| Medibank 1997- 2000 | |
Meet the Wilsons, Gina and Tony, and
Jo.
George and Susan, the 'mature couple'. When a new Medibank marketing
team took over the site they didn't 'own it' and wanted fresh faces so
we redesigned the animation and the site. |
The original Medibank site (left) was made by Edime, and
when we submitted for the business in 1997, it was looking very dated.
Our pitch was to redesign and create an interactive version of the Cover
Choice process, something that was so complicated in print there were
three separate brochures. I suggested that we copy the call centre
approach who, quickly define the client age, marital status and needs.
We sat in on some sessions in Melbourne, obtained a copy of the sales
staff's script and came back to plan our version. I came up with the
idea of Guides, that once selected on the home page would offer the same
personal advice as the call operators did, ' in the margins' of the
site. It was also a way of simplifying the choices. We suggested that the cast of the current TVC's of the time would be ideal, but the cost of photography, 'roll-over' fees etc. dictated illustration. We called for submissions from a number of illustrators, and the client chose Kel Starkis, a Canberra based designer. Kel worked in Photoshop and understood Gif palette's and made it very easy for us. The overall design ended up very simple (this was a Government website, but it's mostly my design choices that made it that way. Loads fast though.). It then went through a number of about six monthly 'revisions' up until mid 2000, when the marketing team moved to Melbourne and appointed the current web company. Jan O'Connell (Creative Director at Grey) completely rewrote the brochure copy for the site and added some more friendly comments.
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E-commerce |
When the new regulations came into force to require people who didn't have private health insurance to pay a premium for every year they delayed, the client knew there was going to be a rush on the Medibank offices. Accepting payments online was an obvious solution, and it saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs, compared to the outside run Call Centre and to over the counter service. I managed the process of physically installing the EFTPOS connection on the actual server, the security and the exhausting debugging as the system moved from a hundred sign-ups a day to almost a thousand. We sat watching the Live Stats in disbelief and monitored the system 24 hours a day from our homes. |
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