Best And Worst Of Website User Experience, 2011: Health Insurers

Health plans have invested a lot in their public consumer-facing websites. But have those investments yielded consumer-friendly experiences? To find out, Forrester evaluated the public websites of seven leading health plans: Aetna, Cigna, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) (BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois [BCBSIL]), Humana, Kaiser Permanente, UnitedHealthcare, and WellPoint (Anthem). This year, BCBSIL and Humana took the top spot, with Humana besting its 2010 score by 16 points. Still, no insurer achieved a passing score, and all had significant shortcomings in key areas such as content and functionality required to support user goals and clear language. Customer experience professionals responsible for health plan site experiences need to adhere to usability best practices, augmenting existing sites with contextual help tools, legible text, and clear privacy and security assurances. But they also need to build measurement strategies that help them make the case for clearer language and better content throughout the organization.