As Australia’s first industry super fund, LUCRF Super (now AustralianSuper*) was no stranger to leading the way. When it partnered with Luminary to rebuild its website, LUCRF Super’s vision was more than just a new site. True to its philosophy of always putting members first, it wanted to completely redefine the industry benchmark for online user experience.
* On 3 June 2022, LUCRF Super merged with AustralianSuper.
The challenge
At the heart of this project was a very simple mission: ‘to create a friendly and helpful experience for members and employers’. The key objectives were also fairly straightforward: to drive membership growth and retention through an improved digital experience.
What was remarkable, however, was the extent to which LUCRF Super was prepared to go to comprehend and deliver on the needs of its audience. As Marketing and Retention Manager Aaron MacRae explains, “The project was driven by a genuine desire to understand the unique needs of our particular members and support them in a way that differentiates us from other super funds.”
The foundation of this approach was a 3-month discovery engagement led by Luminary (in partnership with innovation consultancy Our Very Own) – encompassing competitor analysis, comparator reviews, heuristics analysis, immersion workshops, stakeholder interviews, user testing, and external research with members and employers.
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What we did
During the discovery phase, we engaged with LUCRF Super members directly, as well as similar audiences, to really learn about their attitudes to finance and superannuation, and to highlight specific areas where LUCRF Super could provide meaningful experiences at key life decision points.
The discovery phase deepened our understanding of the site’s user base and uncovered a number of surprising insights about the fund’s members. All of these findings were documented in the form of a detailed customer journey map, which would provide a source of truth to guide us throughout the build phase.
A feature-rich experience for users and editors alike
One of the key challenges of the existing site for the LUCRF Super team was its lack of integration with other systems, including the email and SMS marketing platform. So one of the first priorities was to bring these systems together into a unified customer platform within Kentico Xperience. This not only streamlined communication processes, but also made it much easier for the team to comply with the APRA CPS 234 and 235 privacy and security standards.
Reusable content blocks and design components also facilitate greater ease of authoring, while new navigation configuration options afford far more flexibility to LUCRF Super’s content editors to present different information without the need for developer intervention. The LUCRF Super team is now also able to send bulk or individual SMSs to customers straight from the Kentico Xperience platform, via an integration with cloud communications platform Twilio.
From the customer’s perspective, the platform now provides an unbroken experience for members from their inbox to the website and enables personalisation and automation for a seamless member experience. New features include custom content based on member personas and unique user profiles, pre-populated forms, completely reimagined content, and personalised support through SMS and email.
Best practice listing pages and real-time filtering also make content extremely easy to find, along with a completely overhauled information architecture that has been informed by insights gleaned from the discovery phase.
Where the customer journey on the old site often led visitors to a ‘dead end’, there is now a strong focus on guiding people to the point of being able to perform desired actions on the site or secure member portal – for example, choosing an investment option or upgrading their insurance. For more complicated actions that require support from customer service and financial advice teams, content directs the user to the appropriate support team through their preferred channel, whether it be a call-back, online enquiry or face-to-face appointment.
The result
The site saw a 20 percent increase in organic unique users within six months of launch, with a significant uplift in enquiry, conversion and new memberships.
The final build incorporated more than 80 functional components, with just about every possible micro-interaction considered and accounted for. The project’s agile methodology was particularly conducive to ongoing feature iterations throughout the build.
From a user experience perspective, one of the hallmarks of the LUCRF Super website is its elegant simplicity. But it is the level of complexity and attention to detail under the hood that have made such frictionless UX possible.
“The level of refinement and customisation we were able to achieve was impressive," says LUCRF Super’s Aaron MacRae. "We stayed true to the findings of our research and everything we built relates back to a customer need or solves one of their pain points. Luminary took every possible opportunity to say ‘How can we refine this now, so you don't have to come back to it down the track?’ We ended up with a very advanced website for an initial launch.”
“One of the best things about this project was how much we learned from each other, and how well we adapted to each other's approach. It was a genuine collaboration. We both had a commitment to evolving how we worked as the project progressed. It was a real coming together of two unique organisations to get the best outcome for our members and employers.”
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