Driving Digital Adoption for Claims

With the introduction of a new claims form and a hub to track and manage claims, Direct Line Group (DLG) aimed to increase the number of customers initiating claims online.

Working with the Digital Adoption Squad, we updated the claims landing page to increase conversion.

The Problem

The existing claims page had not been reviewed in over four years, leading to several issues:

  • Excessive and outdated content that overwhelmed users.

  • Unrelated CTA.

  • Prioritisation of phone contact details over online options.

  • Insufficient focus on encouraging online claims.

The Goal

Update the design and content of the claims landing page with quick, impactful changes to increase the number of customers starting an online claim.

My Role: Lead UX Designer

I contributed to the Digital Adoption Squad in the following ways:

  • Research

  • Ideation

  • UI Design

Research and Discovery

Claims Webpage Review

I conducted a thorough review of the existing claims webpage and identified several key issues:

  • The page was content-heavy and cluttered.

  • Lack of imagery and icons to break up the text.

  • A vertical navigation system that wasn’t relevant to the claims process.

  • The "Get a Quote" CTA was unrelated to the claims process.

  • Insufficient colour contrast on CTAs.

  • The "Start a Claim" button was buried further down the page, resulting in only 70% exposure rate (according to Content Square data).

  • Low engagement further down the page.

  • FAQs were poorly structured and difficult to navigate.

  • The CTA to "Make a Claim" led to the old third-party form, not the new claims form.

Usability Testing

I conducted usability testing with six participants to review the claims page. Key findings included:

  • Two participants suggested moving the "Make a Claim" button to the top of the page for easier access.

  • Three out of six participants appreciated the presence of the telephone number, even though they intended to make their claim online.

  • Five participants noted that while some of the content was useful, the amount was overwhelming and hard to process.

  • Two participants highlighted the absence of imagery and icons, which would have made the page more engaging.

Reassurance for the Customer

Working with the customer insight team, we identified through survey feedback that empathy and reassurance were crucial to customers. Many customers still preferred speaking to someone over completing an online claim.

To support these customers, we would need to ensure the content and language used reflected care and reassurance, providing clear, supportive messaging while encouraging the use of the online claims process.

Getting Customers to the New Claims Journey

Customers could only access the new claims form by logging into their accounts.

The concern was that requiring customers to sign in might deter those who didn't have their login details readily available. We needed to test the impact of asking all users to sign in before starting a claim.

Design Process

Recommendations from Initial Discovery

Based on the discovery work, we identified several quick wins to optimise the claims page without a complete redesign.

Working with the Product Owner, we broke down the recommendations into incremental releases to measure the impact of each change.

This included an A/B test in release three to determine the impact of asking users to sign in to access the new claims form.

Release One

  • Removed the "Get a Car Quote" CTA, which was irrelevant to the claims process.

  • Increased the visibility of the "Make a Claim" button, ensuring it was seen by 100% of visitors.

  • Increased the colour contrast of the call to action to make it accessible.

  • Introduced a hero banner to align the page with the design consistency of other Churchill brand pages.

  • Allowed customers to start a claim from multiple entry points on the page.

Release Two

  • Added a "Book Autoglass Appointment" button to support glass claims.

  • Focused on promoting online claims, reducing emphasis on phone calls.

  • Made the telephone number accessible via a clickable link.

  • Introduced icons to improve scannability and engagement.

  • Removed side navigation on desktop to reduce clutter.

Release Three - A/B Test

  • Ask 50% customers to ‘Sign in to make a claim’ on the call to action.

  • Other 50% customers would continue to see CTA ‘Make a claim”

Release Four

  • Reordered and streamlined the FAQs based on data from Content Square.

  • Introduced CTA’s to ‘Make a Claim’ inside the frequently asked questions.

  • Reduced the amount of content on the screen, improving readability.

Impact and Reflection

Outcomes

The changes resulted in significant improvements:

  • The new banner featuring the "Make a Claim" button increased the percentage of customers starting an online claim from 33% to 47% (730 customers).

  • Customer engagement with FAQs on the Churchill brand was 8% higher than the next DLG brand.

  • During the A/B test, there were 9437 visits of which 50% saw the call to action to sign in. As expected, the digital adoption rate decreased slightly versus the period immediately before, but stayed within the normal range of 24%-29%.

  • During the A/B test, the manual processing of the old third party claims form, dropped significantly below the previous period.

  • Our recommendation to get all customers to sign in to make a claim was accepted by DLG.

  • Content moved from the page into the FAQ section saw the least engagement, confirming that it did not need to be given prominence on the page.

  • 5% less customers selecting the "Contact Us" link compared to the next DLG brand.

Final Thoughts

This project demonstrated my ability to quickly iterate on an existing product and drive measurable results.

I worked closely with a highly collaborative team and while the changes made had a positive impact, it would have been great to have more time and resource allocated to this squad to continue with the momentum and further enhance the user experience through further opportunities, such as increased imagery.

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