Improved insurance sales journey for Towergate

Project challenge

Towergate has a large product range and supports a broad church of consumer and business customers. The demands on user experience are significant. Design fixes over the years had attempted to optimise under-performing sections of the site but a more holistic approach was required. Our challenge was to create an all-new user experience, surfacing the extensive product offering more effectively, refining messaging and proposition, improving customer journeys and leveraging the wealth of advice content to support SEO. Bonus challenge; Internal support processes were complex and at worst compromised some of the external customer journeys.

Our approach

Our priority - and our client’s priority - was to gain customer insight and understand market landscape. Discovery & design work included personas, journey analysis, competitor benchmarking, IA reviews & restructuring, prototyping and testing.

We formalised 6 personas based on a body of previous research and insight. These covered a diverse customer set, ranging from self-employed plumbers, to high street entrepreneurs, to military personnel, to retiree classic car enthusiasts.

Benchmarking covered leading aggregators, challenger brands, big insurers and other large broker groups. 

Challenger brands like Digital Risks in the commercial space scored well in benchmarking, as did Go Compare in dealing with extensive product sets and providing clear, consistent labelling & navigation across mobile and desktop.

Benchmark sites were scored across 3 key criteria 1) proposition & production values 2) information architecture 3) function & key journeys.

A heuristic review scored the current Towergate site across 7 categories and 150 criteria. Existing journeys were mapped and heat-mapping/analytics data assessed. User testing and design work is underway (2020) to develop the new site. Shown below are architecture diagrams and exploratory navigation schemes to help users find products and service support quickly and easily. 

Design outcomes

Results from the user testing helped to inform the next round of design development, with an emphasis on more hand-holding for small business customers, especially around guidance on insurance requirements.

The new site is due to go live in late 2021/early 2022.

An early design stage - not final - is shown here

Great collaboration partners. Very strong in proposition and experience design. Consistently deliver value-add thinking and digital design excellence.

Zoe Rattey, Digital Customer Experience Manager, Towergate Insurance