Case study

Simplifying the customer experience for purchasing car insurance

As telco services become more commoditized, Singtel explored new business verticals by offering a car insurance product to its customers.

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The ask

I was tasked to design a buy-flow for customers to purchase car insurance from Singtel's website.

The buy-flow had to:

1. Be easy to use, as measured by:

Page-to-page conversions
Page-to-page abandonments

2. Encourage sales, as measured by:

Conversions
# of policies sold

I was the sole designer on this project, working as part of an Agile squad. My responsibilities included:

Designing and delivering the end-to-end experience
Iterating the design based on the technical capabilities and requirements of our insurance partner
Organising user research and testing
Coordinating with stakeholders to share and negotiate designs
Assisting the Product Owner in backlog prioritisation

Usability testing

To facilitate a quick test with 5 users, I designed a flow based on existing designs from our insurance partner.

We uncovered the following insights:

1. When it comes to car insurance, price has the biggest impact on how a customer chooses their insurance policy and provider.

2. Most users did not perceive Singtel as an insurance provider and were deterred from purchasing any form of insurance from the telco.

3. Most users split their car insurance purchase journey into

2 parts: getting multiple quotes for comparison, followed by purchasing the plan they've decided is best for them.

4. Most users find buying car insurance a tedious chore and want to get their quotes as effortlessly as possible in the comparison phase.

Landscape analysis

We also conducted a landscape analysis to see how our partner's quotation experience compared with their competitors.

Second iteration

I explored various ways to reduce the tedium of filling in a lengthy car insurance purchase form:

Combining certain fields that only had 1 valid option into a single declaration page

Progressively disclosing fields only when users make relevant inputs.

Combining fields such as Vehicle Make & Vehicle Model

Integrating with MyInfo, a tool developed by the Singapore government to expedite form-filling

Integrating with MyInfo

I tested the new designs incrementally through a series of Agile usability tests.

Agile usability tests are 'small' tests we run with 5 users each, to validate a series of features by measuring task completion and SEQ.

I worked with a UX researcher to prepare precise hypotheses I wanted to validate for each feature. Due to the high frequency of the tests, I kept a hypothesis backlog to prevent myself from being overwhelmed.

Delivering the designs

Once a feature was tested and validated, it went into our Agile development backlog.

I would then work with the Product Owner to prioritise the backlog and provide detailed walkthroughs of the designs with the developers. In order to deliver designs promptly through this process, I had to plan for my designs to be tested and ready at least 1 sprint ahead of development.

The results

Our product was launched in Nov 2020. Incremental improvements are being made as the squad monitors its performance.

As of March 2021, the use of MyInfo has proven to be effective in reducing friction in the buy-flow:

> 70% of converted users

used MyInfo to complete their purchase

Results

Closing thoughts

Apart from a simple and effortless journey, having a differentiated product plays an important role in finding success as well.

Given the chance, I would love to play a bigger role in defining the product construct for this insurance product, as well as the oft-forgotten claims journey, which can deeply colour a user's impression of their insurance provider.