Choosing a Medicare Advantage plan is confusing, anxiety-inducing, and often ends in a 30-minute phone call. We tried to make the "Expedia of Medicare Advantage" — it wasn't as simple as it sounds.
Underneath it all: tremendous anxiety about picking the "wrong" plan, low opinions of health insurance generally, and real difficulty predicting future usage.
We interviewed potential customers and mapped their purchase journey to find opportunities, ran competitive research across the marketplace, and interviewed 10 seniors and 5 caregivers to start a research library — noting where AI-generated stand-ins were used instead of real participant photos.
We performed competitive research to find strengths and weaknesses across the marketplace, then mapped the results of the competitor landscape to see where a genuinely better experience could live.
More demographic information helps serve and recommend better — but requesting more of it means higher drop-off. We had to weigh fewer, denser pages against many single-question pages.
People were afraid of being sold to, trained by other sites where reaching the end of a funnel makes you a lead, not a result. They wanted a general sense of pricing before investing much time.
Seniors buying for themselves vs. adult children buying for a parent — with opposite appetites for phone conversations, opposite appetites for online sales, and different starting knowledge.
Drug names are easily misspelled or forgotten; the drug database needed dosage, quantity per container, and refill rate to produce estimates. The doctor database needed location to determine coverage, and the pharmacy database sometimes needed to know the specific branch.
Increasing self-serve completion
Later in the customer journey, not immediately
Percentage who chose "I'll browse all plans myself"
Straight to plans vs. shortened vs. longer survey
