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Comment by avitzurel | Hacker News Reader

I read some of the comments about the funnel and I set out to try it myself.

There are 8 steps to get a quote

1. First and last name 2. Full address 3. question (renter/owner) 4. roomates/alarm 5. current owner of insurance? 6. Jewelry over 1000$? 7. email, birthday 8. Quote, which seems highly generic and could be done without 6 of the 7 previous steps.

I can't even imagine the conversion rate from just checking it out to paying customer, it can't be too high at all (outside the founders circle).

ZipCode -> Quote should be the only step. The rest should happen after you convinced me about your value. By the way, don't email thisisridiculous@gmail.com, it's not really my email.

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Valid points all, but if you were getting insurance from the traditional companies, you'd have to answer many more questions, or alternatively, pay for coverage you don't necessarily need. Our funnel tries to get you a personalized quote in minutes, so you pay for what you need. Most of the time this will be considerably lower than traditional carriers.

Just an idea: give a very general, estimated quote and refine it as people go to the next step. Then people that randomly browse are happy, and people who actually want to know their quote are happy.

It's a good idea, and as a random browser it'd make me happy, but people wouldn't be too thrilled if the price went up from the initial quote. Also if the initial is too high, it may scare some people off.

Yeah I thought of that, but did not find an immediate solution. Anyway, just an idea.

You're probably right about traditional insurance companies but didn't you say you're doing things different.

If you need all the steps (and I doubt it) at first, at least do something like what TypeForm are doing with a progress bar, explain a bit about why you need it etc...

Say the insurance conversion rate is somewhat similar to healthcare average around 9%, I am guessing you lose at least 40% that could have converted means you are left with something around 5-6% conversion rate. Not a sustainable business at this scale (IMHO of course).

There's no doubt that in order to be responsible, you need all of the information. We are in agreement on that. What I'm saying is you need to think of better ways to show the value and hook me before I go through all of the steps. Something simple 1-2 steps, later you can change that. It's worth an A/B test at least.

Insurers are able to offer lower base rates by differentiating customers on many other variables more indicative of risk than a zip code. Property insurance is more than just catastrophe insurance, you're also factoring in your history of claims, personal likelihood of having a claim, replacement and liability costs, etc. It's impossible to segment your quote off of just a zip code.

The way their questions are worded makes it feel like they're making a list of all of the renters/owners that have no alarms and have jewelry > $1000.. lol

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