THE GENERAL
The General UX/UI Transformation
Redefining the quoting and buying experience online.
Project Overview
The General was a pioneer in fully digital quoting and binding for auto insurance policies. (We built an anonymous quoting system before data privacy was a hot topic!) But by 2019, the online experience felt outdated and failed to reflect the quality and service that our insurance coverage delivered. My team undertook a comprehensive redesign initiative to revamp TheGeneral.com’s direct-to-consumer experience.
The result: a modern, responsive, and personalized interface that reinforced brand trust and lifted end-to-end conversion by half a percentage point—translating to millions in incremental premium.
My Role
I led my UX team as well as the entire cross-functional project team through this initiative from start to finish: working with finance to build the CBA, securing executive buy-in, selecting the right partner agency, driving research and planning, and overseeing design execution and rollout.
Research Approach
8 rounds of user testing with 375+ participants from non-standard insurance segments
20+ stakeholder interviews across leadership, product, claims, legal, and IT
28 competitive audits: 15 insurance carriers, 13 digital-first brands outside the category
Analytics deep dives to identify current drop-off points and UX friction.
Solution & Design Approach
Streamlined journey: Fewer steps, intuitive animations, and cleaner visual hierarchy
Responsive & accessible: Mobile-first approach with full desktop parity, optimized for speed and WCAG
Consistency & scalability: Modular components and reusable design patterns
Personalization: Context-aware content and visuals based on user data and geography
Conversational UX: Clear, plainspoken language with smart microcopy, supportive nudges, and small moments of delight when users completed tasks or unlocked savings
Key Learnings
1: Define what success looks like before you start. Identify a set of 3-5 key performance indicators and targets that directly align with driving business goals.
2: Bringing key stakeholders along for the full journey helped us avoid late-game surprises and kept the project top-of-mind for future development support.
3: Deep collaboration across departments ensured alignment with business goals and helped us identify where we could make trade-offs in favor of user experience.
4: Users expect clarity, simplicity, and speed—not just compared to other insurers, but to digital leaders across all industries (think Amazon, Google, Facebook).
Next Steps
Test & Learn: We implemented a continuous A/B testing framework to keep optimizing and evolving the experience in real time post-launch.
Developed Full Design System: We created a scalable design system and governance framework to ensure future enhancements aligned with core design principles, brand standards, and usability benchmarks.
Cross-functional Journey Mapping: Collaborated with product, claims, and analytics teams to build out cross-channel customer journey maps, identifying opportunities to better connect digital touchpoints like email, paid media, and retargeting with on-site behavior.
Expanded Personalization Capabilities: Initiated phase two of personalization strategy: integrating pre-filled customer data (quote history, location, vehicles) to deliver smarter entry points and dynamically tailored content across return visits.
