User Research: Hoovers.com Migration Login

Original Ask

Across Dun & Bradstreet, all major owned brand domains were merging to a central CMS and login experience, with the goal of creating more SEO strength at the central dnb.com URL. However, this presented challenges with competing product logins, including this one for the D&B Hoovers experience. Previously, D&B Hoovers users would just need to go to hoovers.com with a very simple login, but the new migration meant that D&B Hoovers would be in the above navigation layout, causing potential confusion. I proposed, wrote, and ran an unmoderated usability test for leadership prior to migration to identify potential issues and user behaviors and help mitigate some risk of the unknown ahead of the migration.

Summary of Test Learnings

Remote unmoderated user testing was conducted comparing the existing login experience of hoovers.com to the new dnb.com/hoovers login experience, in anticipation of migration. While some people experienced delays compared to the first experience, all users were able to locate the correct D&B Hoovers login.

Approach

With the upcoming D&B Hoovers migration from hoovers.com to dnb.com/hoovers, it was important to ensure that key features are easy-to-use for existing customers and intuitive for new customers. To make the migration smoother and prevent customer confusion, several focused user tests comparing the old and new experiences were run to identify pain points and proactively prevent confusion. Specifically in this example, the target area is comparing the old login on hoovers.com to the new login on dnb.com/hoovers. Users were asked to use both login experiences and compare them, to help identify how difficult it will be for customers to migrate to the new login.

User testing feedback was started with a pilot the first day, full test with 8 participants was launched the following day, and all results evaluated three days after.

Methods

Unmoderated usability test with 9 participants. User qualifications:

• 25-65+ years old

• Employed Full Time

• Income $40,000+

• Sales or Marketing department

• Familiarity with D&B Hoovers

Key Findings

The most notable finding was related to the time-to-find – that is, how long it took a user to locate the D&B Hoovers login on the new experience.

Time-To-Find

While the average time-to-find the D&B Hoovers login on dnb.com/hoovers was 31 seconds for users, there were actually 3 distinct group behaviors that could be seen.

3 seconds - 6 seconds to find

Three testers fell into this time group- these participants were able to quickly locate and find the Hoovers login, with times of 3 seconds, 5 seconds, and 6 seconds to locate. The general pattern for these users was a quick moment of surprise upon seeing the multiple product names, but a fast follow-up of spotting the Hoovers login and clicking on it.

General sentiment for this group is best summarized by one user, who remarked "Fewer options would increase the ease of use for most people, but I still located the correct link and was not frustrated at all."

18 seconds - 20 seconds to find

Another three testers took 18, 19, and 20 seconds to find the login. Their general pattern seemed to be an overwhelmed first response, reading through the all the various product names, before finally finding the Hoovers login. While this group struggled with locating the Hoovers name amongst all the other ones, they were still able to accomplish the end goal, albeit with some minor difficulty. One user remarked that "Just coming to this right off the bat freaks me out right now", another remarked that there was an "overwhelming amount of choices on the second website. It was way too many options".

45 seconds - 90 seconds to find

The final three testers took 45 seconds, 76 seconds, and 90 seconds to find, respectively. The first tester who took 45 seconds wasn't in a terrible rush to read through everything, but in contrast to the users in the 18-20 second group, there was a much larger delay in locating the D&B Hoovers login.  The second two testers encountered some issue with the question phrasing, the task set for them being "From this page, how would you log into the D&B Hoovers product? Do so now." These users were confused with the ask to find the login for the "D&B Hoovers product", and focused on the product portion, but also had difficulty locating the D&B Hoovers portion within the login screen. They both clicked on the login link in the upper righthand corner, didn't see anything labeled "product", and then spent 75 and 90 seconds on their sessions to finally decide to locate just the D&B Hoovers login. While their performance here was definitely influenced by the phrasing of the question, nevertheless they were both confused by the amount of information on the menu.

Overview

It is important to note that every user was able to accomplish finding the D&B Hoovers login. However, across all groups, 4 of 9 users remarked at one point or another that the experience was "overwhelming" or "confusing", and another 4 users noted they found it "clunky" or wished the login experience was more streamlined and easier to navigate.

In the future, it may be worth it to explore new login solutions to try and mitigate some of this confusion in the login process.

While every tester was able to locate the Hoovers login, there was a varying degree of how easily that was accomplished. What this should hopefully translate into for the full migration is some possible initial confusion with the login, and a quick acclimation for those who need a moment longer to locate it in the matrix of all product logins being presented.
 
Next Steps

Feedback from this test was evaluated to understand what was realistic to incorporate into the upcoming D&B Hoovers migration. Initially, there were no changes to the experience upon launching, but as predicted in the test, there was an increase in user dissatisfaction with the login experience, mentioned in our customer survey and other feedback touchpoints. As a result there were followup iterations and tests to evaluate potential new designs for the login experience, to compare for better solutions that may mitigate confusion.

For a deeper dive into this project, leadership and stakeholders were provided with additional resources from the recorded sessions, access to full notes and verbatims from my work compiling the research, and recommendations for possible explorations for new design solutions.

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