In a new age of savvy customers and tight budgets the growth of comparison sites has been outstanding in the past few years. As part of a series of Blogs on usability this week I’ll be  exploring whether the major players in this huge market could be doing more to keep their customers happy.

Life looks pretty good in the marketplace of comparisons. With so many jingles, a few dozen meercats, and millions of bargain hunters thrown in you would have thought all was rosy. But according to recent research published by Which? over half of all comparison customers are not happy.

Which?'s research also states that comparison sites have a fantastic take-up rate with consumers. A staggering 55% of their readers use price comparison sites when purchasing financial services.

Four players dominate what is a very completive marketplace; Moneysupermarket, Gocompare, Confused and Comparethemarket. I thought it would be interesting to look at how well each company performs from a user experience standpoint. In this article I have focused on the effectiveness of each homepage to serve the needs of a cost aware public.

Making the assumption the each company has optimised Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) effectively then the primary goal of the homepage is to direct the customer as quickly as possible to their desired product or service. This may sound an easy task but with such an array of services on offer and the everlasting need to cater for repeat visits, this is no small challenge.

So how well does each company do in the usability stakes?

Money Supermarket

Starting with the market leader; launched in 1999 Money Supermarket was the first of the four to launch and has enjoyed a significant share of the market ever since. Being the original does not necessary mean the best and in the case of the web user experience this is certainly the case.

Money Supermarket’s homepage is structured into a main “mega” menu which is colour coded by product and service. This creates the first usability problem, with the legibility of text in some of the mega menu’s being difficult to read. This is due to the primary coloured backgrounds and the point size of the menu text.

Moving further down the page things don’t get much better. A third of the main banner space is taken up with a brand building advertisement. Amazingly this does nothing. This results in a restricted banner space, which is split into insurance services and money services with the less important services listed below. The remainder of the home page is taken up with banner advertising for financial products which dominate the page.

Overall the Moneysupermarket homepage could be improved. Tidying up the navigation issues, focusing more on their core product offerings, reducing the prominence of advertising and allowing the customer to retrieve quotes at this level would all help the user experience.

Gocompare

Go compare offer a different approach which to my mind is more focused. They retain the mega menu of product and service areas but this is easier to read due to the absence of the colour coding on seen on Money Supermarket. Gocompares’ main banner is split in to two features; Car insurance and Home insurance.

This is very clear with the call to action being either get a quote or retrieve a quote. The menu is excellent with a really well structured mega menu that is easy to scan.

Below the main banner sits a series of feature boxes listing other products. This is well designed with a cut-out image representing each product and with just the right amount of text and white space to avoid the page looking cluttered. Below this sits a completion banner and customer promise. At the foot of the page sits the ubiquitous SEO copy and news. Pretty standard stuff.

Overall Gocompare’s approach works very well giving customers looking for car and home insurance a quick route into these products and also those customers retrieving a quote (assuming they have not come by email link). The absence of advertising also removes the clutter focusing more attentions on their core products.

Confused

In contrast to the competitors Confused adopt a narrower screen resolution (918 pixels) and as a consequence the design feels restricted. Similarly to Gocompare the main banners are subdivided into car insurance and home insurance but the main navigation uses a ribbon style rollover which is displaying a sub-navigation that is barely legible. This presents a significant usability / accessibility barrier.

Moving down the page the content is split into product sectors and a series of advertising banners. This is less effective than Gocompare who dedicate the whole area to product sectors.

Overall the design of the confused.com website is less successful than that of Gocompare’s. The proposition is less single minded and let down by a poor main navigation.

Note – Since writing this review confused have redesigned their homepage. The navigation has been improved although still lags behind Gocompare in terms of clarity.

Comparethemarket

Famous for the iconic Meerkat advertising campaign Comparethemarket were not the first comparison website but took a significant market share in no small part due to the success of the Meerkat campaign.

Comparethemarket fairs better than some of its competitors, with it’s clear navigation well structured feature boxes and minimal advertising which is relevant to the to the brand.

Comparethemarket splits the main navigation into car insurance and credit cards, with the facility to get a quote or retrieve a quote. It’s simple well structured feature boxes supported with relevant imagery makes for a homepage that is easy to scan and navigate.

Whilst not quite as effective as Gocompare, Comparethemarket does a good job in navigating customers through an array of products.

Conclusion

With each company investing significant sums on TV, press and paid search advertising it really surprises me that they are not looking more closely at the user experience of their websites. For me top marks for their homepage design goes to Gocompare for a homepage

which is very clear and offers a great user experience. Comparethemarket is the runner up with a reasonable homepage, but Confused and Moneysupermarket really need to look more closely at the usability of their homepages.