Usability review puts customers in driving seat

Insurance company esure has put its car insurance customers firmly in the driving seat with a major usability enhancement to its 'quote and buy' online process.

Carried out by usability and accessibility experts optimum.web, the enhancement addressed and solved problems that users could potentially encounter during the quotation process.

With a view to improving conversion levels and up-selling opportunities, the usability work aimed to ensure clarity of presentation and ease of access to information.

Usability issues, including use of colours, fonts, limited space, labelling and positioning of buttons as well as the use of progress indicators were optimised by optimum-web before the site went live.

In addition to their own site, esure also markets its car insurance products through price comparison sites.

The usability work also set out to resolve the difficulties that can arise when customers either have to re-input their personal data once they have been delivered to esure by such third parties or are taken directly to a final 'Quote and Buy' page.

Not only was there a risk of abandonment of the quotation process, but esure was also potentially missing out on classic up-selling opportunities for other products such as breakdown cover, motor legal protection and home insurance.

Ed Longley, e-Commerce manager at esure commented: "With there being various routes for visitors to arrive at our quotation page, we saw it as imperative that the user experience, once at the site, was as straightforward as possible.

"Optimum.web's heuristic review analysis was crucial in bringing to the fore a number of usability issues ahead of the new quotation page going live, enabling us to deliver a first class user experience and increase revenue through cross-sales".

Managing Director of optimum.web (the usability division of RedEye), Keith Simpson, added: "Carrying out such a review while the relevant page is still a prototype is key to ensuring usability issues are addressed.

"By implementing these heuristic tests, esure has undoubtedly put its customers' usability needs high on the agenda".

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