New horizons for CosmosDirekt

Based in Saarbrücken, CosmosDirekt is Germany’s leading online-only insurer and Generali’s direct insurer for the German market. The insurance company’s extensive portfolio offers optimal solutions for private insurance, retirement planning and financial investment. With these award-winning products and services, CosmosDirekt accompanies its customers step-by-step throughout their lives. Customers can also rely on the fact that their chosen insurance product not only includes first-class features but is always available at a very appealing price. This is also confirmed by the more than 500 quality seals awarded by independent institutes in numerous product ratings and rankings over the years.

The insurance sector has seen major changes to customer needs and requirements in recent years. Faster-paced lifestyles and the increasing popularity of mobile devices have both affected the expectations and attitudes of potential policyholders. As a digital pioneer in its industry, CosmosDirekt initially decided to relaunch its website, with this project then later seguing into a comprehensive rebrand – the first for 16 years. There was a clear focus for the new internet presence: digital customer contact. The new website aims to be both modern and informative. Apart from a brand new design, the relaunch streamlines content structure while including third-party content, optimizes the user experience and fine-tunes page loading speeds.The original CosmosDirekt website had already been built with the CM 9 content management system from CoreMedia GmbH. As a CoreMedia Gold and Certified Partner, Monday Consulting once again qualified as a relaunch solution provider within Generali Deutschland AG.

Brought into the project during its early stages, Monday Consulting’s responsibilities included project management, consulting services as well as most of the development work. Initially, the project comprised a straightforward website relaunch with a migration from CM 9 to CM 10. The project team headed by Monday Consulting consisted largely of our own colleagues, and was rounded off by the CosmosDirekt team, who were also involved in project development activities. Thanks to the tight integration of both teams plus the agile project management style, key project changes were easily handled at short notice. When the relaunch was about 80 percent complete, CosmosDirekt decided to go for a full strategic rebranding – which affected much more than just the website. The company effectively reinvented its CI, with a new logo, a new design and a new brand presence. As a result, the website relaunch metamorphosed into a full rebranding project. Thanks to the established methodology and strong teamwork within the project, however, the new design specifications were quickly incorporated and adopted without endangering the subsequent rebranding work.

From the first click on the new website, the fresh-faced CosmosDirekt design is instantly identifiable. The clear-cut structure of the new internet presence is optimized for mobile devices and lets users move seamlessly between the various product categories. The big, bold topic blocks on the homepage offer integrated quick links to give policyholders a fast track to the content they need. Site navigation has also been revamped to make other topics easier to access: these are now assigned to the categories of ‘Insurance’, ‘Pensions & Savings’, ‘Magazine’ and ‘Advice’. The first two categories offer new customers a set of UX-optimized application pathways that make it even easier to take out a new policy or purchase a new pension/savings product. The magazine is the new home for the Creator Blog, which has been integrated into the new website as part of the relaunch. The fourth category, ‘Advice’, offers prospective customers a wealth of information about obtaining insurance and other kinds of cover. The new website also features a convenient search function in the header area.

The results speak for themselves: the new website was completed to schedule and has established a solid foundation for the CosmosDirekt rebranding strategy. The relaunch has brought the insurance company’s website decisively up to date, with a fresh new design and consistent approach to usability that provide a first-class customer experience. Throughout the project, Monday Consulting provided detailed site testing and continuous optimization work so as to ensure a successful, step-by-step reduction in page loading times. Thanks to this valuable input, page loading speeds have now been more than halved. Apart from fulfilling the primary goal of user comfort, faster page speeds also work to improve the site’s rating with search engines, since these have recently been weighting load times more heavily in their rankings.