HealthPlans.com is one of the most visited health insurance websites behind HealthCare.gov. 90% of all health insurance consumers came through HealthPlans.com in 2014. The site provides information on how health insurance works, guides on how to pick the right insurance for you, and current health news. Their hope is once they educate their readers, they can then lead these insurance shoppers down a funnel to reach a treasure trove of potential insurance carriers.

Goal

HealthPlans.com was originally an SEO site with lots of drab content with little traffic or conversions. When the Affordable Care Act came along, the site grew overnight. To keep that growth going, HP wanted to add more relevant content, increase the user experience of their conversion funnel, and transform the brand to be a more user-centric name.

Research

It was an easy task to find out what consumers wanted to know when they came to a health insurance site: what plan will provide them the coverage they need for their lifestyle at the cheapest price. At the time, a consumer would have to sift through insurance jargon and rules. I helped the content editor with a plan to add new articles to HealthPlans.com that focused more on lifestyles and used more human speak.

After looking at competitors, I found that busy sites with lots of stock photography was used. The competitors were actually a lot like the current site. Most of the sites had poor hierarchy and made it hard for users to know what to do first. I usually felt so overwhelmed, I would either click on an article not knowing what it was or just click away.

I knew my main mission for reworking the HealthPlans.com site was to simplify and make more friendly. HP needed to be a cool friend who just learned about health insurance and wanted to share their experiences.

Design

In order to make health insurance “fun and easy,” I lightened the colors from a dark navy and grey to brighter blues and greens. I added fonts like Copse and Montserrat to increase the brand’s personality. I replaced a lot of the generic stock photos with simpler icons to lighten the mood.

For the funnel, I made the form a multi step carousel so that it wasn’t as intimidating. Doing so, I could also increase the size of the fields to make mobile browsing easier.

Result

The end result was a playful learning experience for a not-so-playful topic. This update led to an increase in traffic, session length, and conversions.