A human-centered digital experience for getting a life insurance quote

UX Research, UX/UI, strategy

A human-centered digital experience for getting a term life insurance quote at Thrivent

Initial research

UX teardown of existing state and looking towards competitor experiences

Our first order of action was to conduct an internal teardown of the existing user experience to find out what was working and what was not, as well completed a competitive analysis with 10 different analogs in the space. In addition to this, we conducted 12 unmoderated user testing sessions (with Thrivent’s main target audience the “Purposeful Provider”) asking users to go through the current state experience and to compare it to a couple of other competitor experiences.

What we learned:

Landing Page / Gathering User Data

+ Succinct explanations are good, imagery is important to make a user feel like they are the target, starting a quote must be easy

- Seems less personalized, too much jargon, seemed like an old website, not user-friendly

Getting Your Quote

+ Speediness in getting a quote, range of quotes provides a more transparent “ballpark,” let users decide when they wanted to move forward with getting in touch with a rep

- Quote feels inaccurate due to lack of health-pointed questions, wanted a more in depth calculator to determine how much coverage they wanted, expected to fill out more info to get a more accurate quote, does not feel customized

Based on our competitive analysis and findings from user research, we were able to form user stories as the basis of our future state MVP that heavily informed the next stage of designing the experience.

service blueprint

Mapping out the experience flow

Taking into account the current experience, our initial research, and the Thrivent Insurance Team’s quoting process, we blueprinted an experience that followed our user’s desired path and outcome as well as the current tech stack and insurance processes.

wireframing & user testing

Figuring out the right type of content for the landing page

Through our initial research, we learned that the landing page had the biggest chance to woo a customer within seconds with welcoming imagery, clear headlines and content that gave the ability to dive into deeper reading if interested, and clearly communicating and educating the user on Thrivent’s value propositions throughout the whole page.

Users didn’t mind answering more questions if it meant a more accurate quote

The original life insurance quoting tool only asked 4 questions which returned users a generic range of quotes, leaving the user confused as to what their actual number might be and hesitant to move forward with Thrivent. We tested our user’s willingness to answer more personal questions if it meant they were going to see a more personalized quote.

final Visual designs & user testing

High fidelity landing page designs resonated with users

Our target audience, the Purposeful Provider, values their family over anything and needs to trust that any company they work with matches their values. After playing around with a couple of different layouts of the landing page and testing those, we found a layout that gave a little piece for every different type of user for this page. Our users resonated with copy/imagery centered on family and “doing it for loved ones” and this iteration gave a good balance of giving enough information while not overloading too much. Thanks to this page, people were able to understand what Thrivent was uniquely about from this page, even if they had never heard of it before.

We delighted users with illustrations and fun facts about Thrivent to make the question process seem less daunting

Answering personal questions for life insurance is always a big pain point. We wanted our users to feel like this process was worth it and fun at the same time.

Last step: giving a customized quote and encouraging them to speak to a financial representative

The main purpose of this last page is to give our users a chance to review their quote and play with the coverage amount and term lengths to get to a price that feels right to them. Based on the fact that we know they’re usually shopping around on different sites for quotes, this was also Thrivent’s last chance to seal the deal and encourage them to talk to one a financial professional to learn more. Based on our initial research, we knew that users didn’t want to feel pressured here and wanted to have a couple of different options to move forward. For our most ready users, we have the call now option, and for those who need a little more time to think or to speak to a spouse/partner, we allow them to schedule a call for later or simply have a representative email them.

Dev handoff

Making our (design) dreams come true

I partnered with developers early on to make sure that we were designing a feasible experience for the overall timeline of the project. We also knew we had to work upon the existing quoting tech stack available so being in sync with them was crucial to the success of the product. I worked with the engineering team to answer any questions about interactions, functionality, and logic and created a list requirements for them to work off.

Site is now live! Check out the website and maybe get a quote for some life insurance 😉

lessons learned

Balancing business needs and user desirability is a fine art

Making sure our user’s needs were prioritized throughout the whole process was a bit of a challenge when balancing specific client business needs. Through this project, I learned how to make sure clients were brought along throughout the entire design process, ensuring that any design decisions made are in service of our users and essentially the business too.