Southern Cross Travel Insurance (SCTI) case study

Southern cross travel insurance case study - photo of a coastline with large rock forms and turquoise blue sea.

Website consolidation. Seamless cross-device experience. Increased conversions.

About SCTI

SCTI is a travel insurance specialist operating in both New Zealand and Australia, providing insurance to hundreds of thousands of travellers and offering customers a wealth of experience and expertise.

The challenge

The Southern Cross Travel Insurance team needed to provide an optimised and seamless experience across devices, to reduce the administrative overhead of maintaining two separate sites and to improve their website conversion rates.

Project overview

SCTI is a travel insurance specialist operating in both New Zealand and Australia, providing insurance to hundreds of thousands of travellers and offering customers a wealth of experience and expertise.

Their retail presence is 100% online and as such their website is a business-critical platform.

Sitback was engaged to deliver an end-to-end project including User Experience, Planning, Build and Ongoing Support & Optimisation.

The overarching goals for the project were to provide an optimised and seamless experience across devices, to reduce the administrative overhead of maintaining two separate sites and to improve SCTI’s conversion rates.

In May 2017, SCTI reported an uplift of 9.3% in their online sales through the new website, as a result of the changes implemented by Sitback.

Female hands holding a mobile device showing the SCTI website

“I just wanted to say again how awesome the team at Sitback are – I’m not sure if you know how grateful we all are about how responsive you all are. The support team is even more responsive than your websites, (and your websites are excellent).”

Anne Wentworth, Digital Project Manager, SCTI

Anne Wentworth

Digital Project Manager, SCTI

Our approach

Following the Design and Creative phases, Sitback developed the website using Umbraco CMS to provide essential content management functionality. We further customised the system to implement travel insurance conversion funnels, integrating with SCTI’s back-office solution to generate and store the policies as well as process payment. In order to realise development efficiencies while maintaining flexibility and autonomy across geographic regions, the solution was built as a multi-site platform with the same underlying codebase serving both the Australian and New Zealand websites.

  • We implemented a single CMS instance with the ability for content editors to create content in one location and determine if it should be displayed in AU, NZ or both.
  • We set up multiple environments in a new Azure hosting instance with automated backup and disaster recovery procedures.
  • We implemented a structured deployment process using Jenkins.
  • We integrated with a complex insurance system based in Denmark through many API’s and process flows to facilitate the ‘engine’ of the SCTI website and added a bigger functionality set
  • We implemented a seamless workflow for users wishing to make a claim for a policy purchased using the old insurance engine
  • We used our strong psychology-backed UX approach to determine the optimum workflows for users wishing to get a quote, make a claim or review their policy
SCTI website shown inside a mobile phone

SCTI reported an uplift of 9.3% in their online sales through the new website, as a result of the changes implemented by Sitback.

Project highlights

Increased conversions

By almost 10%

Highly scalable platform

to support marketing campaigns

Umbraco CMS

Flexible content management

Multiple integrations

Payment gateway, policy portal

API review & optimisation

To ensure a seamless experience

Cut hosting costs

with optimised Azure infrastructure

Key project outcomes

  • Implementation of best-practice deployment process through Staging, Authoring and Production.
  • Increased functionality through extensive API integration with the Nordic insurance system.
  • Significantly improved page load time.
  • Lower hosting costs.
  • Implementation of Azure hosting using Blob storage with automated backups and Disaster Recovery.
  • Lower client administration time managing the websites due to the single CMS instance.
  • Completed the on time and on budget.

Are you an insurance brand needing to drive conversions, renewals, or upgrades?

We’ve worked with brands across travel, health and commercial insurance to boost revenue, increase broker success, and ensure customer satisfaction. Get in touch to find out if we can help you too.

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