Great to get an insider commenting. You make some great points, and I’d love to get your ideas on a few of my responses:
1. “…online companies do provide customers with extremely lengthy forms, however such questions are absolutely essential if you want to get the correct quotation.” – hopefully my post makes clear that online psychology is quite different to offline. If I call you it’s more difficult for me to bail from a human interaction, but if I go online I don’t give a hoot about your server being offended if I “put down the phone”. The basic premise of my post is that insurance companies have to learn how people “think” online. Would you not agree that FBD had a far more appealing funnel than either of the other 2 subject sites?
2. “Insurance should not be purchased only based on the cost but on the quality of the policy.” – IMO the insurance industry as a whole makes every effort to obfuscate cover terms in extremely long-winded T&Cs. Consumers are not likely to read these, so how do you think the insurance industry could help with more consumer-friendly documentation?
3. “When you purchase insurance online you have very little standing if there is a claim.” – are you suggesting that products sold online are purposely contrived to offer less cover? I do value the service offered by brokers, but I also imagine that unless you have a lawyer read through the T&Cs of any policy there’s every chance your coverage is less than expected whether purchased online or off (this also comes back to crazy T&Cs for consumer products).

Thanks for commenting – I absolutely appreciate the views of someone looking out.
Rgds
Richard

Thanks for dropping by and commenting. I think we’re both in agreement that a lot of companies still don’t “get” the web. But that’s actually good news as it means there’s still plenty of opportunity out there.

Rgds
Richard

I’m like you; I get to about step two of these things and bail. But I don’t just bail, I bail muttering “F**k off, you stupid XYZ company…”.

It’s bad enough losing the prospect, but sending them off cursing you is infinitely worse again.

Good to see you last week, and just a shame we didn’t get time to shoot the breeze. I’ve chatted with quite a couple of companies in this space, and the one theme I see throughout is an old-school marketing mentality – fitting the square peg into the round hole.

Q. How many insurance sites run blogs?
Q. How many update their web content?
Q. How many build content around users?
Q. How many are using the web to build interactions, e.g. twitter and web out-reach?
Q. How many have user-centric design philosophy?

List goes on, and FBD are the example I use of a company that’s progressive with their online marketing strategy.

Hopefully catch you again soon.
Rgds
Richard

Good post!

Dave

Sorry – I had to pull your comment out of Akismet queue
The workflow for FBD, even beyond the ballpark quote is very light weight. I managed to get my full quote without entering half of the info required by the AA. And their workflow was absolutely built around me, not their marketing and quote systems.

I called the AA this morning, and they collected nearly as much on the phone. They wanted my current provider info to generate the quote. How that could be required, other than for them to vary the premium I cant tell.

But the main point I’m trying to make here is that you, as an insurance website, have to give me, as a potential client, enough perceived benefit to justify my commitment. The more barriers you put in front of me (longer form, more steps, no quote before giving my life details) the more benefit you have to offer me. FBD seem to have cracked this by keeping their quote engine light, and offering me a teaser quote very early on to keep my interest. The AA killed me long before I even got the quote.

Thanks for dropping by, and hope all is well with your employer,
Rgds
Richard

Thanks for your comment. I’m in total agreement with you re FBD – they seem to have a user-centric design process which works well, and I’m fairly sure reaps dividends for them.

Thanks for dropping by, rgds
Richard

As as aside, when I’m shopping around for car insurance I never give my correct personal details to these websites. I use bogus a name, dob and address (although the dob and address will be close to my own so the underwriting isn’t adversely effected). It’s my way of protesting at the amount of personal information these companies require just to give you a quick quote.

Great post!

I work for an online insurance broker and we’re very familiar with the issues that you raise.

Everything you say about putting users off is true. However, one of the challenges to designing a good quote workflow is that insurers require detailed information about the risk before they can provide an _accurate_ quote that they can stand over.

Despite initial appearances, even FBD needs to gather this detailed information. The first FBD quote that you see, based on only a few fields, is a ‘ball park’ figure. For an accurate quote, which let’s face it is what everyone customer wants when seeking the best deal, you need to provide more information in subsequent steps – the final quote will likely not be what you were quoted initially. Also, after you’ve invested the time to provide the necessary detail, the system can decide to take the quote ‘offline’ by requesting that you call FBD to discuss your needs.

While I agree that there’s a lot that can be done to prevent putting the customer off, there are limits to what can be done with an insurance quotation site. There will always be a compromise between the level of detail required to get a quote and accuracy of the quote. FBD have done a better job than most, but you’d have to question the usefulness of a quote that will most likely change once the full information is known.