Northwestern Mutual
Northwestern Mutual needs digital to work harder in order to leapfrog the competitive set. They need a deep strategic evaluation of their current digital properties and map a path forward.
THE PROBLEM
This 162 year old company's digital ecosystem is not consumer friendly.
There has been a lot of time spent on improving the speed of NM's website with their internal teams - thus getting rid of any personalization and content strategy that the website could offer to it's consumers. We were tasked with coming up with a personalization and content strategy plan, roadmap, wireframes, tools and prototypes of what could be for nm.com's future.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
18 weeks - still in those 18 weeks at the moment
MAKE OF THE TEAM
Lead UX Designer/Researcher (me)
Stratagist
Project Manager
Drupal specialist
Content Stratagist
KEY GOAL
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Establish NM as an authority in high-demand topics that reflect its expertise
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Make it easier for visitors to find helpful content while guiding them through their decision making process
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Present information in a visually compelling, persuasive, and memorable way that is uniquely NM
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Quickly establish credibility and instill the utmost trust
MY ROLE
Lead UX Designer and Researcher -
This project with Northwestern Mutual (NM) consisted of myself, a strategist, drupal specialist (tech dude), project manager, content strategist, SEO lead and Data guru.
It was amazing having so many smart people on our team. My role in this project was to review all current research that NM has as well as do my own to fill in the holes. Then I took that research and created Persona's and Journey Maps for each persona in order to get a better grasp on a hypothesis of who the users are as well as what potential content they might be interested in. This would allow myself and the content strategist to map out what parts of the potential content should be wireframed and prototyped - all leading to a path of personalization.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
NM had a ton of user research that they wanted me to dive into - the problem with their research was that it was mostly based in marketing and not the digital footprint.
I was tasked with taking all of the NM research, third party research and user interviews and compiling that information into creating user personas and journey maps that walk through the NM.com experience from a personalization and content strategy point of view.
Breaking down the process...
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Through this process we were able to put together recommendations for possible changes to the experience of NM.com - We derived these recommendations directly from the journeys. These gave us a great base to build more hypothesises off of.
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Some of the recommendations...
Top Level Navigation Considerations
The top level nav is not helping lead the user through the advisor process. We learned through research and interviews that the advisor matching is key to NM. They don't sell any products on the site so the realtionships are key and the top nav does not help convey that story.
Fostering trust is important
NM describes themselves as a B2C but in after going through the process ourselves and through research the sales cycle is actually more like a B2B experience. So the cycle is much longer and building that trust is just that much more important. Also there is usually a partner involved so this requires even more trust.
Offer interactive assessments and tools
The majority of the tools and information that is provided on NM.com is very stale and heavy. Through research we found that people are much more receptive to interactive experiences and this will help foster the relationship thus moving the user closer to becoming matched with an advisor.
Easier way to make referrals
We learned through the NM process - referrals are still a huge way of gaining new clients. That being said the referral process is not evident or easy for the user. We wanted to really highlight this as an opportunity for NM.
Matching with an advisor needs guidance
Matching with an advisor is the single most important thing for NM. Currently all CTA's on the site are the same and very vague - the user does not know what they are getting into. This can be made easier and more transparent by bringing this process to the forfront and really explaining it to the user.
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LoFi Wires to test
Invision Prototype - Check it out!
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
STILL LEARNING
This project is still ongoing - check back in to see updates and the findings of the testing.