“ The relaunch of Sterlinghealth.com represents a significant milestone for Sterling and our online presence. The new site better represents our business and products and provides an improved user experience for potential customers, current members and healthcare providers. The upgraded technology platform positions Sterling for future enhancements as we create a stronger web presence. „

- Gary Boyd, Chief Administrative Officer, Sterling Life Insurance Company

Challenge

Sterling’s mission with their web site is to better serve their customers so that they can have easier access to the plans offered.  The visitors are people looking for Medicare and Medicaid options. Their previous site was very hard to maintain because it was built using an in-house Content Management System that was outdated. Another challenge was that they were not able to keep the plans up to date, which made it difficult to keep up with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rules and regulations.

Sterling's website redesign was motivated by the need for online and offline brand consistency and Sterling’s desire to develop a consumer-centric web presence.

Some goals for the new site included:

• Rebuild the entire site with new design, content and functionality
• Partner with internal developers to create an external web service that dynamically presents plan data
• Dynamically present two completely different versions of the site based on “year”
• Offer plan selection and sign up transactions online
• Optimize plan URLs for search and develop XML-based sitemap so Google can crawl within the entire plan database for all states and plan types
• Reuse content in multiple locations and plan offerings to simplify site maintenance
• Manage content assets, including hundreds of PDFs stored with a new Content Management System platform Sitecore
• Develop new site on a four-month timeline!

Solution

Working with Sitecore partner MedTouch, Sterling chose Sitecore because as a native .NET product, it integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products and standardizing Sterling’s internal data center was an imperative. 

In addition to integrating Sitecore as the platform for Sterling’s site in less than four months, MedTouch built a Plan Selection Tool which runs off an internally built web service.

Result

Highlights from the new site include:

• Using the Sitecore CMS platform, Sterling now has the capability to store and access vast amounts of data online
• Sterling developers can integrate into internal systems to sync data
• 257% increase in total visits to the site
• 9% increase in organic search traffic visits to find a plan section
• 65% increase in search engine traffic
• 46% decrease in bounce rate
• Depth of visits increased by 73% to 5 pages per visit
• 2000% average increase in visits to plan types in each state after optimizing the local counties and plan types for key search terms

Advanced site functionality allows visitors to search, compare and sign up for health plans online, streamlining member transactions. The site’s engaging design and presentation establishes trust and aligns with Sterling’s excellent offline reputation—paramount for health insurance. The new content-driven site also now reflects the high level quality of service otherwise experienced by members and partners. This was both a functional and visual failing on the part of the old site and creates dissonance between the operational quality of the web and its counterpart, the call center. Sterling's new site is more visually engaging, more in line with the "brand," and more contemporary with other peers in the insurance space.

“The relaunch of Sterlinghealth.com represents a significant milestone for Sterling and our online presence," says Gary Boyd, Chief Administrative Officer, Sterling Life Insurance Company. "The new site better represents our business and products and provides an improved user experience for potential customers, current members and healthcare providers. The upgraded technology platform positions Sterling for future enhancements as we create a stronger web presence.”

Technical Description

Solution Special Ingredients

• Integrated internal web service
• Access point for multiple portals
• Google Analytics
• ShareThis buttons integrated to encourage sharing with social networks