Testing visuals in a young audience

How ING Bank Romania made a visual test among 10 to 18 year olds

“It was a great experience working with Opeepl. You were able to reach very well and very fast our specific target audience, kids aged 10 to 18 years. I set the project up as a DIY, but whenever I had questions, you were quick to respond and to assist me. It's been a pleasure to work with you”.

Corina Letcu
UX Researcher & Innovation Coach

Portrait of UX Researcher & Innovation Coach, Corina Letcu, from ING Bank Romania
ING Bank logo color

The challenge

Designing a product suite for minors

ING Bank Romania, a top innovator in the banking market, currently offering to its clients a full range of digital products and services, was working on extending their offer by developing a new, fresh, and complete value proposition for the young consumers. One element is to offer personalized debit cards providing the young consumers a tailored experience.

They already knew from qualitative research that kids and teenagers like the idea of personalization and would very much appreciate the possibility to choose from a list with various card visuals, but which visuals should the list contain? ING wanted to test this using quantitative research and carefully crafted a survey targeting kids aged 10-18 years.

For the sampling they turned to Opeepl based on previous experiences with our reach in special audiences:

“We knew from previous projects that Opeepl had good reach in every target audience and that the platform is very friendly and easy to use, so we turned to Opeepl and asked if we could run this quite specific survey through them. This answer was: of course we can,” says UX Researcher & Innovation Coach, Corina Letcu.

The solution

Two-step test of visuals

To test which visuals appeal the most to young consumers, ING decided to go for a two-phased test setup where respondents pick their favorite visual among the alternatives presented to them.

In the first phase they tested two sets of visual variants consisting of graphic illustrations and pictures by asking the kids which visual they prefer.

They split results into two subdivisions of their target audience: the kids aged 10 to 13 years old, and the teenagers aged 14 to 18 years old.

In the second phase of the project, they plan to test out the four most popular visuals from the first round and a few additional variants with a different style, to finally decide which visuals to include in the final product design.

Advertising creative test

An advertising creative test assesses your name, visual or marketing campaign before launch by asking the target audience to evaluate different versions (can include pictures/videos) and analyzing which associations, emotions and actions are created. From the insights provided you will have solid foundations to optimize ad spending, improve campaign ROI, and maximize the interest in the new or adjusted creative concepts.

The research

Fast access to young consumers

This was the first study ING did into this target group and, thus, they did not know what to expect in terms of sampling speed. The sampling was completed in a week to which Corina Letcu comments:

“The sampling speed was higher than expected and we were very pleased with the data we got. We now have the necessary insights to prepare for our second round of creatives testing that we expect to run in the same manner”.

The outcome

A valuable input for the product design

The research partially confirmed ING Romania’s thesis on what would appeal to the target audience, but also sent back to the drawing table to craft new visuals:

“We expected the kids to prefer animal motives but there was also a portion of our respondents saying they did not like any of the visuals. So, for the second round we are including new visuals to bring that number down,” tells UX Researcher & Innovation Coach, Corina Letcu.

  • This research was conducted using our Dynamic Sampling technology for the sampling. We collect no personal data in the sampling process and, thus, GDPR does not apply.

    Learn more about our sampling technology here.

  • Direct and indirect advertising for people younger than 18 is forbidden (source: Chambers & Partners). This study contained no questions on purchase intent, nor any reference to a buying opportunity and, thus, ING do not consider this study a piece of marketing.

  • Given the nature of this specific study ING Romania saw no risk imposed on the kids responding to the survey, nor any risk that the study could impose risk, threat or discrimination against any kid participating in the survey. Thus, the study was considered safe to conduct targeting respondents aged 10 to 18 years.

Surveying kids

Romania has no specific laws against conducting quantitative market research aimed at kids. However, there are questions to consider when targeting such a young audience. Below we address the measures and considerations in this project:

Learn more about the best practices to test visuals

Test your visuals using best practice for great mobile research visuals

The quality of the visuals in your consumer research directly impact how many respondents will complete your survey and the quality of the results. Download the guide to know more.

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