Experiment: Channel shifting: The impact of changing the information and the language on clients' communication channels.

Research Question:

Can we influence the channel clients use to communicate with the department by changing the information, layout, and language used on a webpage?

Project Summary:

The Immigration, Refugees, and Citzenship Canada (IRCC) Client Support Centre receives client enquiries submitted via the phone channel or via the online form. As phone answer rates remain suboptimal, there was interest in experimenting with ways to encourage clients to submit an enquiry via the online form. We experimented with different ways of presenting the information on channel options to communicate with the department. Four versions of the same 'contact us' webpage were tested in parallel. • Version 1 (original) • Version 2 (original + information on benefits of using the online form) • Version 3 (original + information on benefits of using the online form and featured inside blue alert box to attract attention) • Version 4 (original + information on benefits of using the online form + and weblink name changed from 'webform' to 'contact us online') Result: Version 4 far outperformed all other versions. Simply renaming "webform" to the easier to understand "contact us online" increased click rates towards the online form by 45%.

Design Details:

We used a quasi-randomized assignment. Clients who landed on the Client Support Centre contact us webpage were exposed to one of four webpage versions.

Intervention:

- Version 1 (original) - Version 2 (original + information on benefits of using the online form) - Version 3 (original + information on benefits of using the online form and featured inside blue alert box to attract attention) -Version 4 (original + information on benefits of using the online form + and weblink name changed from 'webform' to 'contact us online')

Outcomes:

For each version of the webpage tested, the data collected included the number of times it was viewed and the click rate towards the online form

Findings:

Renaming the online form link from "webform“ to "contact us online“ increased click through traffic towards the online form by 7.6 percentage points (a relative increase of 45%), highlighting the importance of plain language.

Design:

Quasi-experimental

Experimentation Area:

Service Delivery

Experiment Status:

Completed

Last Updated:

Oct 16, 2020

Local Branch and/or Unit:

Client Experience Branch

Reference No.:

IRCC-2019-CSC-00003

Organization:

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada