About the project

From Homepage Refresh to Digital Strategy

Hagerty was beginning to position itself as a classic car lifestyle company, instead of just an insurance provider. I was asked to lead execution of our UX director’s vision, starting with the strategy for the homepage.

Vision:

Accommodate Hagerty’s expanding portfolio of content and products while allowing for distinct landing spaces and maintaining cohesive branding…without disrupting existing revenue.

In a team of 2 UX designers, I led the charge in creating a project plan, which started by conducting a competitive analysis, expert evaluation, and usability test of Hagerty.com, beyond just the homepage, to identify areas of opportunities we could apply to the new homepage, and eventually across the site. 

I wanted to know which pages on the site were important, usable, and more recently updated to know what we can play with on the home page.

The strategy: Communicate who we are, not just what we do. Hagerty is a hobby company that sells insurance. Everything we are and do should be presented as one brand.

With a better understanding of user and business goals, I created a user story map which detailed the homepage experience from left to right - Arrival to departure. Not always chronological, but I aimed to capture all the different tasks, features, and pages the homepage would now support to prioritize what to include in the design. This later became the backbone for entering story and requirement cards into JIRA, our agile project management tool.

Taking Risks

My colleague and I started by exploring the themes that appeared in the research. He was more interested in taking a journalistic approach, something minimal and traditional. I knew that his concepts would fit what our stakeholders were looking for, so I wanted to think outside of the box. 

How can the homepage mimic the driving experience? 

A car dashboard? A roadtrip? I don't know! 

I got a little crazier with my concepts.

We started with 12 that we shared with our larger UX team for critique, and then whittled them down to 6 to share with stakeholders, who were in love with the journalistic concepts my colleague was puttin' down. It was a lot like what's already working for competitors. I was also in agreement that my colleague's concept was a good one to push forward.

By the end of our iteration, I already knew my concept - featuring tiles above the fold, each highlighting a different jump off point into Hagerty.com - was more of a dark horse 🏇, something I intended to test as a way of gaining insights to apply to the traditional concept.

From there, we polished one concept each and took it to a usability test for a spin.

User Testing a Safe and a Strange Concept

While I created the prototype and test, the research team moderated the sessions in a lab in Grand Rapids, where we watched behind the mirror. Our findings were surprising:

People understood Hagerty offerings and completed tasks faster using the dark horse concept

Hagerty’s new (and old) offerings were more visible. It was easier to see the breadth of Hagerty and then enter different areas. Long time Hagerty users were commenting, unprompted, about the things they never knew Hagerty offered.

Users scroll on the dark horse concept

We saw more users scroll and follow scent trails on the tiled dark horse concept than on the content carousel concept. Users seemed more engaged and willing to explore. This meant more space to play with learnings from previous research regarding browsing behavior.

It was a surprise for everyone involved, including me.

Moving Forward

Because it met the strategic goals I set for this project, I persuaded stakeholders that we should move forward with the dark horse concept. I made some changes based on our usability test insights, and then I worked with our visual designer to move into from my Med-Fis into polished Hi-Fi. I created a new prototype that we later tested in San Fran, CA in order to validate the design and usability updates, as well as test with users outside of Michigan, Hagerty’s main area of influence, to see how this concept works with people who are more unfamiliar with Hagerty.

The results? Users continued to be engaged with the new design, and quickly understood all that Hagerty had to offer as a lifestyle brand, even if they were unfamiliar with Hagerty.

Development and Launch

Impact

Learnings

💡 Ideas are a dime a dozen. Harness creativity when it's cost-effective. Embrace it in the early stages to reach more original and valuable concepts.

🏇🏽 Exploration breeds innovation. Play with ideas when it's cheap to do, in early iterations. Go wild! Even if it fails, you'll make insights you can apply to the right concept.

🤝 Create alignment and buy-in with stakeholders by really listening to their needs, not making empty promises, and pushing forward your recommendations, even if initially met with a little skepticism...

🌱 A culture of experimentation encourages curiosity and risk-taking. I need to empower teams to push boundaries in the pursuit of building the things right.