I’m constantly amazed, and often bemused, by the way online merchants find new and daft ways to kill online sales long before the prospect even considers buying. While searching for car insurance I couldn’t help but cringe while visiting the AA Ireland car insurance site:
AA Ireland Car Insurance homepage – Nice, clear design with strong headline, hero shot, bulleted benefits and nice CTAs
Let’s get a quote. Nice strong CTA. Cant miss it. But:
Oops, I forgot to accept a T&Cs challenge, which rather oddly appears after rather than before the main CTA flow
Not a big deal, but I’d hazard quite a few people get that challenge as the checkbox appears after the flow from headline to bullets to main CTA. I should also mention that whenever I see a challenge like this the site I’m visiting always loses a little bit of my “visitor equity”. I’ve written before about a very similar type of negative assurance – negative point of action assurances – which coincidentally was also based on an Irish insurance website.
Anyhow, back on track to get my AA car insurance quote. Step 1:
This is just Step 1? And I don’t even get my quote until Step 4.
What strikes you when you look at the form? What strikes me very quickly is that the AA expects me to invest a lot of time, and a whole lot of commitment, without indicating my benefit from this transaction. The progress indicator tells me I wont see a quote until Step 4, and I’m getting very cold feet at step 1.
Here’s where the negative point of action assurance really kills the deal. My mind turns back to that challenge – Please accept the data protection & privacy policy before getting a quote – which invokes negative apprehensions about my privacy. I’m no longer even considering whether the quote will be good or not. My thoughts have moved from “what if I dont get a good quote?” to “will they spam me for all eternity?“. This increased apprehension is only further aggravated when I go back and actually make the effort to read those T&Cs:
The incredible T&Cs that you must accept before the AA asks you to commit God-knows how much time and energy to see a potentially crap quote.
Smothering Your Prospects Before They Become Leads
When confronted with the AA’s long (unnecessary?) form I managed just 2 fields before bailing. Yep it took just 2 fields to decide that the perceived benefits of this interaction fell massively short of the commitment required. The AA doesn’t need all this data to price the premium, and my “visitor’s mind” now wonders how trustworthy this transaction actually is. Do you trust a company that insists on capturing everything about you without explicitly offering something in return? Will you commit to a transaction before you know what benefit you’ll derive from the transaction? Probably not.
The final nail in the coffin is the onerous legal T&Cs that users must accept before they can even view Step 1. This is what I “hear” – this transaction is all about us, about our terms and conditions, about our lead system, and about us pushing a sale on you later.
That perception might be misplaced, but since there’s no way in hell I’m going to read those T&Cs my next interaction will likely be with a competitor who thinks about me the customer. After all he’s only a click away.
Or Maybe 2 Clicks…
Quinn Direct wont get me either, even though they have 2 steps less than AA:
Quinn Direct are also a little too hot on commitment, and are likely to be spurned
So How Do You Nurture Your Insurance Leads?
In my opinion FBD do a great job of showing the quote without a large upfront commitment from users. They only collect the data required to generate the premium quote, without a requirement that you tell your life story. This one really hit the sweet spot for me:
FBD hit the sweet spot with low commitment, high return
Will FBD get my custom? Maybe, but one thing is for sure – The AA smothered me long before I came close to becoming a lead.
Want to read more?
- Negative Point Of Action Assurances
- Can Third Party Cookies Kill Your Sales?
- IXQuick.com Private Meta Search – a good thing for SEO?
