At the time there was some degree to which our marketing department thought it would be in charge of the project and thought some of the offline media companies we used were bound to know about e-commerece. We had about 10 proposals in but in the large part they were pretty dire. Most proposals were for brochure sites. Entranet was the only company to have the foresight to see where the market would be. We wanted a transactional site that would be friendly, where people could save their quote and purchase.
Analysis suggests that, as a direct selling tool, the system works.
However, direct sales are a tiny fraction of the company's total revenue. The site's primary function is to disseminate information. As financial services become more competitive, the importance of keeping the higher value business and lowering distribution costs becomes crucial. And as the government encourages more people to take out personal pensions, employment pensions will become a crucial market for Eagle Star and its competitors. By designing a Web site that is easy to navigate and extract information from, Eagle Star has improved the chances of fund managers being persuaded to invest in it.