the top navigation bar- 65% clicked in other places


Heatmaps First Click: Vodafone - Spain

Overall 61% were successful- 7% used the search bar- 31% clicked “Tienda Online” on the top navigation bar- 14% clicked in the center promotional area


Heatmaps First Click: Vodafone - Netherlands

Overall 27% were successful- 4% used the search bar- 14% clicked “Internet” on the top navigation bar- 19% clicked in the center promotional area


Heatmaps First Click: T-Mobile - Netherlands

Overall 40% were successful- 15% used the search bar- 13% clicked “Abonnement” on the top navigation bar- 27% clicked “Internet” on the top navigation bar


Heatmaps First Click: Orange - United Kingdom

Overall 75% were successful- 13% used the search bar- 37% clicked “iPad” on the left navigation bar- 50% clicked in other places


• Only half of the participants were able to successfully find the monthly cost of an iPad subscription on the Vodafone website.

• Successful Participants spent an average of 5 minutes 24 seconds and 19 clicks completing the task.

Vodafone > iPad: UK

Task Effectiveness

Orange > iPad: UK

Task Effectiveness

• The majority of participants were able to find the correct price for the plan (75%).

• Successful Participants spent an average of 1 minute 11 seconds and 7 clicks completing the task.

Top level overview of Task 2 across all countries with deep dive into The Netherlands & Spain’s results

“Locate a store address/fax number”

Task Metrics: Locating Store Address/Phone number

Success rates for Netherlands

Task 2 : « Find the closest shop to the Amsterdam railway station and write down its address. »

The T-mobile site provided the best results regarding this task, 77% of the participants was successful.

On average it took slightly over one minute to find the right information, with an average of only 4 page views and 8 clicks.

On the Vodafone website 52% was successful in achieving this information.

Remarkable result is that it took an average of 3 minutes and 29 clicks to complete this task.

Success questionnaire - Netherlands

Nevertheless, the rate of success regarding a task is not necessarily an indication of the ease of use:

The Vodafone website was less successful, but only 28% of the participants regarded it to be difficult to acquire the needed information.

On the T-mobile website, people were far more successful, but also less satisfied with the level of difficulty to get to the right URL: 42% of the participants thought this was (very) hard to achieve.

Vodafone

T-mobile

Abandon questionnaire - Netherlands

Main reasons for abandoning a task were:

Page not loading: Especially the Vodafone website was unable to load the required page. Remarkable is that people wait up to 5 minutes!

Information not in expected location: Both Vodafone and T-mobile present information in an unexpected manner. Participants have certain expectations on where and how to find the required information. In case these expectations are not met, people easily abandon the website.

QUOTES“I was looking for it under Customer service and expected to be able to fill in my location and that it would automatically give the closest store location.”“ I was unable to open the page.”

Final questionnaire - Netherlands

Users of both the Vodafone as well as the T-mobile website are neither positive nor negative about the websites:

They regard it as easy to use for inexperienced users and there is no need for extra help.

Nevertheless, the lack of success will have some influence on the use of the website.

Most users indicate that they will not likely be using these websites in the near future again.

Task 2 Spain : Find the closest shop to the Atocha railway station and take note of its

fax number.

Task 2 Spain – success ratios

• On Vodafone 68% of users completed the task successfully .

• On Orange 53% of users completed the task successfully.

Vodafone analysis - Spain

• First click of users was mostly focused on the search engine and the help section. There were several users that tried to find the shops using the Vodafone logo.


• The reason users got the answer incorrect was due to a problem on the web. Although as happened in the previous task, the information that users found was not clear enough.

The site is not clear nor intuitive, you have to use the search engine, the information provided is not precise

The section with the Vodafone shops is easy, the problem is one you have to find one in Madrid

Too much information on the map


• The reasons participants abandoned the task was mainly due to the information being incomplete (67%). Other reasons were:• The information

presentation is not clear enough

• The information, options and menus are difficult to understand

• The information wasn’t in the expected location

• Few search options• As it has been seen in the

previous task users again had problems with the information provided.

I have entered province “Madrid”, city “Madrid” and no results appeared with this search options. I have tried with different options and it always happened the same.

Orange Analysis - Spain

• Most of the users went to the tab “Orange shop” in order to look for the addresses of the physical shops.

• The reason for the incorrect answer was ‘not being able to find the correct information due to options and menus being difficult to understand.’

• Users explained that the site mainly focuses on the iPhone whereas iPad information is quite difficult to find.

• The system could be improved using an accessible and easy to find search engine.

There is no way to understand what is going on here.

There is no way to find anything. What a fuss!


• Those users who didn’t finish the task was mainly because they couldn’t find the information where they were expecting to find it.

• The links to the information were not clear enough.

• The site is very focused on selling products or services instead of giving clients the service that they need. I don’t have anything

against Orange but its website is a disaster


Final Questionnaire – all countries: Which mobile operator do you prefer?

Netherlands Switzerland

Spain UK

1. I think that I would like to use this system frequently. 2. I found the system unnecessarily complex. 3. I thought the system was easy to use. 4. I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this system. 5. I found the various functions in this system were well integrated. 6. I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system. 7. I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly. 8. I found the system very cumbersome to use. 9. I felt very confident using the system. 10. I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system.

Metrics: SUS ScoreThe System Usability Scale (SUS) is a set of 10 questions that is used to measure the perception of a systems overall usability. Participants rate each question with a 1 to 5 scale (5 being strongly agree).

Metrics: SUS ScoreAfter completing the tasks on each mobile provider website participants were asked to complete the SUS questionnaire. The averages for each question are used to calculate an overall score (0-100).

SUS Score Guide*: 35=poor, 50=OK, 70=good, 85=excellent

Bangor, A. (2009, May). Determining What Individual SUS Scores Mean: Adding and Adjective Rating Scale. Journal of Usability Studies, 4(3), 114-123.

Net Promoter Score (NPS®)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NPS

Orange (SP)16%

11% 15% 10% 7% 14% 9% 9% 2% 4% 3% -75%

Orange (UK) (n=101)

10%

3% 4% 7% 7% 21% 11% 10% 14% 9% 4% -50%

Orange (CH) (n=78) 9% 4% 12% 4% 10% 23% 9% 15% 12% 0% 3% -68%

Swisscom (CH) (n=78)

4% 1% 15% 6% 5% 15% 12% 22% 12% 3% 5%-51%

T-Mobile (NL)13%

4% 6% 4% 6% 27% 13% 10% 13% 3% 1% -69%

Vodafone (NL) 8% 3% 9% 8% 5% 22% 18% 11% 9% 3% 4% -66%

Vodafone (SP) 7% 1% 4% 6% 14% 13% 13% 18% 12% 8% 4% -46%

Vodafone (UK) 8% 1% 4% 8% 9% 22% 13% 16% 9% 5% 5% -55%

Promoters

NPS% of Promoters

(9s and 10s)Detractors

(0 through 6)= -

After completing the four tasks, participants were asked how likely they would be to recommend each mobile provider’s website.

Detractors

Top 5 findings / Learnings The satisfaction is directly related with the success of the users in

obtaining the information that they are looking for. In general the websites for mobile operators in all countries are not performing optimal when consumers have a task in mind. The performance rate was dependent on the task, not the website.

Across the board the main difficulties were in participants finding specific information. The normal way users tried to find the information was through the menu structure. When they realized it was too complicated they tried to use ‘search’ although the results weren’t always clear enough. A much clearer architecture and clearer results in search engines are therefore needed. Furthermore the use of promotional ads made the navigation much longer and difficult for most of the users.

Top 5 findings / Learnings

Analysing NPS, SUS, success on task and preference data it is clear that the brand halo effect has a bearing on site preference in each market irrespective of task success.

UK - although participants had notably higher task success rates on the Orange site (75% and 71%) vs. the Vodafone site (50% and 49%), when asked for site preference at the end of the study, the Orange website was selected only 8% more than the Vodafone site (54% vs 46%) respectively. Out of the Orange customers (n=17) more than half (9) preferred the Vodafone website.

Orange is not strong in Spain

Swisscom the national provider is stronger in Switzerland

Vodafone marginally outperforms T-mobile in the Netherlands

Top 5 findings / Learnings When participants were asked whether they would recommend the

sites in each market all operators scored negatively showing room for improvement. Although these scores are low, previous research has shown that telecommunication companies have the lowest net promoter scores within the technology sector.

As Vodafone and Orange were both tested in 3 of the 4 markets we can benchmark their experiences.

Vodafone outperforms Orange on aggregated SUS (53 versus 51.3)

Vodafone outperforms Orange on aggregated NPS (-55% versus -64.3%)

Task 1 success aggregated : Vodafone outperforms Orange (46% versus 42%)

Task 2 success aggregated : Orange outperforms Vodafone (70% versus 56%)

Information on UI

User Intelligence is a user experience consultancy and

was founded in 2002

Offices in Amsterdam and Helsinki, additional service

offering in Sweden and Norway

Our team consists of 17 consultants with a passion for

people and interactive technology

About Telono

Telono is a Swiss consultancy specialising in usability, user experience and web accessibility.

We help companies implement a systematic user-centred design process, from user experience strategy and user research to interaction design and usability evaluations.

Telono is the Swiss representative of the User Experience Alliance (UXalliance)

About Xperience Consulting

• 10 years of experience

• 2 offices (Barcelona & Madrid)

• 150 AI projects

• 300 usability studies

• 6000 users analyzed

• 150 clients (15 countries)

Usability and user experience experts, we

create interfaces that suit users’ needs and

objectives of your company. Intuitive and easy

to use websites.

www.uxalliance.com

UX Alliance - Who are we?

The UX Alliance is an international network for usability testing and user

experience research consisting of core partners, associates, and affiliate

members.

Back in 2005 the leading user experience companies from France, Germany,

Spain, UK and US met in Barcelona with a single common goal in mind: how to

provide effective international user experience services to our clients.

Having worked together on international

projects for many years, we recognised

that we were ideally placed to lead

international user experience research.

Thus, the UXalliance was born…

www.uxalliance.

Who are we?

20 Countries – 22 Companies Over 100 global projects per year together.

User Centric, Inc.United States

SirValUseGermany

User ExperienceChina

Xperience ConsultingSpain

User IntelligenceNetherlands/

Finland

UXa Partners, Associates, & Affiliates

Optimal UsabilityNew Zealand

Mitsue LinksJapan

Think UserKorea

AxanceFrance

UIDesign GroupRussia

Optimal ExperienceAustralia

Mercedes SanchezBrazil

SymetriaPoland

Snitker & Co.Denmark

ExperienceLabUnited Kingdom

Yu CentrikCanada

Ayer ViernesChile

TelonoSwitzerland

ExperienceUCzech Republic

About UserZoom

Leading online (remote) user experience research software company

9 years experience in UX research & consulting

Offices in Sunnyvale (CA), London (UK) and Barcelona (Spain)

Created because traditional UX research methods are great but not enough

Sunnyvale (USA)

440 N. Wolfe Rd. Sunnyvale,CA 94085 Phone: +1 (408) 524 7445 Contact: Alfonso de la Nuez

Barcelona (Spain)

Av. Diagonal 419 3º 2ª 08008 Barcelona Phone: +34 93 414 7554 Fax: +34 93 209 8380 Contact: Xavier Mestres

Cheshire (UK)

Booths Park. Chelford Road, Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 8GSPhone: + 44 (0)1565 759890Cell: + 44 (0)7900 472 920Contact: Arthur Moan

Thanks so much for your time!

Check out our upcoming events at www.userzoom.com

four country mobile operator study: a competitive benchmark of leading mobile operator sites1

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