Driving Revenue Through Design for an Insurance Marketplace

Background

As VP of Design, I partnered with product and engineering to set design direction for EverQuote's consumer marketplace, where insurance shoppers connect with providers across auto, home, life, and health coverage. We worked across two tracks: visioning for future state experiences and workflow optimizations to drive conversion. For workflow optimizations, we continuously iterated on the quote request experience using customer insights, competitive research, and A/B testing.

Approach

We looked at leading competitors in the space, analyzed our current quote request experiences, and developed a core hypothesis: fewer questions, a revised question order, and an easy answer format are key improvements to drive conversions.

Our approach was to reduce as much friction as possible through design. We removed unnecessary questions and delayed the more personal ones to make it easier for users to get started. Based on competitive research, we presented one question per screen to increase ease of use.

Control vs Test: a new design reduced the number of questions and moved more personal questions to later in the flow. Questions with high-effort interactions are simplified with binary yes/no or short list answers.

To make the questions easier and faster to answer, we focused on reducing cognitive load at the screen level. We replaced open fields with buttons where possible and designed single-tap screens to move users forward without an additional interaction. This was especially effective for mobile users.

A design pattern I championed was moving from open-ended, personal questions to questions that felt less invasive and easier to answer. The income question is a great example. By more deeply understanding what information was necessary to collect, we could give users four income range options and make the question much easier to answer.

Outcomes

The new quote request experience delivered a nearly 50% increase in conversion rate for the health vertical, as measured by completed quote requests, and enabled us to roll out the same approach across auto, home, and life verticals. This win also demonstrated how redesigning a complete workflow could drive meaningful results, a shift from the company's previous focus on small UI changes.

In parallel with ongoing experimentation, my team developed a customer journey map, guiding principles, and feature concepts to align stakeholders on a long-term consumer experience vision.

Customer journey map highlighting key moments in the auto insurance shopping experience

North star concepts exploring the future marketplace consumer experience

Concept pitch for a new product, grounded in foundational user research