Aviva India-Website Audit & Redesign
By: Vashishta Parikipandla
Tags: Website Audit, User Experience Design, Website Redesign, Redesign, Insurance Companies

The Aviva insurance Website offers the largest database of information on all products they are offering in the market today. Aviva is one of the largest players in the insurance and ULIP products and has only one personal outlet for gathering information, This online resource is invaluable for the public, including investors and customers.

The objective of this evaluation activity was to gain quick and valuable insights from experts in different areas like usability, aesthetics, security, compatibility, etc. It covers the most common and broader level issues on the website without going into too deep. Standard usability principles, design principles & technical guidelines are considered in order to arrive at a high-level solution guideline before we plan for the redesign activity.

Expert evaluation is one of the most valuable methods that are time-efficient & cost saving. The Nielsen Norman Group has established The 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, which is not only renowned for its credibility through the authors, Jacob Nielsen and Don Norman, but also the continuous evaluation of this set of heuristics.

Evaluation criteria for this case study

The 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design by The Nielsen Norman Group was used as the 10 defining evaluation criteria.

Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable time. Match between system and the real world

The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order. User control and freedom

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo. Consistency and standards

Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Error prevention

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action. Recognition rather than recall

Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate. Flexibility and efficiency of use

Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions. Aesthetic and minimalist design

Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution. Help and documentation

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

1. HEURISTIC: Visibility of system status

1.1. Is the user aware of their current position within the user journey? The breadcrumb trail ensures that the user is always aware of where they are within their journey on the website and the progress tracker within the checkout journey clearly shows the user what is needed to complete the transactions and where they are within the flow.

But breadcrumbs on the above page of the website which explains the plan have no links back to the homepage, making the customer go clueless.

1.2. Is the user notified about changes in their user journey? The user is taken out from the parent website to another website where the plans are explianed, user is not notified of the change. Its quite visible to the user to notice the change in the URL, which might create a negative mark on the trust of the brand.

1.3. Is the user aware of factors that can have a significant impact on their experience? Yes, most of the website information is seggregated based on the importance and priority, helping the user get the best features of the products in a single frame and help customer make the buying decision quickly.

2. HEURISTIC: Match between system and Real-world

2.1. Are UI elements and interaction prompts easily recognisable? Most of the icons and interactions used across the website are recognisable and are relevant to the real life replicas. But there are few scenarios where the illustrations are duely falling out of relevance, which might be of very less significance like the following:

The above illustration characters are not looking relevant to the description given under it on the website.

The Icons used for these above different download links have similar in nature making not much of a difference for a naked eye until one keenly focuses on it.

2.2. Does the online experience replicate the familiarity of offline actions and behaviour? A digital experience that mimics real life actions and behaviours makes the the online experience more enjoyable. Having animated icons, illustration for banners and especially images of foriegn personas in placeholders is not helping in adding a personal touch to the customer viewing it. This can be toltally replaced by photographs of actual targeted tribe to easily relate things.

2.3. Does the website make use of acronyms, technical terms or jargon that need an explanation? If acronyms are used, are they clearly explained? The content is simple and easily understandable across all sections of the website.Very few words like ‘rider’ , ‘lucrative’ etc, might be difficult for a novice customer or a semi- literate to understand. We recommend to maintain a glossary of words that can be linked back to words on webiste, where on hover the customer can quickly see a short popup of the word’s meaning.

3. HEURISTIC: User control and freedom

3.1. Is the user able to exit all states such as pop-ups and multimedia? Is the exit state consistent and clear? All multimedia videos have a full-screen view and allows the user to exit the fullscreen. Most pop-ups on the website have a close icon in the top right corner to dismiss the pop-up, however, the styling is not always consistent. Some pop-ups look very different.

3.2. Is the user able to use the core sections of the website without signing up? The user is able to browse all available products, create a registry, sign up for repeat subscriptions, sign up for trade, etc. until the point of payment details are required. The user is not forced to create an account at any time during their user journey.

4. HEURISTIC: Consistency and standards

4.1. Is there a consistent design standard for all call to actions (CTA) on the website? All buttons should be categorised based on the importance and outcome of the button. There seems to be no design standard for call to actions on the Aviva website. Icons used for these CTAs are also of two different classes.

4.2. Is there a consistent design standard for headings? The main headings at the top of the main pages are very inconsistent and look quite random. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but even if the intent was to be creative, the big jumps in typography, missing headings are just jarring.

5. HEURISTIC: Error prevention

5.1. Are there helpful constraints that prevent the user from making mistakes? There are no UI constraints to prevent the user from entering incorrect values in forms. Within the form section, the user has the option to add non numeric characters in the Telephone number field.