How Ancestry is modernizing user research with Voicepanel

10X faster research vs. traditional survey vendors
1/3 of the budget
50+ completed projects and counting

About Ancestry

Ancestry began in the early 1980s with a simple idea: to make family history research more accessible to everyone.

What started as a small publishing company focused on genealogy grew into the global leader in family history and consumer genomics. Driven by a belief that everyone deserves to understand where they come from, Ancestry has spent decades digitizing billions of historical records and developing powerful tools to help people discover and preserve their stories.

Today, Ancestry serves over 3 million subscribers across more than 80 countries, with a database of over 65 billion historical records. Since launching its consumer DNA service in 2012, it has built one of the largest commercial DNA networks in the world, with more than 27 million people tested. With over $1 billion in annual revenue, Ancestry remains at the forefront of helping people explore their identity—combining science, data, and storytelling to help everyone find their place in history.

Ancestry by the numbers

3M+ paying subscribers
80+ markets served
$1B+ revenue
65B+ records

From skepticism to advocacy: Ancestry's journey with Voicepanel

User research is foundational to how Ancestry shapes its products and brand. With a mature Consumer Insights and UX Research function, the team plays a key role in informing product prioritization and features, as well as messaging strategy, campaign development, and overall brand positioning.

Given their experience, the team was initially cautious about adopting a new research platform—especially the AI features. "We were skeptical at first," said Shapiro. "We had a toolkit that was working well for us and weren't quite sure where Voicepanel could fit."

Perceptions shifted once they began using Voicepanel for a few time-sensitive projects. "Once we started to run a few studies, we saw how powerful this platform could be for us," said Shapiro. "We were able to hear from hundreds of consumers in minutes. The speed was impressive, but more importantly, the insights we were getting were on par with what we took away from more time-intensive research studies."

At the time, demand for insights was accelerating across the company. Product, marketing, and leadership teams were asking more questions, more often. Voicepanel quickly proved it could keep pace, offering a faster, more scalable way to support research across the entire product lifecycle.

Supporting research at every stage from discovery to validation

When Ancestry first started using Voicepanel, the team focused on foundational questions with consumers, tapping into general population audiences through Voicepanel's panel integration with Respondent. This gave them a fast, flexible way to explore broader trends and consumer attitudes on topics that were top of mind to the business.

"Leadership was interested in the impact of inflation and consumer pullback," said Kendra Shapiro, Head of Consumer Insights & UXR. "We launched a Voicepanel study within hours to understand how financial pressures were influencing subscriber decisions. The results were clear—many were actively considering canceling—and the insights were quickly shared with leadership to guide retention strategy."

After early success with a few time-sensitive studies, the Ancestry team began to explore how Voicepanel could support a wider range of research needs. "Voicepanel allows us to gather direct feedback from our subscribers from within our web app." said Sweetnam. "It's become our go-to platform to get a quick pulse on anything—whether it's a new product, a message we're testing—with minimal setup from us and is simple for our subscribers to use too."

The Consumer Insights and UXR team now uses Voicepanel regularly for everything from foundational discovery to concept validation, message testing, and UX evaluations—delivering insights that directly support product and marketing decisions. Below are just a few of the more than 50 projects the team has completed using Voicepanel:

More than just speed

While speed was the initial draw, Ancestry quickly discovered that Voicepanel delivered far more than just fast turnaround. The ability to move quickly unlocked entirely new ways of working—enabling the team to test ideas more frequently, involve stakeholders earlier, and keep research tightly aligned with real-time decision-making.

Over time, the team also began to see clear budget benefits. With less reliance on expensive agency work and time-intensive sessions, they were able to run more studies at a fraction of the cost. "We're actually under budget this year," said Shapiro, "but at the same time it's clear we're doing a larger volume of research as we lean on more powerful, scalable tools such as Voicepanel. That's a big shift for us."

Ease of use became another standout advantage. Researchers didn't need platform training or operational support to get started—launching a study was as simple as writing a question and hitting send. "We've used tons of research tools," one team member noted, "and Voicepanel is the most user friendly by far. I just default to going to Voicepanel now because I know it will be easier."

What's next?

Ancestry is now scaling Voicepanel globally—extending its research agility to teams across the 80+ international markets they serve. With automatic translation built into both respondent answers and AI-driven moderator prompts, localized studies can be launched just as quickly and easily as those in the U.S., unlocking high-quality insights across languages and regions.

By making high-quality research faster, more flexible, and easier to access, Voicepanel has become more than just a research tool at Ancestry—it's a strategic advantage. From foundational discovery to rapid product feedback, it's powering smarter decisions at every stage of development.