Increasing Car Insurance Conversion Rates
Using unmoderated usability tests to redesign the quote and cover journey for car insurance.
Industry
Financial Services
My role
UX Consultant
Date
2020
Tools
I redesigned the Sainsbury’s Bank Car Insurance Quote & Buy flow to increase conversion rates, simplify the journey, and improve add-on selection. Prototype testing showed higher completion rates, faster task times, and significantly reduced errors, demonstrating a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.
Scenario
As the sole UX Designer on this project, I completed a redesign of the “Quote & Buy” flow for car insurance on the Sainsbury’s Bank website. The overarching goal was to increase conversion by identifying pain points in the existing journey and iteratively design a cleaner, more intuitive experience.
Stakeholders / collaborators: Insurance Product Manager, CX Manager, third-party hosting/development team
Discover
I began by conducting usability testing on the existing version of the quote-and-buy screen to diagnose issues.
Key issues surfaced:
The journey was one long scroll and featured too much content without logical breaks
The visual language felt outdated and didn’t align with Sainsbury’s Bank’s current branding
Weak visual hierarchy and poor use of white space
The add-ons purchase flow was cumbersome: users had to click “Add” then “Update Price,” and many missed the second step, causing the add-on not to register
I regularly distributed research findings via stakeholder presentations, combining qualitative user test feedback with screen recordings and highlighting direct user quotes.
Define
In collaboration with stakeholders, I framed the core problems to address:
How might we break down the journey into more digestible steps?
How might we modernize the design language without blowing up development scope?
How might we simplify the add-on flow into a one-click interaction?
I prioritised solutions that aligned with business and compliance constraints (e.g. order of content required by information security or compliance teams) while keeping the user experience at the heart of the process.
Develop
I iterated through several design versions, initially retaining the old design language (plum CTAs, beige backgrounds, thin fonts) to minimise development effort.
Early prototypes maintained existing style while reorganising layout - splitting into separate “Quote” and “Buy” screens.
In usability testing, participants repeatedly flagged the outdated styling as inconsistent with their knowledge and recognition of Sainsbury's branding.
Based on that feedback, I proposed a shift to the newer design system: updated components, modernised colour palette, refined typography, and better spacing.
I also re-ordered content and chunked the flow into two screens: “Quote + primary policy details” then “Add-ons & upgrades.”
For add-ons: I replaced the two-step “Add → Update Price” with a unified toggle control that updates pricing instantly.
Deliver
The most advanced prototypes had been validated via usability testing and showed significant improvements in task completion. Designs were ready for handoff, with specs aligned to the new design system and potential edge states documented. These were handed over to the 3rd party insurance provider for development.
Following this, I coordinated with the development team to ensure component reuse, ways to reduce dev effort, and ensuring consistent implementation with the designs.
Results
In prototype-based user testing, the updated flow showed a notable rise in task completion rates versus the original.
Users found the two-step flow clearer, and the new add-on toggle was more intuitive and reduced missed add-ons.
68% → 89%
Increased completion rate from 68% → 89% in usability tests after restructuring the flow.
~34%
Reduced time on task by ~34% (average completion time dropped from 11 mins to 7 mins).
60% ↓
Add-on selection error rates fell by 60% after introducing one-click toggles instead of the “Add → Update Price” step.
61 → 83
System Usability Scale (SUS) score rose from 61 (marginal) to 83 (excellent) in unmoderated testing.
