Blog

At any BBQ or dinner party around Australia, chances are that one of the guests is with AMP. The iconic Australian brand has 3.4 million customers and is an established leader in the financial services sector.

Not only is AMP Australia’s largest superannuation provider, but it also offers a wide range of other financial products and services – including retirement savings and income, investments, financial planning, insurance and banking.

Clearly, it is a consumer-focused organisation.

So it was crucial that the financial giant’s new website reflect this focus on customers, particularly at a time when people are more tech-savvy than ever before.

Challenge

The last refresh of the AMP website was in 2002. In the past five years, technologies have advanced and consumers’ needs have changed.

“Our old website was trying to be everything to everyone,” said Andrew Hobern, Director, Personal Wealth Management, AMP. “By late 2007, we were in an ideal position to review the site and seek ways to make it even better for our customers.”

With more than 5,000 pages of information on the previous site, a refresh would be no mean feat. AMP sought an organisation that could steer the process while providing critical advice on the user experience.

Solution

After speaking to a number of web agencies, AMP engaged Bienalto to manage the site refresh.

“We liked the way that Bienalto focused on the user experience, and clearly separated information architecture from design,” said Hobern.

Bienalto’s recommendation to separate these entities facilitated:

• Consensus amongst the stakeholders
• Reduced design costs
• Faster development and deployment
• Reduced maintenance costs.

In getting the user experience design right from the start, Bienalto sought to improve the relevance of the site for key target audiences.

Indeed, Hobern identified this as a key project milestone. “Nailing the audience and purpose of the site was probably our biggest challenge. With Bienalto’s wireframes as a blueprint for the new site, we won support of 17 internal stakeholders,” he said.

It was at this point that the project became larger than first anticipated. Initially scoped as a ‘landing page refresh’, Hobern and his team were confident that Bienalto could contribute to creating a whole new site.

Bienalto then became the project manager for the site refresh, engaging a web designer (Andrew Boddy, of Andrew Boddy Design), a copywriter (Rebecca Gleeson, of Squidink Communications), and an HTML developer (Christopher Jones).

Quantitative analysis of the old site was used to guide design and content decisions.

“For example, we discovered that certain tools and content play a significant role in new customer acquisition, especially through search engines, so we focused on providing good access paths to these tools and content,” said Hurol Inan, Managing Director, Bienalto.

“We also learnt that some high value, strategic content was not viewed as much as it should be, because it was buried in the old site’s architecture – so we sought to give this content more exposure,” Inan said.

By seeking to understand the business priorities and consumer needs, Bienalto was better positioned to design architectural structures to serve both audiences.

Customer research conducted by Sweeney Research throughout the project confirmed that the user experience design was resonating well with customers.

The new site went live about six months after Bienalto’s engagement – a fast turnaround for a project of this size.

Results

“Bienalto really gave us the confidence that this was the right way forward for AMP. Their expertise, and the way they challenged our thinking when required, saw the project grow from a small update into an entire site refresh,” said Hobern.

Since going live, the site has won approval from the many internal stakeholders who owned non-consumer sections of the site, and anecdotal feedback from customers and the competition has also been positive.

“Websites are living entities. The real test for our work comes when customers start using the site. Through online analytics, AMP can now take the site even further, designing and delivering new online services,” said Inan.

AMP is building analytical capabilities to track the site’s performance for ongoing optimisation, and has transferred its ownership to a newly formed group to ensure strong governance.

With these strategies in place, AMP will ensure that its new-look website enhances its leading reputation in the finance sector.