When developing the look and feel of well-established brands, it’s only natural that the subjectivity of design leads to differences of opinion. BGL Group’s brief was to collect insight from price-comparison website users to validate a new design of their Compare The Market website. Following a previous research project, Compare The Market asked us to assess a new design of their website’s homepage and key user journeys. By placing the new design in front of users, they wanted to gauge responses and understand how they can future-proof the brand’s look and feel.

Capturing the perspectives of a wide range of comparison website users, we recruited 32 participants to take part in a two-phase project: unmoderated and moderated user research. Comparing a prototype to the current design, several scenarios were simulated to understand participants’ emotional response to colour, icons and design features. This approach enabled us to develop hypotheses during unmoderated research which we put to the test and expanded upon during moderated testing.

To overcome order bias we alternated the presentation of each design. We identified patterns and comparisons between the unmoderated and moderated research. Applying our emotional response tool, we probed and surfaced participants’ gut feeling towards each design.

Common themes emerged including clearer icons, navigation, buttons, and a preference for a particular design. By sourcing this data before committing the designs to development, Compare The Market were able to learn what was working about the designs and what was required to move it forwards. And the affirmation that the meerkats are much-loved characters!