Vermaze

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO for E-Insure startup which is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We aspire to simplify the process of buying insurance and digitise the experience. The purpose is to capitalise on the Covid-19 pandemic where many left without insurance and was too afraid to see an agent.

For what projects/services did your company hire Vermaze?

Traditionally, insurance is a very pen-paper-centric industry. Buyers have to fill out few pages of questionnaires and read through stacks of policy wordings. The buying experience is only as good as the agent. And the agent may not have the buyer's best interest as they are on commission.

E-insure hopes to reduce the friction above by simplifying the user journey and let the buyer exactly knows what they are buying.

How did you select Vermaze?

Vermaze's founder Vincent has good experience in designing user journey and experience. He was the lead designer for another startup's services which I personally used on a regular basis. Knowing that he is the lead designer prompted us to hire him to help us with the journey.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Vincent is a good facilitator when it comes to understanding our needs and user experience. His workflow as follows: Understand the E-insure's vision, market pain point, all of E-insure's marketing materials including how our CEO chooses the color for the site layout and its meaning. Performed research on existing insurtech companies that sells their product online.

He presented three companies' design flow, share his thought about their design. Knowing that he has some ideas about buying insurance online, we then identify which products that we should focus on. And we have identified Home Insurance is the first product. We explained the manual way of buying this product and he begins to design the journey. He challenged us by asking the need of each field and its meaning. He created mock screens and showed the whole user journey.

We keep iterating the journey until it only requires few steps to complete the purchase. Users now know what to do without being overwhelmed by long forms and insurance words. Each field has an explanation and the user knows why we are asking the questions. Our app development team only start to code when we have signed off the user journey. This saves the team time and effort, as we exactly know the design, layout and process.

In short, there are no un-pleasant surprises as Vincent kept the whole team engaged and informed.

How many resources from the Vermaze team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Vermaze has a dedicated lead designer to work with us. During the presentation, Vincent personally shows the UI/ UX journey to our leadership. We have one weekly meeting to understand the progress.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We are very happy with Vermaze. The E-insure website - www.einsure.my is far better than what we had earlier. The site layout is cleaner and direct. There are no more broken processes. The number of users who dropped off from the purchase journey is reduced. We see an uptake of the user query and purchases since we deployed the home insurance product.

We now moved to other products such as medical and travel insurance.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Vermaze was calm and patient throughout the workflow. She is willing to challenge us on our justification on the meaning and reason for putting in fields that require the user to fill in. Overall we are happy with Vermaze. As we have to drop many old assumptions and school of thoughts in order to digitise the user buying experience.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Before Vermaze, our testing is filled with surprises and frustrations. Our old vendor would take months to develop a prototype. When it comes to testing, we have throw out pretty much everything as our old vendor did not understand our needs. With Vermaze, we know exactly what we are getting into with the mock screens.

With the mock screens, the turnaround time went from months to weekly. The backend development work only starts upon sign off. This saves the company development cost.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Overall we are happy with our relationship with Vermaze. The understanding of the insurance journey took some time to develop. But it is not their fault as it is never an easy thing to understand. The relationship took time to built, but it was worth it.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the business director of Rtist creative platform in Malaysia.

For what projects/services did your company hire Vermaze?

We want to revamp our website UIUX for better user experience and with SEO optimization and equipped with new features.

How did you select this vendor?

We compare few talents by quotation and portfolio. After the interview, we decided to have Vermaze for our project.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

They conduct research bout our business before kickstart. Then they estimate the timeline for the project. They work out a prototype in Invision which we can directly experience the user flow and comment on the area we wish to amend or improve. Once we approved the UI/UX work Vermaze brief and pass the relevant UIUX asset to the programmer team for the development stage.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Our team works directly with the UIUX designer.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We are really happy with Vermace's work. The project outcome is exactly what we are looking for. Now we proceed to the development stage.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The UIUX designer is experienced in their work and very easy to communicate with. We have meetings for updates and feedback through zoom, in person, and via phone. They deliver their work within a timeline.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The UIUX designer is really experienced and good at what they do. In addition, they have Google SEO knowledge. They are very patient, they listen and understand what we need. When we have a new idea that pops up after UI/UX wireframe is confirmed, they will always identify if the amendment or new idea is important /must have it now or can be later. We learn a lot from them.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

If they provide platform content service and email notification planning will be great.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Direct Lending is an online personal lending platform in Malaysia

For what projects/services did your company hire Vermaze?

We get Vermaze to develop a new web page for a campaign in short notice and help to track click to our partner page

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We have worked with Vermaze in prior project and we always enjoy working with Verzame

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

While this is not a very complicated project, we require the page to be up and running in a short period of time. Verzame got what we need and put that together within the time frame

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We work mostly with Vincent

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We launched our campaign in a short time frame and manage to provide traffic insights to our partners for this campaign

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

very effective, ongoing and clear communication

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We like their customer-centric focus and find practical solutions for our needs

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Not any in this case. We look forward to be working with the team again