WhitePages.com

WhitePages.com

Challenge

With stiff competition from search engines such as Google and a host of other directory and people-finder websites, WhitePages.com experienced dwindling visits and page views. The client felt that new social media trends towards blogging and RSS feeds from competitor sites represented a changing mix necessary to their success as an online directory, but WhitePages.com didn’t know the best place to start the process. Additionally, while the brand maintains strong recognition among an older population, WhitePages.com needed research guidance to understand how other groups viewed it. WhitePages.com was looking to roll out new offerings that would stretch its value proposition and needed supporting data from the market to be able to evaluate those offerings. Intrepid was tasked with delivering a full brand recognition summary and strategic recommendations that would help WhitePages.com grapple with the challenge of appealing to the younger, tech-savvy market while keeping its existing customers happy.

Our Contribution

Intrepid developed a unique approach for WhitePages.com that ensured both diligence and insight-generation through the research process. Using extended qualitative groups, we explored in detail the concept and meaning behind online directories. Intrepid researchers dissected participant feelings about various competitive brands to gain insights into the online directory services landscape. This led to the development of a set of basic axioms for defining the online directory services space. Once this foundation was laid, Intrepid identified how those applied to WhitePages.com. This process revealed much about the various customer segments and helped inform our strategic recommendations to WhitePages.com. Throughout the course of the research, it became clear that a gap existed between people’s current experiences of using online directories and the kinds of experiences they could be having. Users reported that there was very little humanity in current directory brands and the experiences on offer were not that different from one another. Intrepid used mindmapping methodologies and concept evaluations to refine this theme further before arriving at a set of final recommendations for WhitePages.com. Conclusions were developed across the three age groups to reveal each one’s underlying need of online directories, the ideal proposition and where each group places its trust.

Results

WhitePages.com came away from the research project with a strong understanding of their various customer groups and actionable steps to improve the user experience while maintaining a differentiated competitive offer. WhitePages.com consequently underwent a makeover of the brand logo and took on recommendations to use identity markers, rankings and recommendations in an effort to stand out in the crowd of online directory sites.