Ladderlife
Helping families protect their loved ones.
Platform
Mobile
Responsive Web
Responsive Web
My Role
Researching competitors
Creating a flow that reduces drop-off
Can we simplify the process to get a quote for term life insurance faster?
Users that visit our website need a fast way to get a quote for term life insurance. From our research data, most people are shopping around and comparing prices. We need a fast way to give a dollar number yet still be in a range of accuracy based on underwritting questions.
What currently exists?
The old flow had users go through a series of long winded questions. Each input field is a whole page. The original intent was a walkthrough that was guided, but drop off rate was high.
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What are our competitors doing?
How can we do better?
The curation of experiences when a user is window shopping is juxtaposed the heaviest at this stage of the funnel.
It is imperitive to standout.
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Taking a look at the competition is a critical step when designing for quotes. We can expect a customer is shopping around and therefore going through various experiences already.
What is helpful to see is:
- How many questions there were.
- What type of questions.
- How you moved through the flow.
How underwriters assess risk is unique.
Quote accuracy vs. user experience
Each company that offers life insurance needs to assess the risk that an individule would claim their life insurance. The more questions that are asked upfront, the more accurate the quote, but at a cost to user experience by having to answer more questions.
Working with compliance, legal, and the Ladder underwritting team was crucial to ensure the price we offered was true and valid. We also had to go back and forth in UX copy to make sure the language used was technical enough and legally binding.
Designing a flow
I wanted to first start with combining like questions into sections. Without deviating too far away from the original flow. Since competitors have taken this approach, It was safe to assume it was working somewhere.
Making more complex + inclusive language
The problem with the first iteration was that is still was not as direct. Also, having a reflexive question, “Do you have any family medical history?” required more details. This made the experience not as plesant because it “tricked” the user by adding an additional step in the flow.
The team also had a conversation with the UX writer about the issue of “sex.” Should we be more inclusive and acknowledge more than one sex? The decision to keep it at sex in the final version landed on the fact that our competitors were asking the same question as binary. From an underwritting perspective, we ask this question simply because people who were assigned female at birth tend to live longer than males.
This opened up a conversation about inclusive and sensitive questions. The team came to a consensus that since our competition was asking similar questions for a quote, a user shopping around would be accustomed to these questions and be familiar with the UX language.
Simplifying
The team decided to try and merge all the entry fields into one single page. Moving from page to page was more cumbersome than necessary and having a step counter was not significant.
After a few iterations on how to present a quote, a modal would be more appropriate as it prompts and gives the entry form center stage.
Simplifying even more -legally
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The team then worked with underwritting and ommitted even more entry fields to simplify the form even further. Some questions did not affect the quote as much and more details would be elaborated on later in the application form.
Conclusion
From what the flow was and became, the process simplied and got customers into the door much faster.
Working with inter-diciplinary teams in the organization was cruitial for this to happen. From marketing, to copy, legal, project managers, and underwritting - I worked with various teams to speed up the process flow to make a seamless experience.
