Employee Benefits Website Design

Enterprise Business Client

The Mission:

Our Enterprise Business Client was born from the merger of two benefits administration firms, EBS-RMSCO and Support Services Alliance, Inc (SSA). When our client, a national benefits administration company, chose ACS Web Design & SEO to launch their new brand’s online presence, our team was excited for the opportunity and challenge to develop a website that would be used by tens of thousands of clients on a daily basis.

ACS Web Design & SEO embraced the technical challenge of converting multiple online properties into one website. our client's online properties included three sites and multiple apps that were used daily as part of their clients’ core operations.

Early in our process, we identified concerns from the previous EBS-RMSCO and SSA websites, specifically that the sites were difficult to navigate, making it inconvenient and time consuming to access needed resources. Knowing this, ACS developed the new site to make it easy for users to find resources in as few clicks as possible.

Through multiple, thorough preliminary workshops, interviews and collaboration with representatives from all their departments and vendors, ACS was able to craft an informed strategy for site development which resulted in a successful launch of the new and best insurance website.

See for yourself why our insurance portfolio page is a testament to the quality of our work.

A Technology Partnership Begins

Our process began with a technical and usability audit of our client's three existing websites. In addition to an audit of existing websites, our preliminary audit included a comprehensive evaluation of our client's existing resources and Google Analytics data. This Analytics data acted as a powerful resource that provided insights into past user behavior, such as which services were popular and how people interacted with the sites. This Analytics data played a significant role in the development of our client's website design and structure, empowering ACS to deliver a solution that reflected the needs and preferences of our client’s current and potential users.

The audit also included extensive interviewing of all project stakeholders as well as collaboration with our client's IT staff to gain access to dozens of sites and applications. The auditing process also included concurrent partnerships with multiple vendors, all with varying levels of technological skill. Through this collaboration, we were able to acquire access for all associated sites and apps, allowing for a smooth site launch process.

Employee Benefits Website Design

Birthing A Brand

When this partnership with ACS began, our client's brand had only recently been created. ACS worked with their marketing and branding team to actualize the brand across the web. All ACS messaging was developed within approved brand guidelines. Working closely with our client's marketing and sales team, ACS adhered to a messaging matrix that provided cohesive messaging across all online properties.

Accurately and effectively representing a brand online presents challenges that are unique to digital marketing. Content must be formatted and presented in a way that is consistent with the overall brand, but made to look and function properly on multiple online platforms with varied formatting requirements. For example, images must meet certain specifications to display properly on Facebook, while these specifications are different for Twitter and other online properties. Our team was able to represent the brand in a way that harmonized all brand requirements and specifications for important platforms.

Design Logo & Branding

Landing Page Solutions

A landing page is a single web page that someone arrives at, often from clicking a link, such as a search engine result. To introduce the our client's brand online, ACS created a landing page early in the project process. This landing page allowed our client's customers to continue to easily access important resources from its existing websites, acting as a portal to the EBS-RMSCO and SSA websites that clients were accustom to using.

In addition to acting as a temporary website and online representation of our client's brand, ACS installed an advanced heat mapping software and analytics tracking to the landing page to gain insights into the audience, such as demographic information and referral sources (also known as sites that link to another site).

The intelligence gathered from our tracking technologies played a significant role in defining our client's audiences. This intelligence influenced the formation of the self-identifying portal design for lifetimebenefitsolutions.com. The self-identifying portal design segmented site information by the user’s role. Specifically, the home page for the final site build features portals for benefit plan participants, employers, plan brokers and health care providers. This audience-centric navigation ensures the proper message is presented to the most relevant audience.

Requirements Gathering

The thorough information gathering process included archiving and organizing all existing assets, totaling thousands of resources that needed to be accounted for. Organizing all assets in a way that made things easy to find required a comprehensive understanding of our client's business and their customer base.

Through content strategy workshops, questionnaires, interviews and education, our team was able to organize and prioritize the massive amount of existing assets and integrate the proper resources into the website. This included placing resources in sections of the site that made relevant messages and materials accessible for their intended audience.

The content workshops included representatives for every service and department. Through meeting with department representatives, ACS gathered information on experiences that were common for each of client's different audiences. By talking with staff that regularly addressed client questions and concerns, we were able to connect customer service to the site design, effectively designing the site around common concerns and making it a highly valuable resource for our client's users. This collaboration resulted in our team being able to prioritize and segment resources in to easy-to-locate sections, directing users to the most relevant resources.

A Custom Design for a Custom Audience

Our client offers diverse services for a broad population, including various, distinct audiences, such as benefit plan participants, employers, brokers and health care providers. To develop a site structure and information architecture framework that’d send users to the most relevant parts of the site, ACS conducted personal interviews with our client's sales representatives, including two 10-hour sessions with key decision makers, to get a complete understanding of our client's audience. This extensive persona modeling and audience profiling assisted in the development of the site’s design and audience focused navigation, allowing users to self-identify to easily find what products, services or resources they’re looking for while avoiding confusing jargon.

Custom website design for Lifetime Benefit Solutions

The Right Message for the Right Audience

The Lifetime Benefit Solutions site also has an alert system, allowing Lifetime Benefit Solutions’ site administrators to easily and quickly add timely, highly visible messaging that can be audience specific. This audience specific messaging allows for different alerts to be displayed on the different audience sections of the site. Because of this, the alert messaging feature allows for time-sensitive, important messages to be clearly communicated to specific types of clients. The custom content management system (CMS) provides administrators with convenient access to alert messaging. By being able to easily change alerts, attention can be brought to special events, filing deadlines and other temporary, important messaging.

Employee Benefits Website Design solutions

Responsive Web Design

Our client's new site features a responsive design. Sites with a responsive design are made to display and function correctly regardless of which device the site is accessed from. This makes responsive websites work equally well on all devices, such as phones, tablets and desktops. Having a site that works and looks just as good on an iPhone as it does on a laptop is essential to maximizing opportunity. According to the Pew Research Center, 31% of people use mobile devices as their primary means to going online. This means that if your site doesn’t have a responsive design, it’s also not responsive to your potential client or customers’ expectations. Additionally, when people do use mobile devices online, they’re more likely to take desirable actions (such as submitting forms) on mobile-friendly sites. Our client's new, responsive website meets today’s web users’ expectations.

Not only is a responsive design important because people are more inclined to pick you over a competitor, but a responsive design is important because people use different devices in different ways. For example, a person may do preliminary, early stage purchase research on a mobile device, which, at this point in the purchasing path, they may not be ready to buy. The same person might do more in-depth research on a laptop, as actually sitting down at a computer may signal a greater willingness to invest more time and start to seriously consider their options. That same person might then leave the computer to attend to other concerns then finish the purchase later on a mobile device. Your site should be a convenient, accessible option throughout a potential customer’s journey.

Our client's new, responsive website meets today’s web users’ expectations.

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Staging the Site for Collaboration

ACS had the important task of creating a website that accurately reflected the brand and complied with benefits administration industry regulations. Our copywriters and editors were able to build and test the site through the course of a planned period, allowing all key stakeholders to experience the website and provide feedback, ensuring the site met the needs and expectations of each of client's various audiences. This staging process also ensured a smooth transition after the site’s launch, as our client's staff had experience and practice with the site before it went live.

Company News Made Easy

Being in a rapidly changing industry, our client's site needed a newsroom section to keep clients current on relevant industry news. ACS developed separate sections for regulatory, legislative, industry and community outreach news, as well as a news bulletin and 401(k) news section. Our client's site administrators are able to easily update and add news stories for each section, providing efficient, easy maintenance for industry news.

Company News Website Application

Recruiting On the Web

ACS developed and designed a specialized web portal for employment and careers. The specialized careers portal provides access to job opportunities, company information, employee benefit plan details and a recruitment video. The page was developed through collaboration with our client's human resources department. This collaboration was pivotal in successfully developing a careers page that prioritized what mattered most to prospective employees. Additionally, ACS' recommendation to add video content to the page provides a more engaging experience for potential employees by humanizing our client.

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Specialized careers portal

Security and Compatibility

As a benefits administrator that plays a significant role in the medical industry, our client is responsible for protecting important private information. ACS' secure development approach ensured personal information was protected and private while also allowing for backend compatibility for old technology.

Our experienced cybersecurity experts excelled in providing a solution that allowed for cutting edge security and cross-browser accessibility, allowing our client's customers to securely access important resources while using previous editions of popular web browsers.

SEO Migration

Nearer to launch, ACS archived existing assets and worked with vendors to ensure our client didn’t lose what it’s earned on search engines. Although this company is a new brand, the businesses that formed to create this company have longstanding websites that over the years have earned valuable positioning on search engines. ACS implemented our search engine optimization (SEO) migration process, which successfully ensured the new website maintained its strong positioning on search engines.

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Quality Assurance

Prior to launch of the new website, our team performed rigorous stress testing to ensure the site looked and functioned flawlessly and as intended. These quality assurance tests ensured lifetimebenefitsolutions.com would display and function properly on all devices or browsers. Our quality assurance testing process included testing on Apple and Android phones, tablets and desktops as well testing on all browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox and IE 11 and previous IE versions.

Continued Training and Support

After launching lifetimebenefitsolutions.com, ACS provided hands-on, ongoing training and support, empowering site administrators’ to easily maintain the website. Our client's custom content management system (CMS) includes user permissions with varying levels of access and views, allowing our client's internal staff to edit site sections relevant to them while avoiding potential technical or editorial concerns by providing certain levels of access for certain staff.

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