The global pandemic changes people’s lives. Great restaurants permanently closed, department stores filed for bankruptcy, millions of people lost their jobs. That is to say, millions of people lost their coverages and some of them may not be able to afford the care of the illness for themselves and their families. I thought the incredibly high cost for healthcare was a joke until my best friend received a $70,000 bill for the knee surgery in 2017. Health insurance is a necessity if you want to survive in the US. You’ll be all set If you have a job, but how to buy insurance if you’re self-employed, a student, or a freelancer?
I remember the first time that I was looking for coverage after graduation for a part-time job as a foreigner. I received several calls throughout the day after requesting a quote online. However, I didn’t enroll anything because of tons of information that the agent threw on me, and I didn’t get some of the terminologies as well. Personally, online shopping makes me feel more comfortable, but I thought that would not work out for buying insurance. However, Oscar, which is a company good at advertising in the NYC subway offered me a great experience for an online enrollment with the best price. Here’s my experience:
The messaging on the landing page was relevant to the search results
I searched for “insurance online” but bounced right after landing on most of the pages because they didn’t offer what I need. But Oscar gave me the right message that I could check out at their website without speaking to anyone else, as a result, I stepped further into the process.
The modern design of the entire website follows the trend of minimalism
Less is more - I’m not a huge fan of seeing tons of information at one time on a single page. The truth is that when you think everything is important on your page, then nothing becomes important. Lemonade is another good example here, the revolutionary minimalist design of the entire website with only 3 colors drove them to be one of the trendy topics in 2020.
Every page is informative and straightforward
After I picked the recommended plan, Oscar gave me all the details sat in blocks in the table format without multiple colors, pop-up windows, but a very clear view of all the features that I wanted. We have an example here from their website:
Design for care
When people shop for health insurance, they are serious. It’s not uncommon that patients are kicked out of the hospital because their insurance companies are not willing to pay the treatments anymore. People want to see the most valuable information on the page that points them in the right direction to get covered but not some fancy animations or marketing banners. Oscar did a good job on this; they gave me thorough guidance on each action that I need to take.
Here’s a recent example that I found for SEP on their website to explain that I need to have experienced a qualifying event to sign up for the plan.
Another example would be the screenshot shown below. When I clicked on the first name of the field, the question mark popped up on the right side of the screen explains why I need to fill in this field.
Pay attention to nuances
Another design I like from Oscar is that it displays a summary of each step of the enrollment, which makes me feel that I’m taken care of by the company because they carefully record my requests and remind me of what product I’m going to choose.
Oscar has created an ecosystem to optimize customers’ online experience, and I believe, shopping insurance in a digital way is the future for the industry. I work in the health insurance industry and find our online enrollment platform is not just appealing to younger generations (age of 18-35). The senior group made up 16% of our total policy members in the first quarter of 2021, and I think the percentage will be increasing over time. With the maturity of machine learning, insurance companies are developing in-house tools to provide the best match in a faster, accurate, and automatic way. People will skip over the long conversation with agents, and all the daunting process of enrollment.
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