Details
Turning Abandoned Quotes into Second Chances
Every month, 65% of people who got an insurance quote would leave the site before actually buying — without explanation. There was no way to bring those customers back or even understand why they left.
I led the design of a solution that caught people right as they were about to leave, gave them a reason to stay or come back later, and turned what used to be a dead end into a second chance — increasing saved quotes by 10.8%.
Impact
In 6 months, saved quotes increased by 10.8% — turning abandoned sessions into real second chances.
My role
Lead Designer
UX Researcher
Team
Product owner,
User Research Team,
Business insights,
Development
Timeline
February – April 2024
The challenge
1.1 User painpoints:
1.2 Business painpoints:
Price-conscious customers were speed-running through checkout, selecting the cheapest option without processing what they were committing to. The low price point was an incentive, but the associated requirements weren't being effectively communicated or absorbed during the quoting process.
This created a "surprise-and-reject" moment post-purchase when app requirements became clear.
🎯
Increase Drop-off
10% behind quarterly quote insurance targets in Ontario
📈
Stiff Conversion Rate
Rising operational costs from managing cancellations and plan switches
👻
Decrease Engagement
No way to re-engage or recover abandoning users
discovery & research
Identifying exit pathways and patterns
Started by mapping every possible exit point across desktop and mobile. The data revealed a consistent story: multiple abandonment scenarios confirmed that most exits resulted in a complete loss of the user's quote progress.
2.1 Investigation:
Step 1 – User data
Engaged with the Business Intelligence (BI) team to access real user data.
Step 2 – Analyze drop-off
Analyzed funnel graphs showing user drop-off and conversion rates at each step within various quote flows.
Step 3 – Abandon pattern
Identified at which stages users abandon the quote flow most frequently.
Step 4 – Conversion rate
Quantified the cumulative effect on overall conversion rates.
key findings
Understanding Exit Behaviours
Analysis of three core exit behaviours reveals the underlying reasons users abandon the quote flow. This insight enables targeted interventions that address specific friction points and user needs.
2.3 Reframing Problem | Design Strategy
Exit-intent technology tracks users behaviour signalling an intent to leave (e.g., mouse movement to close a tab) and displays a timely prompt. We evaluated three primary strategies based on industry data. Rather than forcing immediate completion, I reframed the goal: convert permanent losses into recoverable opportunities. Users might not be ready now, but that doesn't mean they won't be ready later.
the journey
Proposed journey
Proposals
3 Proposed solutions | Lo-Fis
Drawing from the design strategy and behavioural analysis, I explored three alternative solutions tailored to each user exit pattern.
Option 1: Survey + Save & Continue
What it does: A dual-purpose pop-up that captures abandonment reasons *and* allows users to save their progress.
Benefit: Gathers actionable feedback for future product improvements while also retaining the user.
Option 2: Save & Continue Only
What it does: A focused pop-up triggered when users navigate away to explore (e.g., clicking the logo).
Benefit: Retains users who are still interested but are navigating away for research, preventing accidental progress loss.
Option 3: Idle/Inactive Popup
What it does: Prompts users to save progress or provide feedback after a period of inactivity leads to a session timeout.
Benefit: Recovers potentially lost quotes from users who have been interrupted.
3.1 Understand Constraints & Prioritization
Given leadership's priority for rapid delivery and existing developer bandwidth, we adopted an MVP strategy. This allowed us to deploy a high-impact solution quickly and gather live user data for future iterations.
MVP
Final MVP Design
Results
The impact
The Save & Continue Exit-Intent feature allows users save their progress mid-flow, and accidental exits trigger a recovery prompt–eliminating the hassle of re-entering information.
With this feature launch, we successfully reduced quote abandonment by enabling seamless progress preservation and recovery.
🌱 Takeaways
Less is more — One well-timed trigger did more than a complex system ever could.
Friction can be intentional — Designing the exit-intent moment taught me that interrupting a user isn't always bad — it's about when and how you do it.
Copy is design — The success of this feature leaned heavily on clear, benefit-led microcopy. It reinforced how much words shape the user experience, not just visuals.
⚡ Challenges
Working with what you have — Limited dev bandwidth meant letting go of features I genuinely believed in. Learning to advocate, then accept, was harder than I expected.
Data only tells part of the story — We could see that users were dropping off, but understanding why some chose to restart instead of saving remained elusive. It left me wanting better feedback loops from the start.
Done is better than perfect — Shipping an incomplete solution and iterating was a mindset shift I had to embrace.
