State Farm has continued to improve its site with a redesigned life insurance section. Last month we showcased the new homepage, featuring a de-cluttered, task-focused look that sought to simplify and speed up the user experience. This design philosophy has now been extended to new site areas and represents a considerable improvement.
This has not been a cosmetic redesign. The colors, fonts, and graphic elements are largely unchanged. Instead, what matters most to site visitors has been radically overhauled: the words, the local navigation, and the content.
We’ll look at the changes in detail in the future (in our customer-only publication Insurance Website Review), but some of the key improvements include:
- Removal of material irrelevant to people researching life insurance from content area
- Addition of content that facilitates easy product comparison
- ‘Get a quote’ and ‘Find an agent’ are integrated prominently within the page design
- Extension from the home page of task-oriented language that resonates with visitors
- Introduction of expanded local left-sided navigation menu
State Farm’s site improvements reinforce the message that we have been communicating for years. Site content and navigation, along with the words chosen for links and general text, needs to align with customer expectations. People come to websites with tasks in mind. The two challenges for companies are firstly to know what the expectations are, and then to tailor the site design accordingly (or rebuild it from scratch).
Company-centric designs – where content is added just because one department or another thought it was a good idea, or for political reasons monthly newsletters – are going the way of the dinosaur. Successful site design comes from knowing with site visitors are expecting, and knowing what they want to do on your site. Good design, of any form, is not a form of artistic expression, and is only successful when it puts the user first.
The page heading on State Farm’s main life insurance page now reads ‘Life insurance just got easier’. For site visitors, this is certainly the case.
So, what are your impressions of the updated site? Do you have a site (in insurance or financial services) that deserves to be showcased?
