Increasing GESB's member engagement via digital channels

Following a company reorganisation, the digital team was facing the challenge to increase members engagement with limited resources.

Lorna Hegarty 25 Aug 2022

GESB Superannuation

GESB is a WA Government statutory authority with over 80 years of experience managing and administering the super savings of current and former public sector employees. With over 240,000 members and $30 billion in funds under management, GESB is the largest super fund in WA and one of the largest in Australia.

Industry

Services

Products

CMS

A structural change saw GESB outsource administration and other services but retain a small digital team. Despite its reduced size, the team was under pressure to increase online engagement and deliver valuable products and services to members.

With this digital project, GESB had two main objectives.

First, the company wanted to move all its paper forms and processes online to increase efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Second, it was considered essential to provide a high-quality search experience to assist members further.

On top of it, the team needed to quickly deliver personalized and segmented content on their website to create a seamless and engaging member experience. They also needed to make their websites more accessible, to meet the WA Government’s accessibility requirements.

Following a comprehensive evaluation process, GESB chose Squiz to deliver on its digital vision: increase members' engagement via digital channels.

Statement summaries

An example of this was the introduction of ‘Statement summaries’ that allowed members to access an interactive statement summary online, which showed them a ‘snapshot’ or ‘summary’ of their annual member statement, and also allowed them to download a copy of their full statement, should they choose to do so.

Statements

Search

To help members find the information they need, GESB introduced Squiz DXP Search and completely revised its approach.

To reduce frustration among users, the web team introduced autocomplete to “guide” members toward existing search results.

Autocomplete

Filters are also being used to assist users in their search and narrow down the list of results.

Faceted navigation

Accessibility

The website has received nationwide recognition for its accessible design.

The web team has implemented numerous changes to support accessibility for its users, notably:

Typography and background colors have been updated to make sure information is clearly visible at all times
Alternative text is inserted to describe what’s shown in images, charts and graphs, so screen reader users don’t miss out on the information
Forms are available as pages on our website or in Member Online, so they are accessible to everyone
Tables and information now appear in a way that’s easier to read and understand
Lists, buttons and form fields are clearly labelled to help our website visitors find what they need

The most recent accessibility audit conducted by the Centre for Inclusive Design rated the audited pages and processes on the GESB website as 100% compliant with the WCAG 2.0 guidelines AA success criteria and showed a significant impact on the digital engagement of GESB’s members.

Improved engagement

The different initiatives were a resounding success.

30% of members logged in to view their statement summary (versus a mere 8% that read their statements in 2008), with many members logging in on multiple devices averaging 2.4 sessions per member. Of those that logged in to view their summary, 41% did so via a mobile device.

73% of the members also rated the experience very good to excellent (either an 8, 9, or 10 out of 10)

“Squiz go above and beyond just building software,” explains Marleen Timmers-Vasen, Manager Digital at GESB. “They’re regularly looking at ways to improve our member experience but also to improve the manageability of our website, which has far-reaching benefits for our team. For example, they recently recommended building a container library for our forms, empowering our team to easily create complex forms, without having to rely on Squiz. That’s just one of countless examples where they’re working with us as a partner, not a provider.”