2019 - Present
Insurance
Experience design
User testing invaluable
Towergate is one of the UK's leading insurance brokers with a large online sales operation. Our brief was to redesign their main website to improve sales conversions and customer journeys.
Project challenge
Towergate has a large product range and supports a broad church of consumer and business customers. The demands on user experience are significant. Design fixes over the years had attempted to optimise under-performing sections of the site but a more holistic approach was required. Our challenge was to create an all-new user experience, surfacing the extensive product offering more effectively, refining messaging and proposition, improving customer journeys and leveraging the wealth of advice content to support SEO. Bonus challenge; Internal support processes were complex and at worst compromised some of the external customer journeys.
Our approach
Our priority - and our client’s priority - was to gain customer insight and understand market landscape. Discovery & design work included personas, journey analysis, competitor benchmarking, IA reviews & restructuring, prototyping and testing.
We formalised 6 personas based on a body of previous research and insight. These covered a diverse customer set, ranging from self-employed plumbers, to high street entrepreneurs, to military personnel, to retiree classic car enthusiasts.
Benchmarking covered leading aggregators, challenger brands, big insurers and other large broker groups.
Challenger brands like Digital Risks in the commercial space scored well in benchmarking, as did Go Compare in dealing with extensive product sets and providing clear, consistent labelling & navigation across mobile and desktop.
Benchmark sites were scored across 3 key criteria 1) proposition & production values 2) information architecture 3) function & key journeys.
A heuristic review scored the current Towergate site across 7 categories and 150 criteria. Existing journeys were mapped and heat-mapping/analytics data assessed. User testing and design work is underway (2020) to develop the new site. Shown below are architecture diagrams and exploratory navigation schemes to help users find products and service support quickly and easily. 
Watch this space
Results from the user testing are informing the next round of design development. Key insights have included the need for more hand-holding for small business customers especially around guidance on insurance requirements. Watch this space for the launch of the new site in late 2020/early 2021.