Insurance challenger, 1st Central, needed specialist support to bring a new tone of voice to life across their entire digital domain as they revamped their website.
The Challenge
With a brand new tone of voice but no one to execute it, 1st Central needed a partner to rewrite their website, which is visited by more than 1.5 million car and home insurance customers.
Leveraging our editorial expertise, they briefed us to audit and rewrite all 25 web pages, taking into account key UX/UI considerations and best practice content design.
The overall objective was to support direct traffic to 1stcentralinsurance.com over that of comparison sites and improve onsite retention.
The Insight
Historically, the majority of 1st Central’s traffic was acquired via price comparison websites. However, with the insurer launching a new brand identity across all their touchpoints, the objective was to start boosting direct sales and improve SEO.
Their shop window needed a total makeover—transitioning to new colour palettes (purple to teal), fonts, and an overall visual identity. The challenge was to enhance user experience and navigation, ensuring clarity and accessibility for a broad audience.
Bringing their tone of voice to life was the final piece of the puzzle, essential for tying everything together and creating a consistent, modern brand experience. The new verbal identity needed to be approachable, engaging, and simple enough to resonate with all users—including the 20% of visitors who were not native English speakers.
With FCA guidance in mind, we prioritised clear, straightforward language to ensure information was accessible and accurate. The end goal: to drive direct sales by providing a seamless, user-friendly digital journey that felt fresh, welcoming, and aligned with 1st Central’s challenger status.
The Solution
We immersed ourselves in the new brand world, featuring photography of real customers and a complementary tone of voice that was supportive, authentic and effortless. Throughout the project, we worked closely with their in-house UX designers to gain a deep understanding of each page’s content requirements and hierarchy, along with the bigger picture of the customer journey.
Working in a phased approach across 6 weeks, we developed a platform that was unmistakably 1st Central. From product pages to About pages and everything in between, we iterated until everything was approved by multiple stakeholders ahead of their launch deadline.
The Impact
The overwhelmingly positive reactions confirm that the user-centric content and UX improvements are hitting the mark.
Uplift of 5 direct sales per day following the site launch
0.37% uplift in conversion, resulting in over £600k annualised profit
Recognised as the second most successful Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) test in 2024
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