Online providers: Losing their lustre?

If you have ever tried to buy car or home insurance online, you may sympathise with the consumer opinions in Global Review's new 4CE Benchmark study.

The research, which accounts for consumer attitudes, opinions and an expert audit of websites, reveals that consumers are far from happy with the current experiences on offer.

With dissatisfaction high, brands will lose prospective customers, both to online and phone application routes which are more expensive and time consuming. Increasing online conversion must be a key priority for UK insurance brands, and improving customer experience is crucial.

According to the Q1 2012 study, home and motor insurance websites in the UK are doing a poor job of supporting and converting their online audiences.

Users, who were asked to undertake a number of tasks on various home and motor insurance sites, were left unsatisfied and unlikely to recommend their experiences.

For example, almost a third said they were not confident with their experience on the insurance sites, which could lead to reluctance to transact online.

When asked whether they thought the site would help them to decide and apply for that brand's insurance, 39% of home and 38% of motor site users didn't think they would.

In addition, no website in either benchmark achieved a positive Web Promoter Score. This score, based on the well-known Net Promoter methodology, asks users how likely they are to recommend the website to family and friends.

The number of detractors is taken away from the number of promoters to give an overall Web Promoter Score; the average WPS for motor insurance sites is just -37%, and for home a slightly better -30%.

The highest WPS for motor insurance sites was -14% for the AA, with More Than receiving the highest WPS for home insurance sites at -17%. Given the power of positive word of mouth in the insurance industry, the negativity of users towards sites at present is a major stumbling block.

Why are consumers so unsatisfied with their online experiences? Both motor and home websites lack some of the basic information and functionality that researching consumers expect.

For example, 77% of home insurance consumer site users and 83% of motor consumers expect to be able to compare a range of brands side by side on a website, but 80% of the home brands reviewed and 40% of motor insurance sites don't facilitate this.

Half of home insurance researchers even expect to be able to compare products from multiple providers on a brand site, something that few brands attempt.

The current financial climate also influences the content consumers would expect to see too; more than 60% of motor insurance researchers expected to see information about safe driver discounts, content which is rarely made explicit.

One of the most important industry-wide problems is the failure of brands to positively differentiate; the lack of integrated content across a brand's site leads to a lack of consumer confidence and a failure of the website to close the deal.

For example, few brands offer any external validation of marketing claims, such as Which? awards, or any customer satisfaction data.

If they offer such information, it is rarely placed throughout the site, just appearing on the homepage, for example. To be effective it needs to be obvious throughout the customer journey.

Many sites focus largely on new business, failing to address existing customers, leading to a failure of support for paying customers as well as a level of distrust from potential new buyers.

Why should a buyer spend their money on a brand which seems not to cater for their needs once they become a customer?

By failing to meet customer needs, insurance brands are wasting online investment and failing to convince consumers to buy, resulting in poor conversion metrics.

In many cases, improved satisfaction, and conversion, could be easily achieved by a few tweaks; at present, sites are leaving revenue on the table for the sake of some simple user experience improvements, such as adding award information, making FAQs linked throughout all pages, and adding phone and contact details on each page.