Simply Business, 2018 · 12 min read
Overview
Simply Business is a leading online insurance brokerage, serving over 8 million small businesses and sole traders.
In 2019, the company identified health insurance for small businesses as a key growth opportunity. To explore this potential, a Product Discovery Unit was formed, comprising a product manager, user researcher, data analyst, insurance expert, and myself as the lead UX product designer.
The PDU was dedicated to deeply understanding customer needs and exploring new product opportunities for the business that address real problems.
Key takeaways
This case study outlines the challenges faced and the strategic approaches taken to address them, including:
Leading the customer experience strategy within a cross-functional team to identify and launch new insurance products.
Conducting extensive user research and competitive analysis to assess whether health insurance was a viable product-market fit for Simply Business.
Effectively iterating through prototyping and testing phases to design and deliver the best possible customer experience.
Driving evidence-based experimentation to validate customer interest and preferences.
Successfully launching the first health insurance product at Simply Business
The Challenge
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Small business owners struggle to find tailored health insurance options. Simply Business needed to determine if health insurance was a viable offering and how to design a seamless, user-friendly experience that fits naturally into their existing product lineup.
Strategy
Can we offer the right product to our customers?
Recognising our team's limited experience in the health sector, our first step was to gather extensive insights through a combination of qualitative and quantitative research. This involved:
User Interviews:
We interviewed 12 small business owners who use private health insurance to understand their needs and preferences.
Customer Survey:
An in-depth survey was completed by 600 existing Simply Business customers to gauge their interest in health insurance and their willingness to pay.
Competitive Benchmarking:
The team conducted a comprehensive analysis of existing SME health insurance products to identify gaps and opportunities in the market.
This thorough research provided us with the evidence needed to confidently move the project forward and significantly enhanced our collective understanding of the health insurance landscape.
Things we learnt included:
How much small business customers are prepared to pay for health insurance
What health benefits are most popular to our existing customers
What illnesses and treatment covers are most popular
Refining our strategy through targeted assumption testing
Building on the insights from our initial research, we ran a workshop to refine our approach to introducing healthcare insurance. The objective was to identify and challenge any assumptions that could influence the product's success. If the assumptions proved correct, we would move on to the next opportunity and discontinue this one.
Together, we compiled a list of desirability and usability assumptions rooted in our research findings, focusing on the riskiest ones for targeted experimentation.
The two key assumptions we needed to validate were:
Simply Business can offer the right health insurance product tailored to the needs and preferences of small business owners.
Customers would trust and prefer to buy this insurance through Simply Business.
These experiments were crucial in gathering the evidence needed to make informed decisions about the viability of healthcare as a business proposition.
Experimentation
Experiment 1.1:
Brand versus price
To validate our product strategy, we conducted a series of small, measurable tests using the knowledge gathered in our earlier interviews to prove or disprove our key assumptions quickly.
Assumption:
We can offer the right product to our customers
Hypothesis:
Customers prefer to spend more on healthcare with a trusted brand, even if it offers fewer benefits.
Method:
We conducted an unmoderated test with 10 small business owners. Participants were presented with two SME health insurance offerings and asked to choose the one that best suited their needs, while explaining their decision.
Offering 1: Equipsme—a smaller, relatively unknown health insurance provider offering a cheaper policy with more benefits.
Offering 2: Bupa—one of the UK's leading healthcare specialists, offering a more expensive policy with fewer benefits.
Findings:
Participants were more focused on the value offered by the insurance policy rather than being associated with a big brand.
Experiment 1.2:
Response to medical language
Assumption:
We can offer the right product to our customers
Hypothesis:
Customers prefer healthcare communication that uses familiar, everyday language.
Method:
We conducted an unmoderated test with 10 small business owners. Participants were asked to choose the health cover that resonated most with them based on the language used to describe the options.
Offering 1:
Issue-focused language—descriptions centered around specific health problems and scenarios that customers could easily relate to, such as “coverage for common illnesses” or “protection against unexpected health issues.”Offering 2:
Service-focused language—terminology that emphasised the types of services covered, using medical jargon like “outpatient cover” and “preventative care.”
Findings:
Customers found issue-focused language more relatable and easier to understand, while struggling with complex medical terminology.
Evidence-based design: What have we learned
Conducting these experiments allowed us to apply evidence-based design principles to our process, guiding us further and providing a path forward as our knowledge base grew.
Prioritise value over brand: Users prioritise tangible benefits over brand prestige, as shown in our brand vs. price experiment, where better value consistently outweighed brand recognition.
Use clear, relatable language: Users prefer simple, issue-focused language over complex medical terms. Our experiments showed that clear communication leads to better engagement and understanding.
These learnings not only deepen our understanding but also enable us to build more targeted and accurate tests going forward. With this knowledge, we can refine our approach, ensuring our future experiments are even more aligned with user behaviour and preferences, further enhancing our product offerings.
Experiment 2:
Demand test
Using insights from our previous price and language experiments, along with benchmarking research, we crafted a health insurance offering that we believed would appeal to Simply Business customers. These learnings informed the next series of tests:
Hypothesis:
Customers will purchase healthcare insurance through Simply Business’s quote comparison page.
Method:
Phase 1: Conducted an unmoderated test with 15 small business owners using a clickable Axure prototype.
If successful move to Phase 2Phase 2: Performed a live demand test on the Simply Business covers page.
If successful move to Phase 3Phase 3: Launched a dedicated marketing page and a competitive PPC campaign.
As the tests progressed, we increased the fidelity of the prototypes, ensuring the environment and audience were accurately reflected. Starting with 10 users in a controlled testing environment, we then expanded to the Simply Business checkout journey, which received around 2,000 weekly visits. Finally, the test progressed to a dedicated health insurance marketing page, indexed on Google and supported by a competitive PPC campaign with a budget in the tens of thousands of pounds, attracting over 10,000 weekly visits.
Key Learning: The success of these tests provided strong evidence that health insurance is a viable proposition and a good product-market fit for Simply Business customers.
Integration and launch
Integrating healthcare into the customer journey
Our next challenge was deciding how to offer healthcare to existing customers—whether as an add-on, a new vertical, or a separate product.
By analysing competitor flows, we identified gaps in their products and customer experiences. These insights helped us refine and enhance our own offerings.
Our goal was to integrate health insurance into the user journey in a way that felt intuitive and seamless. We designed the system to check if a user’s business was eligible for health insurance and, if so, added a relevant health question into the process.
Including healthcare in the coverage would dynamically introduce this step into the user’s journey, making it easy to navigate.
Competitive analysis
Introducing Healthcare as an add-on
Testing with our new partner
After selecting Equipsme as our healthcare partner, we anticipated that integrating and building out the single journey would require several months of development and planning. To facilitate this process, we launched a series of ads offering free health insurance to Simply Business customers for a limited time.
This approach allowed both companies to test, learn, and build confidence in the partnership as we worked through the development and integration phases.
By 2021, Simply Business successfully launched an integrated, single-vertical healthcare offering for small business and sole trader customers.