Visual Design Second to Only Product Satisfaction in Predicting Brand Affinity and Acquisition for U.S. Car Insurance Websites - Keynote Reveals

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Keynote® (NASDAQ: KEYN), the global leader in mobile and web cloud testing and monitoring, today announced the results of a new study examining the business and technical effectiveness of U.S. Auto Insurance websites. In the 2012 Auto Insurance study Nationwide took first place for Overall Customer Experience, while in the Technical Quality portion of the study 21^st Century Insurance took first for Responsiveness (Speed) and Progressive scored first for Reliability. The entire study is available for immediate purchase. To request more information please visit: http://bit.ly/AutoInsurance2012.

“Despite not being tops for Product Satisfaction, Nationwide still managed to outperform competing auto insurance websites in this study due to the overall strength of its online experience, particularly when it came to the site’s visual design and ease of the quote and research process.”

Winners of Keynote Competitive Research studies are invited to participate in the company’s Online Excellence Program which recognizes the "best of the best" websites as ranked in the studies. The rankings are based on responses from real users, who were observed as they accomplished tasks on each of the sites studied, as well as real data collected through Keynote website monitoring to assess the technical quality of the sites. For each study, Keynote recognizes the companies with the overall top ranking, as well as those exhibiting excellence in specific categories.

For the ‘Customer Experience’ portion of the study, Keynote observed and conducted online interviews with more than 2,250 car insurance prospects as they interacted with the websites of a total of 10 leading U.S. auto insurance websites (225 per site): 21^st Century Insurance, Allstate, Esurance, Farmers, GEICO, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Progressive, State Farm and Travelers.

For the ‘Technical Quality’ portion of the study, Keynote performed 6,000 total measurements for each site, for a total of 60,000 total measurements, from 12 locations in the U.S. The data was collected every day over a one month period during the websites’ peak period (8:00 AM-Midnight, EST., Monday-Sunday).

Keynote produces leading competitive research using the company’s commercially available Web performance monitoring and real user experience testing products. Keynote regularly evaluates the current state of online customer experience, technical quality (responsiveness/reliability) and implementation of best practices on leading websites across a wide variety of vertical markets including financial services, automotive, media/entertainment, retail, travel and technology.

More Information about the Customer Experience Rankings for US Auto Insurance Websites

For the ‘Customer Experience’ component of the study, Keynote sent 225 U.S. resident Internet users to each of the 10 insurance websites. The online panelists each performed three tasks. First, they took a minute or two to briefly learn about the benefits of obtaining auto insurance with the carrier. They then learned about the auto insurance offered by the carrier and obtained a quote. Finally, participants were asked to use the site to learn the best way to contact the company.

The study revealed that when tested by actual users Nationwide’s website (www.nationwide.com) offers the strongest Overall Customer Experience, placing first in Brand Impact and Conversion Impact, and placing third in Customer Satisfaction. Other key findings include:

Visual Design and Quote & Research Process remained the 2^nd and 3^rd most important drivers, respectively;
Shopping Guidance and Contact Information became more influential factors in 2012;

“Sites that tested as most effective for brand and conversion tended to use specific techniques not found at the other sites to frame their prices and product and excel in the Product Satisfaction driver,” said Chris Musto, general manager of the Keynote Competitive Research group at Keynote. But the study also found that Nationwide’s site excelled for reasons beyond Product Satisfaction. “Despite not being tops for Product Satisfaction, Nationwide still managed to outperform competing auto insurance websites in this study due to the overall strength of its online experience, particularly when it came to the site’s visual design and ease of the quote and research process.”

More Information about the Technical Quality Rankings in the US Auto Insurance Websites Study

In addition to evaluating customer experience with actual users, the Keynote study also examined two broad aspects of technical quality: responsiveness and reliability. Responsiveness comprises: high speed response, DSL (midband) response, response time consistency, geographic uniformity and load handling, while reliability is comprised of availability and outages. For the ‘Technical Quality’ portion of the study, using measurement computers located in 12 cities across the U.S., Keynote measured a typical transaction of researching and obtaining an auto insurance policy quote online. Each measured transaction began at the site’s home page and then clicked through the process of obtaining information about the particular company’s insurance offering, and starting the quote process. Based on the thousands of transactions monitored over the course of the study, Progressive ranked first for Reliability, while 21st Century Insurance ranked first for Responsiveness (Speed).

In order to collect the Technical Quality data Keynote used its Transaction Perspective® product, the leading real browser-based service for measuring and monitoring website performance from the end user perspective. With Keynote Transaction Perspective the company examines website performance from multiple geographic locations by simulating users clicking through transactions on a website. Keynote collected approximately 6,000 data points that detailed each of the sites’ technical performance in terms of page responsiveness and reliability.

The study is available for purchase from Keynote and comes with extensive analysis of brand impact, acquisition impact, reliability and responsiveness and the factors that drive sites’ performance in these areas. Clients will receive an executive presentation, extensive back-up charts and illustrations, and online access to all clickstreams, verbatims, question responses and panel facts for all panelists at all sites for all tasks and can download and use this data in their own research. To inquire about a copy view: http://bit.ly/AutoInsurance2012.

About Keynote Systems

Keynote® Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ: KEYN) is the global leader in mobile and web cloud testing & monitoring. Keynote maintains the world’s largest on-demand performance monitoring and testing infrastructure for Web and mobile sites comprised of over 7,000 measurement computers and mobile devices in over 275 locations around the world that enable companies to continuously improve the online and mobile experience. Known as ‘The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority™,’ Keynote offers three market-leading product platforms:

Keynote Perspective® provides on-demand performance monitoring for enterprise web and mobile sites including online portals, e-commerce sites and B2B sites. Over 2,000 customers rely on Keynote Perspective services to know precisely how their websites, content, and applications perform on actual browsers, networks, and mobile devices.

Keynote DeviceAnywhere® provides the industry's only true cloud-based platform for testing and monitoring the functionality, usability, performance and availability of mobile applications and websites. It's suite of mobile testing solutions is used by over 1,000 mobile developers and enterprises to deliver quality mobile applications and services to the mobile channel.

Keynote SIGOS offers active end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) testing and monitoring solutions for mobile, fixed and VoIP communications. Its SITE and Global Roamer products are used by over 200 network operators, content providers, carriers and regulators in over 100 countries worldwide.

Keynote's 4,000 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies and include American Express, AT&T, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia, Google, Microsoft, SonyEricsson, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Keynote Systems is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at http://www.keynote.com/ or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE.

Keynote®, DataPulse®, CustomerScope®, Keynote CE Rankings®, Keynote Customer Experience Rankings®, Perspective®, Keynote Red Alert®, Keynote Traffic Perspective®, Keynote WebEffective®, The Internet Performance Authority®, MyKeynote® , SIGOS®, SITE®, DeviceAnywhere®, The Mobile & Internet Performance Authority™ and Keynote FlexUse™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2012 Keynote Systems, Inc.