ANCESTRY

Our team at Berkeley Innovation consulted on a project for Ancestry to redesign their surname website to be more inclusive of users from diverse backgrounds and to increase conversion rates.

 
 

🗓️
Timeline
Aug 2019 - Dec 2019

 

📋
Type
UX Research, UI/UX Design

 

🛠️
Tools
Figma, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping, User Personas, Journey Mapping, Prototyping

 

👏
Team
Chibuzor Obiorah, Vivian Hong, Zoya Razzak

Mentor: Serena Chan

 
 

Background

 

Ancestry is an industry leader in reinventing the way people can learn about their family history. These discoveries can give everyone a greater sense of identify, relatedness, and their place in the world.

The “Family Insight” pages are an entry point to Ancestry for millions of people every month who are searching for the history of their surname. Yet, conversion rates are relatively low (<1%), and bounce rates near 70%.

 
 

Opportunity Statement

To begin, our team worked with Ancestry to craft the starting opportunity statement:

“How might we create a more engaging experience for people searching their last names through search engines in order to get more potential customers into Ancestry products?”

User Research

In order to understand the product space more deeply, we conducted an information architecture analysis on the current Ancestry site and competitive analysis amongst the industry. In order to learn more about the users, we conducted one-on-one interviews.

Information Architecture

By conducting an information architecture analysis, we gained a better understanding of how Ancestry currently balances providing information to the user and prompting them to further explore Ancestry. Although the page incorporates many links to further records or sign-up pages, the destination links are unclear which may confuse the user and derail their exploration. Moving forward, we aimed to develop a clear roadmap for users to follow that also supports Ancestry’s conversion goals.

 

an example portion of the information architecture analysis

 
 
 

Competitive Analysis

After getting a better idea of the Ancestry surname page, we explored how industry competitors compared and differeed. Through the competitive analysis, we observed qualities we’d like to incorporate and qualities we’d like to avoid.

11
Competitors
Analyzed

Qualities to Incorporate

  • Interesting facts about your surname

  • Clear signaling of free trial

  • FAQ section

Qualities to Avoid

  • Lack of information for non-European ancestry

  • Too many hyperlinks to external sites

 
 
 

One-on-One Interviews

We created an interview guide with the following goals in mind about what we wanted to discover:

  • Why do people use Ancestry (what entices them and when would they do this)?

  • What are some pain points of using the website (with a focus on sign-up conversion)?

  • What do people like most about the Ancestry platform or what would make them want to use it?

Since Ancestry caters to a wide variety of users, we looked to interview a diverse group of people. However, we did focus on finding younger users because Ancestry is hoping to incorporate a younger audience into their current user base.

12 Total Interviewees

4 Ancestry Users

8 Non-Ancestry Users

 

Interviewee Ethnicities

Black, Caucasian, Filipino, Hispanic, Indian, Native American, Pakistani, Taiwanese

 
 

Interview Key Insights

After completing our interviews, we compiled our insights through affinity mapping. We split our findings into two main categories: (1) surname page user experience (2) general thoughts about ancestry

group affinity mapping session

 
 
 

(1) Surname Page User Experience

  • Users enjoy the interesting language and vibrant colors of other Ancestry sites

  • The map only shows the US, not clear that users can access other countries

  • Census images do not look personalized or diverse

  • Font colors should be contrasting to help users figure out what to click on or look at

  • Re-evaluate user flow and information hierarchy to prioritize information that entices users

 

(2) General Thoughts About Ancestry

  • People want to learn more about family tree, ancestral immigration records, culture and heritage, or random fun facts

  • Information is inaccurate compared to previous knowledge

  • Data ambiguity and lack of diversity leads to lack of trust

  • Users want to learn more about what a subscription entails

 

Research Synthesis

User Personas

An important insight from our user interviews was that a user’s experience of learning about their surname is mostly influenced by their surname type. As a result, we constructed 4 different personas to reflect these differing experiences.

 
 

common last names with little information

 

already has a lot of information

 

uncommon last names

 

different surname traditions

 
 
 

Journey Maps

Moving forward, we decided to focus on our Kevin Chen persona because they experienced the most pain points that aligned with Ancestry’s goals for the project.

 
 

Ideation

With our target user in mind, we further ideated on potential features and improvements using the Crazy-8 methodology and subsequent affinity mapping.

 

partial example of our crazy 8 brainstroming

 

affinity diagramming of crazy 8 ideas

 
 

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

 

Putting together our ideas, we created a low-fidelity wireframe of our proposed surname page.

We aimed to keep a similar structure to the existing surname page, but we focused on offering more information to the user before directing them to sign up.

example of our low-fidelity wireframe

 

Mid-Fidelity Prototyping & Testing

Given that the main goal is to improve conversion rates, we focused our mid-fidelity testing on determining the best way to present sign-up prompts. Since we did not have access to a large user testing base to do large-scale A/B testing, we chose to show every design to each of our users to get their feedback.

Below are three versions of the top portion of the surname page, which is the first view users see when they open the page.

 

Design A
Built in sign-up form that reduces need to leave surname page

Design B
‘Explore more’ button positioned after user receives free surname information

Design C
‘Sign up’ button positioned before the bulk of the free surname information

 
 

Insights
While users appreciated not needing to go to an external link, it felt like a lot of information to provide upfront.

Insights
In mobile view, the sign-up button appeared very far down and took a while for users to find.

Insights
Since the sign-up button appeared before most of the surname info, users didn’t feel inclined to click on it.

 
 
 

Hi-Fidelity Prototyping & Testing

Based on our insights, we decided to move forward with a sign-up page built into the surname page. We also made changes to the rest of the page based on user feedback during mid-fidelity testing. For example, we offered more information about where ‘learn more’ links would lead because users reported hesitancy clicking on them. We also included more images and graphics to help users visualize their surname information.

Additionally, the client reported that most users access the surname page on their mobile phone, so we decided to approach the hi-fidelity design from a mobile-first view.

 
 

Intro Screen
When users first access they site, they view a brief description of their surname along with interesting statistics about their surname to draw them in.

 
 

Sign-Up Prompt
After viewing preliminary information about their surname, users are prompted to sign up for a free trial.

 
 

Fun Facts
This section includes various infographics about their surname. Users can click on the info icon to learn more about the statistic itself and how it was calculated, in order to bolster trust.

 
 

The interactive map helps users to visualize their history, and covers all of the world rather than just the United States.

Users can also view notable people that share their surname. The notable people are diverse and vary from historical figures to modern idols.

 
 

Learn More
Near the bottom of the screen, users are prompted to learn more about their family history.

 

Insights

We conducted a final round of user testing to get feedback on our hi-fidelity prototypes. Overall, users were excited to see the fun facts and interesting statistics, reporting that it instantly captured their attention. However, users were still hesitant to sign up at the beginning of the page before seeing more information. To remedy this, we could offer a small sign-up button at the top of the page and a more in-depth sign-up form near the bottom of the page.

 
 
 

Reflection

Throughout this semester, we gained valuable industry knowledge and research, design, and collaboration skills. We learned how to work within company design guidelines and constraints. If we were to do the project again, we would want to approach the problem through a mobile viewpoint and then expanding to desktop since most users view the surname page on mobile screens

We’d like to thank Monica Niehaus and John Gower for meeting with us every week to help guide us and offer valuable feedback throughout the process. We are also very grateful for our project mentor, Serena Chan, who was with us every step of the way and helped push us through design roadblocks.