Emerge.me
Emerge is an online supplemental insurance marketplace based in the US. Through research and industry insight, Emerge curates the best supplemental insurance plans for its customers. Currently they offer accidental insurance, hospitalization insurance, dental and vision insurance, and critical illness insurance. By sifting through the numerous companies that sell supplemental insurance, Emerge aims to offset the confusion and headache of buying insurance and looks to educate site visitors about the benefits of supplemental insurance.
The Problem
Emerge approached RED Academy looking for help with revamping their Get Advice form that helps users choose a product, or products, and provides information and a quote for the recommended product(s). Their current form includes the guidance of Max, a robot advisor that walks through the process with users. Working in a team with two UX designers and me, the UI designer, we set out to get insights and start redesigning the Get Advice form.
Research
After performing user surveys, it became clear that site visitors were unsure about what it was that Emerge was offering. Many users thought Emerge was just another insurance company. After reading through Emerge’s offerings 100% of those surveyed did not feel like the site clearly explained the products on offer. When asked what needs should be met to convince them to purchase supplemental insurance from Emerge one of our surveyed users said, “Proof of coverage by my doctors, authentication, detailed coverage information that makes sense (layman terms).”
With this in mind my team and I decided to broaden the scope of the project by adding a redesigned homepage and mocking up a scenario section that clearly explains the products being offered. When it came to the Get Advice form it became clear that Max the robot advisor was causing confusion as many thought he was a chatbot. With this research in hand it was time to start cooking up some solutions!
Inspiration
Since Emerge is selling a pretty serious and important product, the final design needed to represent a brand that is trusting, caring, friendly, and responsible. With this in mind I created a mood board that spoke to these traits.
And for the Get Advice form we found some great inspiration from these examples of Natural Language Forms:
Design Elements
Keeping in mind the brand objectives, I came up with a style tile. For trust I kept the logo trustworthy blue, but went with a slightly more subdued blue than the current blue of their logo. I then complimented this with an autumn leaves orange and mellow yellow, two friendly colours that draw visitors in without being too bright or overpowering.
When it came to font choice I went with Avenir. Avenir is a timeless font that displays beautifully in a digital environment. It’s easy to read and being a sans-serif has a clean and modern design.
The Final Designs
When we first got started on this project this was the homepage for emerge.me:
It’s was obvious from the first glance that the homepage did not clearly explain what it is that Emerge is offering. The copy is ambiguous and the product names imply that Emerge is selling insurance, when in reality they are selling supplemental insurance. It’s no wonder users were confused when they first came to the site!
Using Hotjar, an analytics tool that provides heatmaps to glean insights, my team and I found that website visitors were not clicking on the products in the hero image, in fact there was very limited action happening above the fold.
As we were working on redesigning the homepage, the team at Emerge was also making changes in an effort to make their offerings clearer. While this was definitely an improvement, we still wanted to take it a step further and really address the issues users were having.
For the homepage redesign we used a larger font and a muted shade of orange to draw users in and so users know from first glance what Emerge is offering. Again, to really emphasize what supplemental insurance is I created the image of the cliffs and bridge as a visual metaphor that shows how supplemental insurance bridges the financial gaps in a users current health insurance.
Next it was time to tackle the Get Advice form. The current form being used, while functional, didn’t flow well and was impersonal. Max the robot advisor was also causing confusion as many users thought that he was a chatbot.
After researching different form design patterns, we came across the natural language form. This is a conversational way of gathering user data, it’s a more natural way of getting users to share their information and we decided that this would be the way to go for the Advice Form redesign as it fits the middle ground between fun and practical.
And finally, we decided to include a recommendation that Emerge add a scenario for each product to show what exactly prospective buyers could expect from the plans that Emerge offers. We created a mockup of an example scenario in the form of a story that we recommended they eventually turn into short videos to really stand apart from other brands selling supplemental insurance.
Summary
In the end we wound up with three sets of deliverables that help address the pain points Emerge has been facing with their current website: a redesigned homepage with a clear declaration of what Emerge is offering, a redesigned Get Advice form that uses a natural language design pattern to get more users filling out the form from beginning to end, and finally a mockup of scenarios that can be used to further educate users about the products on offer.
Take a look at the clickable prototype here https://invis.io/RYEEKVATV
