A Better User Experience On-line at LV=

Usability testing, expert reviews and competitive evaluations helped LV= make it easier for their customers to apply for insurance online.

Insurance and investment provider LV= is the UK’s largest friendly society, offering a wide range of financial products on-line and through brokers to customers across the UK.  They are committed to finding ways to improve their customers’ experience when buying and using their products.

LV= asked System Concepts to help them improve the way customers applied for an insurance quote on-line.  We used three different approaches:

• Usability testing of the live LV= site
• Evaluation of the LV= site against its competitors
• Expert review of proposed changes to the site.

Usability testing

We carried out usability testing on the live LV= site for all three products: travel, home and car insurance.  For each type of insurance we asked participants to perform three tasks:

• access the homepage
• obtain a quote
• add optional extras and making a purchase

While working through each task, we asked participants to ‘think aloud’ and give us a running commentary of their opinions and perceptions.  They also completed questionnaires at the end of each task and at the end of the session.
 
At the end of the tasks, we focused on some specific parts of the website and encouraged participants to provide ideas on how they could be improved.

Generally, the applications were seen as straightforward and easy to use.  However, we identified a variety of ways to improve the effectiveness of the site, including technical issues, wording and terminology, navigation, layout and form design.

We prioritised our recommendations and included examples of good practice from other websites to illustrate how they might be implemented.

Competitive review

We compared the experience of ‘getting a travel insurance quote’ on the LV= site with three of its competitors.
 
The review was guided by our User eXperience Assessment Tool (UXAT) which scores a website overall and on eight separate dimensions as shown in the diagram. 

The scores provide an easy way to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of a site in isolation, against its competitors and against an overall benchmark.

We identified the areas which LV= needed to improve in order to out-perform their competitors on all dimensions and made practical recommendations, with illustrations, on how they could achieve this.

Expert review

An expert review, early in the design process is a quick and cost-effective way to identify any major usability issues before they become embedded in the design.  With the help of our User eXperience Assessment Tool (UXAT), we benchmarked designs for a new car insurance system against scores we had for competitive sites and the current system.

Our recommendations for improvement were prioritised to help the development team plan their work effectively.

Guidelines for future applications

Pulling all the results together, we created interactive storyboards and user interface guidelines for LV= to use as a reference when developing future applications.

Customised user centred design and accessibility training

We have carried out customised training for the eCommerce Web Content team at LV=.  You can read about their experiences in our article A Site for Poor Eyes?

What does the client think?

Paul Marsden, E-commerce Customer Experience Manager at LV= is delighted with the support he has received from System Concepts, saying:

At LV we put great importance on ensuring that we have the optimum customer experience. Working with System Concepts over the past few years has resulted in us being very proud of our LV.com site and has provided a very clear road map for our ongoing on-line application development.

We were recognised by 'Your Money' readers as the best online home and contents insurance and life insurance provider in 2008. The judges were impressed with our user-friendly, functional and high quality website.  System Concepts’ recommendations have played a major part in helping us improve the on-line user experience and we look forward to achieving more awards in the future.

 

Last updated: March, 2010

---