Home Insurance Quotes
This project taught me never to compromise on people's needs and to always validate hypotheses.
Work
Insurance @ Credible
Project Duration
3 months (2022)
Role
Lead Designer
Collaboration
Product, Engineering, Research & Content
Summary
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Credible has a home, auto, and bundle insurance marketplace that provides transparent quotes from 40+ carriers.
On average, insurance buyers wait ~30 minutes to receive customized quotes.
This also means they have to switch between the online and email experience.
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Real-time quotes allow users to view/compare quotes and purchase policies instantly without leaving the online experience.
This will make the entire experience faster and aid our users with decision-making.
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Within a month of going live, we saw a significant rise in the conversion, with 4 out of every 10 customers purchasing their home insurance policy from the dashboard. We were successfully able to reduce the real time quote load time to 2 minutes.
Design Process
Validating Hypothesis
The market analysis led me to believe that users would find it beneficial to have a complete and comprehensive comparison of quotes to understand what is covered in their home insurance policy.
I conducted an un-moderated test to verify this hypothesis and compare two experiences.
User’s Preference
The user test validated the hypothesis, with most users preferring a side-by-side comparison.
Competitor Website
Side-by-side comparison
"I like how everything is broken down; Everything's laid out for me … It puts all the power in my hands as opposed to the agent's”
User Feedback
Mobile Experience
Given the limited real estate for mobile devices, providing an experience that allowed side-by-side comparison of quotes was tricky.
Backing my design decisions with mobile best practices, I conducted another user study to understand buyer needs on mobile devices.
User’s Preference
On mobile devices, buyers preferred to explore high-level details and drill down into one specific quote instead of a side-by-side comparison.
Mobile designs for user test
"I'd say 25 percent comparing, and then 75 percent looking at the quote in detail because usually, I'll make a comparison quickly, but then when I get an idea of what I want, I hone in on it and look into the details on that specific product.”
User Feedback
Responsive, yet unique
Knowing that buyers’ needs on larger screens differed significantly from their needs on mobile, I wanted to provide a unique experience without increasing the engineering & operations effort.
I created two different quote viewing options for buyers, which they could toggle between, providing a seamlessly responsive experience yet highly customizable. I collaborated with the engineering team to set different default viewing options for users depending on what devices they are accessing the page from.
Summary
The default view on desktop:
Side-by-side comparison
The default view on mobile:
Summary
A toggle option for a responsive yet unique experience
Humanizing Design
One of the most significant challenges was translating heavy technical insurance terms into accessible bite-sized information that was easily comprehended.
I worked with the operations team to understand the quote generation process and the information available to users. I learned that the insurance quote revolved around different types of deductibles, coverages, and discounts to reduce the premium.
User Feedback
"I think the hardest part is just making sure all the details are covered, all the nuance from the different parts of insurance and everything it covers, because things can get very complicated."
Designs to invoke trust and confidence
Always consider edge case
No one likes dead-ends. Imagine filling out an insurance application only to find no matching quotes!
There can be edge-case scenarios where quotes cannot be generated for buyers, and design can help them navigate from this situation and engage with other aspects of the product.
Summary
Other scenarios include:
Single or less than three quotes were generated for buyers.
When quotes cannot be generated
Building Components
When designing multiple variations of an experience, I begin by building the core components and then explore various possibilities. For this project, which required designs for three different platform viewports (desktop, tablet, and phone), I created nested components to fit each use case.
Summary
Build foundational elements and single cell component variants —> then build larger data modules.
Impact
40% increase in policy purchased
Within a month of launch, we saw 4 out of every 10 buyers purchasing policies within minutes.
Time to quotes reduced from 30 mins. to 2 mins.
Buyers were able to see automated quotes in real-time within 2 minutes.
