Fasthosts - case study
Fasthosts is one of the largest UK web hosts and was established in 1999. Offering a wide range of web hosting solutions including domain registrations, shared hosting, email hosting, dedicated servers, virtual and reseller web hosting to home, home office and small and medium enterprises (SME) markets.
Background
We were contacted by Fasthosts to provide a proposal on user testing and an analytics review on their existing website. They wanted to gain insights into how customers navigated through the key product pages on the site as part of the ecommerce process to help inform the site and user experience going forwards.
Screenshot
Challenge to meet
We were asked to gather practical insights during user interviews that would inform the design and development of the site going forwards. The site houses a large amount of content with products clearly signposted, but due to the way the site has grown there are concerns that some content may be buried too deep in the site.
Benefits and outcomes
We identified suggestions and improvements to the site during user testing. The report we produced captured key issues from the user testing, including areas such as the homepage and user journeys through product comparisons.
What we did
We recruited 12 participants, made up of existing and prospective customers of varying age ranges and gender. These were then interviewed using a mixture of self determined and predefined tasks on the website. We allowed for exploration using self determined (or freeform tasks as they are also known), to see how the user would naturally use the site e.g. interacting with other key channels such as the phone.
How this was achieved
We ran a test over two days day test with 6 users per round with 1 hour interviews for each one. We also gathered user's opinions and thoughts by way of a survey at the end of the testing sessions to gain additional insights.
Testimonial
Ben and the Spotless team have added great value to our business, improving our knowledge of our users and helping us build an action plan to implement the required changes. They have managed the project effectively and delivered exactly what we wanted, within budget and with no disruption to us. For the lifetime of the project Spotless felt like part of the team and were as passionate and focused as us on the achieving the end goal. I would strongly recommend Spotless to anyone looking to run a usability project, you will not be disappointed. I hope that we will find other projects that we can work with Spotless on in the future.
Claire Lewis - International Marketing Manager - Fasthosts Internet Ltd
