Legal & General: made accessible Why it matters to our business Why it should matter to every business Dave Wilton Head of Internet, Legal & General Julie Howell Director of Public Relations, Fortune Cookie First European e-Accessibility Forum Accessible on-line services, a benefit for all Paris, 29 January 2007
What we’re going to cover How we approached the project The results Improved natural search listings Increased conversion rates Reduced running costs
Our business case has three key parts 1.There are at least 9 million disabled people in the UK All should be able to buy financial services products from Legal & General. If 1% bought just one £300 policy = £27million. The cost of making the site accessible pales into insignificance 2. If disabled people can’t buy from Legal & General they will go to our competitors (and we don’t want them to!) 3. It’s the law
Step 1: We audited our existing website We found out how accessible our site was We benchmarked it against our competitors How? Automated tools (quick, cheap, regular, thorough) E.g. AIS Web Accessibility Toolbar (IE) Web developers toolbar (Firefox) Used a product called Maxamine Completed real-world user testing
Step 2: We got to know our customers Legal & General has 5,636,638 customers in 4,007,635 households * The total number of contracts held by our customers is 6,225,458 * (that’s an average of 1.59 contracts per household) But we didn’t know… What they needed from us What challenges they faced So we asked them * Source Legal & General Corporate website
Step 3: We got to know their habits Web analytics (site drop-offs, browser types, JavaScript, etc.) 10% couldn’t get past our homepage 30% wouldn’t open a PDF Analysed helpdesk feedback Poor access to online servicing Tracked user data and metrics using Hitwise Mature users, high proportion aged over 55
Step 4: We discovered what that meant for our business We were losing sales by turning away customers Some of our competitors were accessible – we were losing business to them Other competitors weren’t accessible – we could differentiate!
Step 5: We analysed the UK disabled market More than 9 million people are registered disabled 1 in 3 people is aged 50+; incidence of disability increases with age And… 3 million people speak English as a second language 1.5 million people lack basic language skills 5.2 million adults have sub-GCSE level English
Return on investment calculator Avoided costly legal action and bad PR for breaking disability law Supported brand values Increased our potential customer base by 9million Conversion rates increased by 200% Maintenance costs reduced by 66% Natural search listings improved by 50% Improved customer satisfaction (not one accessibility complaint!) Scalable Shaw Trust accreditation for accessibility Great PR!
See the results at