Helping pet owners protect the animals they love
Our experience design partnership with Petplan brought their digital vision and business strategy to life from a system for visual design to crystal clear UX writing. Our work helps pet owners make informed decisions about the best insurance for their beloved animals.
The challenge
- Understanding Petplan's customers and their relationship with Petplan products.
- Imagining, defining and developing a digital visual identity for an established brand over a 3-year period.
- Creating an emotional connection with pet owners and building engagement with Petplan's premium services whilst designing to deliver business enhancement.
Our approach
- Qualitative research to intimately understand the motivations of pet owners.
- Using our findings to guide design and content development.
- Applying this direction to Petplan's digital offering over a 3-year period to deliver on their business strategy.
Petplan are the UK's leading premium pet insurance provider.
Pet insurance
increase in traffic into quote and buy funnel
A digital offering reimagined
Petplan know that to deliver on their business strategy they need to win in digital. They have a unique product and content offering and are experts in their field. We needed to merchandise this through digital design.
Petplan also have multiple product and service lines that any design needs to cater for. We established a consistent design identity that could be adapted and applied across Petplan's digital real estate.
Contextual research to inform our approach to design
Petplan pride themselves on their over-the-phone customer service, so this is where we began our design research: listening to calls in the Petplan office. This gave us insight into the personality, expertise and emotional connection Petplan had with customers when dealing with insurance and cover plan enquiries. This was our reference point for designing the digital experience.
The archetype for future design
In year one of the programme we focused on designing Petplan's main site. By distilling our qualitative research findings our design hit on all of the great elements of Petplan's CRM.
The website project meant we formed an archetype for Petplan's design identity which could be used across all points of presence. We iterated and tested our visual design with Petplan customers in our research lab. This highlighted the importance of emotion in the purchase journey and drove home the significance of focusing on people and their pets in our design.
User testing showed us that offering pet owners personalised information had a positive impact on their perception of Petplan as a premium brand.
This signalled to us the importance of considered content: the more participants learnt, the more positive they were about the product and therefore the more likely they were to convert.
Our approach future proofed their digital estate. The design identity was flexible enough to incorporate regulatory and product changes as they emerge.
Tinkering with the conversion funnel
This led the focus of our programme in year two onto Petplan's Quote and Buy conversion funnel. We enhanced this value-driving component through our defined design direction supported by the clues we found from design research.
We were able to unpick complexity with visual design and copy, particularly after products had been added to the basket. This helped us to deepen our design language and enhance user journeys.
Transforming the in-vet sign up process with UX writing
Year three of our engagement focused on aligning other touch-points with the overarching design identity we'd defined.
Due to changes in regulation vets couldn't sign customers up for cover, meaning pet owners need to take action fast in order to benefit from the free cover offered. Not only was this a complex process to introduce, but it needed to line up with Petplan's brand. We crafted copy to ensure that trust was built early on. This ensured all prompts to sign up to free cover were delivered with the right tone to encourage conversions and reassure owners that their pet will have access to the best treatment.
These notifications and prompts were designed for both SMS and email and were formatted to be both concise and empathetic. This work linked back to the wider design identity we crafted for Petplan and developed a cohesive tone of voice which can be used across all points of presence.
The outcome
By spreading what we did for Petplan across 3 years we were able to match business priorities against annual budget allocation. It also allowed Petplan to check the commercial effectiveness of each phase before committing to the next.
We continue to apply our design to adjacent service lines including Equine and Pethood. Each new development allows us to fine-tune Petplan's unified design language.
Activities
Customer interviews, qualitative research and testing, data analysis, information architecture, visual design, UX writing, proof of concept, iterative design sprints, customer experience measurement.
Delivery
Three-year engagement across a range of digital products and services. The building block for design and delivery was two-week design sprints.
Get in touch
We'd be very happy to talk through more examples of our work.
Contact Ed Walker, Business Development Director on ed@foolproof.co.uk.
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