Over the last 18 months, Nationwide Insurance has stepped up its marketing efforts behind the theme "life comes at you fast," and now the financial services and property/casualty carrier has brought its Internet presence into that branding initiative. In December, Nationwide.com was relaunched. "The Internet is a major customer touch point, so we wanted to make sure from a brand standpoint our Internet presence aligns with what our customers see in local agencies--from the service they receive through call centers to the TV ads they see," says marketing officer Sue McManus.
The initial plan was simply to redesign the site, according to McManus, but once work began, she indicates they quickly realized more was needed than merely a coat of paint. The company also wanted to establish a Web strategy for the entire enterprise. "We've got dozens of customer-facing Web sites that have been built over the last 10 years," she says. "We really didn't have a comprehensive master plan. We now have one and implemented the first phase of it to combine some of our larger consumer sites into nationwide.com."
Guru Vasudeva, associate vice president and chief architect for Nationwide, is pleased with what has been accomplished thus far and believes the carrier's marketing department has done a great job of positioning the company. "There is humor and, at the same time, a gut reaction when you see our [TV] ads," he says. "We've tried to recreate some of that in our Web site consistently across the various lines of business. We do have a lot of work to do in terms of making our transaction capabilities up to speed."
In the past, Nationwide's Web presence was more a reflection of the individual business units than one single entity, and in order to change that focus, Nationwide had to do some integration work that would offer users seamless access across various Web sites. "We needed to get toward the same set of technologies for the key elements such as Web content management and Web hosting environment," Vasudeva explains. "All of that was completely disjointed and based on different technologies. We introduced a new Web content management system in the last five months, and we've also released this in a virtualized environment."
He describes the environment as an infrastructure capable of adding capacity on demand to meet the needs of various advertising blitzes. "We can do all these things without incurring huge amounts of upfront costs because of this virtualization technology," he says. "In addition, it also saved our Web hosting charges 50 percent. So, we accomplished a lot of things--not only the end-business functionality but also the underlying foundation. It positions us for a good future."
Nationwide focused this launch primarily on its individual insurance and individual financial services products, McManus says. In the next phase, which is expected later this year, the carrier will be rolling in its mortgage business, some small commercial business, and health plans. The next release will offer better tools for customers to contact the carrier using online chat capabilities and e-mail, Vasudeva adds.
What really changed in this first launch, though, is compliance to the Nationwide brand. "Whether you have life insurance or auto insurance--which are sold by different business units--the customer doesn't have to know where it comes from," Vasudeva says. "It all looks the same and feels the same."
