CASE STUDY

BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD

To educate and activate the small business segment, we designed a simple experience that walked new users through a blended education and eCommerce step-by-step experience.
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Our process included user interviews to understand the small business owner and their challenges with health insurance for their workforce. From there, we constructed a prototype to engaged in moderated user testing. 
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​Results included a reduction in sales and marketing costs alongside a boost in qualified leads for the account representatives. 

STRATEGY

Solve your user problems and they'll solve your business problems. 

Interviewing Small Business Owners

Small business owners are...busy! Between payroll, running the business and commitments outside of work, it can be challenging to keep up with everything. 

That's particularly true for health insurance - figuring out the economics of when to buy health insurance for your company can be complex financial and emotional decision. 

For Blue Cross Blue Shield, they wanted to better educate and help their small business owners build a custom health care plan that best fit their workforce. 

Identifying the Business Opportunity

From a business standpoint, the small business health insurance market is actually untapped. 

There are millions of small businesses that would financially benefit from offering health insurance to their workforce. 

Conversely, a easy-to-use digital experience would help potential customers convert and be a more efficient and lower cost sales channel. 

So, that's what we designed. 

IDEATION

A prototype is worth 1,000 meetings. 

After understanding the user problems and business opportunity, we held collaborative solutioning sessions and built wireframes to put the users experience at the forefront of the collaboration. 

​We mapped out all the information that would be essential for a small business owner - this gave us the framework for the user experience. Using this information architecture, we deconstructed the experience into 10 simple, understandable steps for the user. This included everything from understanding monthly contribution to onboarding employees into the health plan. 

From there, we built a mid-fidelity wireframe prototype. If new to the term, wireframes are the backbone of any project and generally created during the early stage ideation phase. They should provide only enough layout and functionality to get the whole team on the same page.

For Blue Cross Blue Shield, creating these wireframes pushed usability to the forefront. In particular, it allowed The Makery to clearly understand the information hierarchy as well as selection tooling for the user.  

DESIGN

Good design is good for business. 

Building on the wireframe prototype, we then moved into visual design, making the experience easy-to-use, accessible and visually appealing for the small business owner. 

We’re visual creatures by nature, and UI Design at its core drives us to interact with products, and if done correctly, it builds credibility between brands and their audiences. For this collaboration, we were able to create a performing UI based on user needs - straight-forward, fewest clicks possible, easily understandable data sets. 

For Blue Cross Blue Shield, the right design was essential in building trust for users - they needed to know they were in the right space. Additionally, we ensured our mobile-first design would scale to me multi-use sessions - whether it be browsing on their phone while picking up the kids, or hard at work at the office, the small business owner had a powerful tool to help grow their business. 

We also designed to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 - ensuring that the design worked for all users. 

The result? ​User problems solved, business opportunity achieved. 

​Based on user experience research, users felt comfortable with the design and enjoyed the customization of the experience. 

They were better able to understand key concepts in the insurance market, pin down their business needs, and build a custom plan that would meet the needs of their workforce and business. 

For Blue Cross Blue Shield, they now are tapped into the small business insurance segment with a powerful platform, and can grow and scale that market segment. 

They are able to organically grow the business without traditional top of mind marketing, all to deliver world class services for their customers. 

THE MAKERY GROUP

The Makery is a design firm that specializes in User Experience Research (UX) and User Interface Design (UI). We make best-in-class digital experiences to help businesses succeed in today's digital world.

CONNECT

EXPERTISE

User Experience Design (UX)
User Interface Design (UI)
​E-Commerce Strategy
​Marketing Design
Company Websites
SaaS Platforms
Mobile Apps

CLIENTS

University of Minnesota
Blue Cross Blue Shield
Procter & Gamble
Vanco Payments
SPS Commerce
LifeSource
ProtoLabs