Kaus Insurance has been around for the past 30 years, and are now realizing that they are starting to fall behind due to their nonexistent online presence. They are hoping to take their business online, as they would like to start targeting a younger audience, whom they realize are using technology more than ever.
Kaus understands that insurance can be confusing, which is why they want to provide affordable coverage, and a simple, easy to use quoting process that will make users feel less overwhelmed and intimidated when purchasing insurance.
Design a responsive e-commerce website for an insurance company that provides a pleasing, affordable experience and allows customers to easily browse products and find what they're looking for.
UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher, Branding
Sketch, Invision, OptimalSort
Jan-Feb 2021
Kaus
How might we help young people with little insurance knowledge find and purchase the right insurance for them at an affordable price?
🔍 What do people currently use to find their insurance policies?
🛍 Why do people feel overwhelmed when shopping for insurance?
🧐 What draws people to purchase insurance?
🤔 What factors affect a person's decision to purchase one insurance policy over another?
It is very convenient because users can compare policies with other companies, make quick searches, and there is no phoning around to companies. Some are even able to provide quotes in a matter of minutes. A lot of the traditional insurance companies have been falling behind due to their late understanding of UX.
There has also been a rise of "insurtech" companies - which use technological innovations to disrupt the current insurance industry model and innovate the insurance industry.
I compared some of the top insurance companies that have a similar target audience to see what works well for them, and what they could improve on.
To understand the problem scope and the users experience with Insurance companies, I conducted five interviews - two participants who haven't purchased insurance before and three that have.
I decided to divide the interview questions into two scenarios - one for those that have purchased insurance before, and another set for those who haven’t. The user’s experience with insurance and their thought process when it comes to purchasing may vary depending on if they have actively looked to buy it before vs. never having any interest in it.
After conducting the interviews, I synthesized my research with an empathy map to narrow down on anything that was unique or came up frequently.
People felt overwhelmed by the amount of options and information.
They put in a lot of research before making a purchase (they value reviews, forums, recommendations).
Value price & coverage the most when purchasing insurance. They also want customer service that is reliable, responsive, and quick.
Find a lot of insurance products unclear & confusing.
The insights that I had gathered from the Empathy Map were then used to define the goals and needs of the target user, Amy.
She is a young digital marketer who recently graduated university, and is looking to purchase her first car. Car insurance is mandatory where she lives, but finding the right one is confusing and taking a long time, which has delayed her purchase of the car. Her and her boyfriend are also thinking of settling down in the next few years, so it would be nice if they could easily add bundles for the insurance coverage that they may need in the future.
Now that I had identified the target user, Amy, I went over the business goals from the project brief to make sure they aligned with what Amy was looking for.
With all of the research found above showing that users find the process confusing and overwhelming, I knew that I had to provide a clear and simplified approach to insurance. I listened to what people valued when purchasing insurance, such as customer service and reviews, which helped me prioritize my list of features.
As mentioned by the participants I interviewed, the information on insurance websites can often be overwhelming and confusing. As I was starting to gather the information I wanted to include on the website, it seemed appropriate to conduct a card sort exercise to help me categorize everything properly, and in a way that was familiar to users.
I took the card sort results to figure out the main navigation on the homepage of the site.
Main Nav:
By building off of the sitemap, I thought about the main task that we would want a user to take on the website, which is to get a quote. I focused on this task as I considered the different ways that a user could end up here.
Here are some of the considerations that helped me make my decisions:
Now that I had a list of features, as well as the typical path that a user would take, it was time to determine which features would go on each page. I carefully thought about which features would best help the user in completing the task, which is to get a quote. These decisions were backed up by research.
For example, insurance pages should have:
Based on my research, and keeping my persona, Amy, in mind, I felt that these features were most important to have on an insurance homepage:
Many users expressed that price was a major factor in choosing whether or not to purchase, so it's important that they know that it's affordable. They really valued reviews/testimonials when making any buying decision. Also making the process to get a quote as clear as possible since people value transparency, and so that they don't feel intimidated.
To quickly test out my ideas, I first sketched out the pages on paper that were necessary for the user to get an insurance quote - such as the homepage, insurance landing pages, quote page & payment page.
I was able to choose what I liked about the sketches and take them into Sketch to begin building the outline of Kaus' website.
The website needed to be responsive so that users could view it at various screen sizes. I tried to optimize the screen sizes and focus on the placement of items.
Some challenges that I faced when designing responsive:
When thinking about Kaus, I wanted people to feel comforted, yet know that the company was very sophisticated and trustworthy. A lot of the images that I was gravitating towards included flat vector illustrations & rounded corners/curves. This was a good starting point for my brand, and also helped start to establish a colour palette.
I started by brainstorming some adjectives to describe Kaus:
At first I came up with a lot of different ways to represent this, from links, open hands, to umbrellas. I knew that the main message that I hoped would be conveyed is to make the users feel safe and reassured, but also comfortable.
To do this, I made sure that the logo had rounded edges to represent that reassuring, comforting feel.
The chosen logo was a play on links, since links are usually used to show connection. The heart shape gave that youthful look since Kaus is trying to target a younger audience, as well as feelings of safety and comfort.
Referring to my moodboard and logo, I put together this style tile as a guide that could be referred to when putting together the UI designs.
I referred back to my wireframes and style tile, but made sure not to stick with them completely since I was realizing some things needed to change as I was designing (such as image sizes). For the most part, the text size stayed consistent between web and tablet, but I had to start reducing it for mobile. I changed the vector images to match my brand colours, and utilized a lot of whitespace so that it looked minimal and the information didn't feel overwhelming.
How I was able to use the colours:
In case I or anyone else ever need to recreate my design, I put together this UI kit. It was especially helpful to put together once I figured out the different states of the buttons and form fields.
The user was told that they just purchased their first car, and were looking to buy car insurance. They were given specific information about the car that they were looking to purchase to help them fill out the information.
They were then told that they needed to find more information about car insurance coverages.
The test was conducted remotely with four participants. I sat with them through Zoom and recorded the screen as I asked them to complete the given tasks on the high-fidelity wireframes. All participants were able to complete the tasks successfully.
This map was done to help sort, prioritize, and rank user testing feedback. It was helpful to divide the information in this way to prioritize what needs to be fixed right away, and what can be fixed in the future.
I focused on the changes that I could implement right away:
If you're interested, you can view the final prototype below:
The first thing would be to test out the changes that I made above with participants, to see if the users have any problems with them. I would then take the feedback that I get from that test and try to implement them again. This process would likely repeat for a few times, until we are ready to explore new features (referring back to the "can come later" section on the feature roadmap list). I would also want to conduct some tests for mobile & tablet as well, since the prototype focused on desktop.
Insurance is something that many people realize they need, but don't know much about. So coming up with a solution that makes insurance look appealing is already difficult enough, and then I had to figure out how to target a specific audience like the younger generation. I made sure to reference a lot of newer insurance company websites during my competitive analysis to see how they were appealing to a younger audience and standing out. It also helped to talk and interview people who fit this target audience, as they were able to tell me how I can help to make insurance less confusing. I was able to learn what frustrated them about the purchasing process, and reasons why they avoid it in the first place.
Overall, I was able to simplify the quoting process and not make users feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that was being thrown at them or that they were being asked for. I learned that coverage and price is what users value the most when purchasing insurance, and I was able to highlight these on my website.
