Fuelling Up on Feedback: Circle K’s Customer-Led App Redesign

Challenge

Circle K was planning a major revamp of its main app. With a new prototype ready to be launched, the company wanted to ensure it offered the best navigation experience and communication clarity. Moreover, Circle K wanted to test the effectiveness of its new loyalty programme, and to confirm users would understand and utilise it at launch.

Solution

Sonar tested Circle K’s prototype using the ‘Prototype User Testing’ study from its insights marketplace. To ensure the lowest level of bias on the new prototype, Sonar evenly recruited participants between app users and non-users across different markets. Sonar then interviewed the participants and aggregated their feedback into a set of actionable insights.

Results

The test confirmed Circle K’s doubts about its new program: most customers liked the idea but found the overall message confusing. Additionally, the test showed that customers appreciated the updated features and sections, but suggested making the app more personalised to their needs and improving the readability of the icons.

Impact

Circle K got the customer validation it needed to cut decision time by up to 50%, streamline development efforts and roll out a new app with enhanced navigation and value to its customers.

Beyond Analytics: How Bambo Nature Used Customer Insights to Boost Online Sales

Challenge

Bambo Nature, a skin and eco-friendly baby products manufacturer, was looking for a way to boost conversions from its UK online store. The company’s e-commerce team was already using all of the traditional analytical tools, such as Google Analytics and A/B testing, to optimise conversions. However, it wanted to take it one step further and discover how customers experienced its website.

Solution

Bambo Nature needed rapid insights on video into the customer’s purchase experience. Therefore, the company decided to run a usability test with Sonar, using the ‘e-commerce flow’ study from the Sonar insights marketplace. Sonar then recruited participants in the UK market, interviewed them and aggregated their feedback into a set of actionable insights.

“Sonar’s easy-to-digest format and powerful insights helped us gain internal buy-in and quickly implement changes that benefited our customers.”

Helle Merrild Hansen, eCommerce Manager, Bambo Nature

Results

Sonar provided Bambo Nature with a comprehensive list of insights and customer-backed recommendations. The company was surprised by the results: the test revealed customers found the navigation intuitive, but struggled with confusing terminology and pop-ups interrupting the flow. Furthermore, it gained a clearer perspective on its customers’ pain points and barriers, validating some of its internal assumptions.

Impact

The insights provided by Sonar gave the e-commerce team the authority and validation it needed to make meaningful changes to its website and optimize it for maximum conversion.

Breaking the Bank: How Santander Created a Money-Spinning Loan Application Flow

Challenge

As a leading financial service provider, Santander Finland was transitioning its service offering on its online portfolio. But there was a problem: large amounts of customers were dropping out during their online loan application process.

The challenge was clear: to improve the online application flow to reduce the drop-off rate and create a best-in-class online application process.

Solution

Santander first probed its customers to get feedback on its existing flow with a flow optimisation test. After it collected insights from the first testing round, the bank went back to the drawing table, editing its flow and presenting it to a sample of non-Santander clients.

During each testing round, Santander received usability scores, which it used to benchmark the two flows.

Results

Through iterative testing, Santander identified all highly critical issues in its flow and learned how to address them with precision and speed. Furthermore, by presenting it to a new audience, the bank discovered its new flow outperformed the old one in every single benchmark.

Impact

“Your process made usability testing quite easy for us. Before, there was a lot of hassle in conducting user research, but your process and approach were much more useful and easier for us”

Usko Manninen, Digital Marketing Leader (Nordics) at Santander Consumer Bank – Nordics.

Santander launched a customer-inspired flow that made online loan applications much smoother. As a result, online transactions grew markedly. More than that, the bank has now integrated customer insights into its production cycle, helping it make customer-inspired, more successful business decisions in a fraction of the time.

How Saxo Bank’s Customer-Centricity Led Digital Innovation in Private Investing

Challenge

As a platform provider for multi-asset trading and investment, Saxo Bank strives to empower people with a user-friendly and personal platform experience, no matter if they want to actively trade global markets or invest in their future.

Therefore, Saxo Bank wanted to understand the use and satisfaction with the current solution, as well as apply an iterative process to optimise and further develop their solution.

“The investor platform is the core of the offering to our customers and a key differentiator. Staying ahead of our competitors by exceeding market expectations to the customer experience is a constant strategic priority.”

Martin Christiansen, Head of Platform at Saxo Bank

Solution

To get the best overview, the bank ran iterative tests using the Sonar platform with several investors, from evaluating the existing platform to prototyping until launch.

Results

By helping assess elements across the platform, the bank gained insights into their customers’ opinions: what drove them to use the platform, as well as what they could improve. This helped speed up development while optimising new functionality, features and content.

With easy-to-access customer insights from both the mobile and desktop versions, Saxo Bank was able to place its platform to be one of the most responsive on the market.

Impact

Through Sonar, Saxo Bank was able to gain the right insights and involve its customers in assessing and optimising its platform. Thus, it managed to steer digital development in a way that was actually useful to its target audience. It was an instant success for the bank, as it went on to win the 2019 Active Trader Award for Best Platform.

ReSound: Empowering Tinnitus Sufferers with a User-Centered Design

Challenge

As one of the leading apps for relieving and managing tinnitus, maintaining and improving the Relief app is a priority for ReSound. Since the app was launched, it has gained popularity in the app store, and ReSound wanted to explore its potential for further growth.

While their current user base was solid, ReSound wanted to better understand the app’s perceived value as well as the user experience of first discovering and exploring the app after the initial download.

Solution

Working with the Relief team, we designed an app customer research study that would target people with varying degrees of tinnitus in the USA, who were not current users of the Relief app.

The study focused on different features within the app and asked participants to explore the app while giving feedback on what they found valuable and most useful.

Results

The results helped validate many of the Relief product development team’s original hypotheses. They also highlighted some areas of concern for them to focus on and address before re-launching the app.

Impact

The Relief team at ReSound gained a much clearer understanding of the daily lives of people living with tinnitus. With rich qualitative insights, the company work was able to integrate the voice of its customers into its development process, making customer-inspired decisions with no delay.