NRMA is one of the largest insurance companies in Australia, so you could assume that they would be proactive and flexible with their online quotes. While looking at Travel Insurance for a recent conference trip, NRMA was one of the many companies I considered contacting to get a travel insurance quote. The screenshot below shows the reasons that I did not contact NRMA, my agency is based in the state of Queensland so I did not proceed with the quote process because Queensland was not an option or was most of Australia.
The screenshot also shows that the online quote is limited to Australian residents living NSW/ACT but if there is only two options why not just have a check box?
NRMA has fairly proactive in search optimisation campaigns, ranking #6 for the highly competitive search term “travel insurance” so why be so aggressive if they are going to limit their insurance quote platform to only 1 state and 1 territory?
The note that is partly covered by the drop down menu advises that the product is also not available to residents of Victoria, but it would be more useful to advise that the policy is only available to residents of ACT & NSW. When you move the mouse over the text it appears to be a link but does not redirect you to page that explains what residents of Victoria should do, this would likely reduce the number of potential leads lost.
NRMA is not a small company and should have the resources to examine a better way to display the information or use geobased IP redirects to the relevant websites that deal with visitors who are not from NSW, ACT or Tasmania. It is interesting that the footer of the webpage advises that they provide insurance in states including Tasmania but its not option in the insurance quote form. So this would point to a failure in business process and a lack of understanding about online marketing and where their visitors come from.
If you read the fine print at the bottom of the website you can see the 3 links which advise visitors of the correct website to visit if they are not from ACT/NSW. The information provides direct links for visitors from other states and territories such as Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, but interestingly leaves out any mention of Victoria and the Northern Territory. For any Australian company to be so vague and general in details about our states and territories does not demonstrate an understanding that a market exists outside of NSW.
Compared to a number of their competitors, the online quote form is not intuitive or easy to use and it is likely they are losing a number of leads because visitors leave and try and different website for a quote. The important elements to understand is that you cannot limit what geographic regions visitors your website by choosing to only show in organic results for one city or state, if you want to do this look at Google AdWords Campaigns or Facebook Ads. Organic results as a result of a successful link building campaign will drive traffic from a whole number of regions and there are ways to monetise that traffic that you cannot convert such as Victorian residents.
With all the recent hype around VirginBlue’s 
Australia’s largest cinema chains 
St George Bank’s new saving product “
Lloyds TSB has had their product in the market longer and you would expect more control over the search results in Google.co.uk but this was not the case.
The Lloyds TSB product appears to be marketed slightly better with a simple message of that they will round up the amount to the nearest pound and transfer the difference into your savings account.
The Bank of America product seeks to further improve and indirectly with its 5% matching of your savings transfers. Offering 100% for the first 3 months with a cap on this bonus limited at $250 per year. While these are great they make the product much more complicated to market and more confusing for consumers.
