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Car insurance price is an incredibly important factor in customers’ decisions related to their policy. Demonstrably understanding influential factors such as initial quote price fluctuations, renewal pricing, how to pay, when to pay, and how to break premiums into smaller payments are vital to the acquisition & retention of quality customers.
From user feedback, the digital product team at Esurance identified the need to enhance our payment methods and plans, and approached UX research and design teams to evaluate and build an improved user experience. Throughout our design and research sprints we iteratively evaluated customer demand and design features to ensure the success of the product launch.
View related UXR best practices learned from this project and more. See 5 Methods of Prioritizing Recommendations for how to order UX recommendations by most important variables, and 4 Components of an Improvement Action Plan for how to ensure that change actually happens.
research sprint planning quantitative surveys contextual user interviews moderated usability studies usability testing unmoderated research
First, we clarified and documented the business need in order to structure our approach. This is a helpful step to ensure we stay focused on providing actionable and useful insights / recommendations throughout the project lifespan. The goal is to establish a vision, context, business goals, and research objectives to keep the team oriented through ambiguity that naturally arises mid-project.
Second, we planned and executed quick-hit research to validate market / customer demand. We uncovered an extraordinary amount of internal knowledge on related subjects. Leveraging SMEs, past research, and enterprise resources proved a useful source of quick, yet valuable insights💡. For this project, we worked closely with various teams, such as Voice of the Customer, Digital Chat, Market Research, and fellow UX Researchers to tap into existing data. Then, we were able to synthesize these into directional insights for our product team.
Third, we tested low-fidelity concepts with real customers to evaluate initial usability and design. Working closely with UX Design, we incorporated our insights into their design process. We tested the initial clickable prototypes with customers to gain insight into major pain points, experience issues, and opportunities to improve. We ran several iterations of low-fidelity to high-fidelity prototypes to improve the product experience based on customer feedback.
Lastly, the prototypes evolved based on leadership input, customer feedback, developer working sessions, and product design requirements. Final usability studies further honed the language, icons, design, experience and value proposition to set up the product feature for launch. Post final development, the new feature set was launched in 2 test states.
Next steps include monitoring the results, gathering feedback, improving the design as we scaled across more U.S. states. The project continues to be a great learning experience working closely with development, design, product, and other teams to bring new user experiences to market that are aligned with customer needs.
