Agency Revolution had created a powerful website builder for independent insurance agents but faced a number of client satisfaction, reliability, development hurdles. It was time to take the builder to the next step with a new platform.
I was tasked with identifying blockers of the initial implementation of the product and outlining solutions as well as creating a product roadmap along with accompanying processes and technology budget that would presented to stakeholders. Once approved I performed design, development and management tasks as necessary to see the project through launch and beyond.
After mining through implementation and usage data it was clear that one of the largest challenges we faced was meeting the value proposition presented to clients in terms of launch timeframes. Since the website builder was part of a package that included the implementation of a marketing system both needed to feature a similar implementation cycle free of any blockers that would cause clients to stray too long in either phase.
At this point each client was given a large allotment of hours that they could use to initiate major product customizations that would be delivered before the launch of each system. While this had the potential to offer tremendous perceived value it often left clients unsure of a direction to place their efforts or enabled them to hyperfocus on certain areas and leave others untouched.
Based on data gathered by competitor research and client feedback I proposed a solution that would enable us to set more accurate expectations and delivery consistently by focusing deliverables on specific areas that would be the most valuable to their brand.
Another issue that presented itself was usage of the website builder both during and after the implementation phase had concluded. Up until this point we had tested a couple variations of how to guide clients through the implementation process.
One path was to edit the website directly through the drag and drop editor. While this appeared to be very powerful it required a number of steps to edit any portion of the page and often produced undesirable results do to the complexity and scope of modifications it allowed.
The other path was a questionnaire that was filled out and utilized to populate various parts of the site. This often produced valuable information as clients proved keen to complete this step early on in the process.
We ultimately chose to proceed with a variant of the questionnaire path as it allowed clients to with limited time resources to populate the product without requiring them to wade through the minutia and pressure of producing both content and a pixel perfect design.
By this time were feeling the pressures of hosting the website builder internally. We needed a cloud hosted platform that could scale with projected growth and offer unified codebase that would allow a small team to iterate quickly on new features and development challenges.
We investigated several options weighing available attributes against a number of criteria that would best benefit our customers and achieve our internal goals. This process included researching competitor platforms, interviewing other businesses in similar vertical markets, cost and security analysis, consideration of employee and client onboarding as well as incorporating support and client feedback data from other platforms that we were utilizing.
This was large project that achieved success shortly after launch by reducing implementation and support averages by over half and received positive feedback from clients that were eager to utilize a platform that was sensitive to their needs and tailored to their industry.