01/02/10 Claims Site Launched for Mobile Web Browsing

Rightpath Claims have launched a website optimised for claimants browsing the web via their mobile phone.

Managing Director, Andrew Commins said that “We recognise that mobile web browsing is a growing trend and from 2007 to 2012 we expect to see a 400% growth in the number of people using their phone to browse the internet. In the travel insurance context this has significant implications. When people are travelling they will be able to, and therefore want, access to online claims support: someone who has just been robbed may want to know that they must make a report to the police, someone waiting around in an airport lounge may want to use their time to notify a delay claim. Customer benefits even extend past when they are just travelling abroad – your busy commuter may also want to make a claim notification on their way to work or simply whilst brushing their teeth at night!”

Existing websites often fall short of the needs of the mobile user and Rightpath Claims had to make optimisations to their site over four principle areas:

1. Customer centricity – Mobile users have very different needs to a desktop user in so much as they will tend to be looking for critical information for a specific need. They are happy to sacrifice ‘wow’ for ‘to-the-point’. Therefore, the number of pages was reduced down to just easy to find functional pages.
2. Roller-ball movement – Cursor movement is often controlled by a roller-ball so the layout and placement of hyperlinks had to be easy to navigate through, by this means alone.
3. Download size – As mobile download speed is a lot slower than broadband, download time was increased by reducing the average page size (in Kb’s) by 90%.
4. Display size – Typical mobile display sizes are only about 3.5” so the text and graphics had to be reduced to fit onto a much smaller canvas.

Commins was also keen to stress that it isn’t just the customer’s claims experience that is improved, “Insurers also benefit as we are encouraging claimants to notify us of a loss a lot sooner to when it actually occurred and this helps reduce their exposure to exaggerated claims and in terms of cost containment, allows for us to take a proactive approach at an earlier stage in the claims lifecycle.”