Budget Insurance builds better online journey

Budget has developed a new customer journey for its car insurance to optimise traffic generated from the four leading insurance price comparison sites.

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The brand has adopted a shopping basket approach usually deployed by online retailers, but less widely adopted in financial services, to provide greater clarity into the product being bought and its price. Budget is part of the insurance intermediary Frontline, a division of the BGL Group, which also operates Comparethemarket.com, Ibuyeco, Bennetts and Dial Direct.

Karen Wilkinson, Frontline’s associate director for e-commerce, says: “We’ve always performed well on price comparison sites but with any online purchase a number of customers drop out of the process before purchasing their policy. We’ve conducted an extensive ’test and learn’ exercise to understand what influences customer behaviour and applied best practice from other industries to improve our performance. We’re confident that the changes will have a major impact on the bottom line.”

More than 60 per cent of car insurance policies are now bought online. The shopping basket will show prospects arriving from price comparison sites the exact contents of their policy and the premium to be paid. Optional extras, such as breakdown cover, a replacement car or legal cover, will be clearly displayed. Budget’s brand will also be emphasised in the post-aggregator journey. The new e-commerce approach was developed in-house.

“We’ve made significant changes to the buying process and are confident that they will have a material impact. We’ll be measuring performance closely – not just on final sales, but on the number and whereabouts of drop-offs,” says Wilkinson.