Kyle Fanthorpe | Copywriting. Content Strategy. UX.

Context:
We discovered that, while users were working through Ethos’s online application, there was a distinct drop-off later in the flow before they actually completed the app. Some of the drop-offs occurred at places we expected, such as the request for their social security numbers, their residential addresses, and credit card number request pages. However, even when we removed these data points, there was still a significant drop-off later in the app. When discussing with my design partner, we intuited that this was likely due to not only the length of the application itself but also not having an indication of your overall progress.

Problem:
Users are dropping off before they complete their life insurance application, and this also includes those that have passed the high-drop-off questions.

Hypothesis:
Users are experiencing application fatigue because of the length of the application. Perhaps adding more context about where they are in the app as well as what to expect next will motivate them to complete the application.

Experiment:
Create a sidebar to give users additional context on what is coming next and add a progress bar to the bottom to give a sense of how much they have already completed. No such elements existed beforehand.

Results:
After running the experiment long enough to have statistically significant results, my design partner and I sliced the data with our product manager. We found (accounting for the high-drop-off questions as before), there was a roughly 22% higher application completion rate. This feature was implemented for 100% of all site traffic.

Note:
The screen below shows the previous iteration of the application pages.