Following the successful launch of the Professional Beauty Direct (PBD) "Buy Online" insurance product, aimed at individual beauticians, Dock9 has developed a further product for the client offering Commercial Combined insurance for salon owners. The product is promoted by the industry-leading Professional Beauty magazine and exhibition company.

Project Overview

Built on the same Microsoft.NET/SQL Server platform as the Professional Beauty Direct product, the Salon Commercial Combined "Buy Online" product also offers market-leading online insurance functionality.

Customers can build their "self-service" quotation to include the following:

• Public Liability Insurance
• Products Liability Insurance
• Treatment Liability Insurance
• Contents Insurance
• Buildings Insurance
• Money Cover
• A range of additional cover options

• Option to pay the premium in full or with monthly Direct Debits (see "Premium Credit Integration" below)
• Insurance Schedule, Certificate and invoice are automatically issued once payment is confirmed
• Underwriting workflow for policies that have referred, pushing them back to an online process once the underwriter has responded
• Management Information including Bordereau
• Back Office notes, renewal settings, policy history log and policy document archive

Premium Credit Integration:

Premium Credit are currently the most widely used Premium Finance platform in the UK and Ireland. They have 1.8 million customers and achieved advances of £3.3 billion in 2012, processing 24 million Direct Debits.

We fully integrated Premium Credit with the system. On the payment screen the customer is shown a number of options, including paying the premium in full or a quote for paying monthly installments.

This quote is sourced directly from Premium Credit and displayed on the page. If the user chooses to pay with monthly installments their bank details are taken and securely passed to Premium Credit for an instant decision to be made on whether they have been accepted.

If they are accepted then the policy becomes live on the system. If it is set to refer for manual review a Back Office Workflow is triggered enabling management of the case.

Dock9 is five years old today! We’d like to say a big thank you to all our clients for their business during this period.

We have grown rapidly in the last five years, winning projects from major clients such as Tradex Insurance, St John Ambulance and Professional Beauty Direct. The services we offer have also expanded from user interface design and online marketing to becoming a full service agency, including bespoke system development and integration.

Recent project highlights include developing a self-service vehicle update process for Tradex Insurance customers which is integrated with their back-end system (automating tens of thousands of transactions per month) and full-cycle instant quote/buy online insurance websites for Clegg Gifford and Professional Beauty Direct.

We are continuing to invest in the growth of the company and look forward to another five successful years.

St John Ambulance are the leading providers of first aid training in the UK, teaching over 800,000 people last year alone. They challenged us to build an engaging and interactive email marketing campaign that would be informative and useful to their customers, while at the same time increase conversion rates.

In addition to designing the email itself we built a bespoke, interactive First Aider Calculator. Users who click through from the email to the First Aider Calculator are guided through a number of questions related to their organisation in a visually engaging user interface. At the touch of a button they then get an instant calculation of their legal requirements for first aiders, which again is presented visually in addition to supportive text and a strong call to action.

Kim Coulson, Campaign Marketing Manager at St John Ambulance gave the following testimonial for our work on this project:

"We were looking for an agency that would be able to offer more than just a good creative concept and instead make our offering interactive and produce results that would be useful and helpful to the end user. Dock9 enabled us to do all these things and to very tight deadlines. Nothing was too much trouble and they spoke to a number of different departments in our organisation to ensure every aspect of the campaign was done to the deadline. We have had an impressive 18% open rate on the first prospect e-campaign and have gone on to produce similar campaigns with Dock9 to continue this good work."

If your company is looking for innovate email marketing ideas please get in touch for a free quotation.

Dock9 has launched a new “buy online” insurance process for our client Clegg Gifford, Lloyd’s Brokers. In a first for the company, clients can now get an instant quote for Public & Employers Liability Insurance on the Clegg Gifford website and can buy the policy online. Policy documents being issued instantly upon payment, with no manual intervention required.

If a quote is outside of the basic underwriting criteria it refers for manual review. Clegg Gifford staff have access to a secure, web-based underwriting platform where they can either accept or decline these risks. If the underwriter chooses to accept the risk they can load the policy premium, apply additional terms and endorsements and set a custom excess. The client is then sent a link to purchase the policy based on the terms set by the underwriter.

The system is built on our full-cycle insurance platform which enables insurance brokers to make their products available online, with market-leading self service functionality and underwriting features, at a fraction of the cost of traditional insurance systems.

Key features of the Clegg Gifford buy online process include:

• Instant quote
• Secure payment online
• Policy documents are automatically issued once payment is confirmed
• SMS confirmation sent to the customer
• Referral system for risks outside of the basic policy criteria

Policy self-management features:

• Secure “My Policy” site
• Policy documents available for download at any time
• Self-service Mid-term Adjustments, with automatic quoting of additional premium and payment online. Where appropriate, replacement documents are issued upon payment

Other features:

• Bordereau
• Automated renewal
• Back Office rating and product definition management

Toby Clegg, Commercial Director of Clegg Gifford, comments:

“Dock9 have constructed several websites for us, generating remarkable volumes of business in the process. The buy online system represented our first foray into the ‘full cycle’ online products and was a bit of a step change for us. The team at Dock9 were superb, ever accommodating and able to incorporate all of the nuances involved in the quote process. What’s more – it impressed several leading London market underwriters, all of whom raved about the product - which frankly is market-leading.”

If your company is looking for a powerful, cost-effective solution to selling insurance products online please get in touch for a free quotation.

Dock9 has launched a new insurance quote and buy online system for one of our insurance broker clients, InEvexco. Their product, sold under the Professional Beauty Direct brand offers Public, Products and Treatments liability cover to beauticians, hair dressers and nail technicians. The product is promoted by the industry-leading Professional Beauty magazine and exhibition company.

The bespoke, full-cycle, system is built on Dock9’s in-house insurance platform which enabled us to offer Professional Beauty Direct’s clients market-leading online insurance functionality.

For example, in addition to getting an instant quote and being able to purchase the policy, customers can also completely manage their policy online. This includes changing surname, changing address and adding and removing extensions. Where required, an additional premium is instantly quoted to the user and once payment is taken new insurance documents are automatically generated and available to the user.

Underwriting features include the ability to accept (and load, if appropriate) or decline risks that have referred for review as they are outside of the basic policy criteria. Unlike some insurance websites, whereby at this point the quote would be taken offline, if a quote is accepted a link is sent to the user to purchase the policy online.

Key features of the Professional Beauty Direct project include:

• Online quotation and policy purchase with secure payment online
• Insurance certificate and invoice is automatically issued once payment is confirmed
• An underwriting interface for policies that have referred as they are outside of the basic policy criteria
• Integration with the WorldPay payment gateway
• Professional Beauty Direct customers can access a secure policy self-management site that features self-service mid-term adjustments
• Full Management Information including Bordereau
• Automated renewals
• Back Office notes, renewal settings, policy history log and policy document archive.

John Harrison, Managing Director of InEvexco comments:

“This is the first insurance product that we have made available to buy online Dock9’s platform offered us a quick path to market. In addition to buying their policies online our customers can also now make adjustments to their policy themselves on our website and the system takes care of quoting for additional premium and taking payment. Pushing all of these processes online has delivered large back office efficiency savings for our business and given our customers a modern, fast and secure way to purchase their insurance"

If you are a small or medium sized insurance broker looking for a "full-cycle" online insurance solution get in touch for a free quotation.

Tradex Insurance is one of the largest motor trade insurers in the UK. As with all motor insurers, Tradex is required to notify the government Motor Insurance Database (MID) each time a vehicle is added or removed from a policy. Unlike normal motor insurance policies, which have one vehicle and therefore may only need to notify the MID once a year, motor trade policies are frequently updated. Often, many vehicles are added and removed from a policy each month. It is therefore crucial to the company to have an efficient online process for customers and brokers to update their motor trade policy.

Tradex required a new, full-cycle, online MID process to replace their legacy website which had limited end user functionality and created manual work reconciling policy data and updating policies on their back office system. Dock9 was chosen for the project, which launched successfully earlier this year.

Key features of the new MID update process:

• Quick and Easy to Use - Customers can process up to 20 transactions onto their policy at once within a modern, easy to use web interface that uses automated DVLA and ABI code lookups.
• System Integration - The process is integrated with Tradex’s main computer system. Transactions are automatically processed onto the policy if they match the policy criteria.
• Efficient Referral Process - Transactions that exceed the policy criteria are referred for manual review. These referrals are distributed to the appropriate team for review. Underwriters have options to accept or decline a transaction, including requesting an additional premium or restrictions if required. The customer is notified immediately of the decision.
• Status Update - The customer or broker has access to the current transaction status at all times in their online My Policy or Broker account, mitigating the need to call Tradex to ask for an update.

The system handles thousands of transactions each month, the majority of which are processed automatically onto Tradex’s computer system without any manual intervention. In addition to improving the customer experience and enabling increased online transaction volumes, the new process has delivered significant efficiency savings in the area of policy updates.

Stephen Endean, CEO of Tradex comments:

“The new MID process has enabled us to improve and achieve our goals to ensure that Motor Trade policies on our system, Policyholders, Brokers and the MID are updated with accuracy and efficiency. Manpower has been greatly reduced with the auto process and is now only used where appropriate on referrals. The “MID tool look up” also allows internal staff to quickly view any updates saving wasted search time.”

If your company requires an online insurance process to be developed, including one that needs to integrate with your back office system, get in touch for a free quotation.

Michael Nicholas are Chartered Accountants in London that specialise in services to professionals, contractors, small business, international clients and property investors. They commissioned Dock9 to build their new website, which has just launched. It features a striking design with SEO-optimised pages built upon an easy to use Content Management System.

Nelia Rodrigues, Managing Director at Michael Nicholas gave the following testimonial:

“The website Dock9 developed for us looks stunning and we’ve already received some really positive feedback. We are results driven and there’s not much better one can say than to point to a great result! We will certainly be recommending Dock9 to some of our SME clients. I’m glad we chose Mark and his team for the job!"

You can visit the Michael Nicholas London Accountants website at: www.londonaccountants.co.uk

What is structured data and why is it increasingly important?

As has been widely reported in the media, Google is planning the biggest shakeup in it's search algorithm in over a decade, increasing it's focus on "semantic" search. In practice it is likely that Google will continue to increase the emphasis on facts and answers (relating to people, places and things) at the top of their search engine results pages (SERPs). With the increasing prominence of structured data on SERPs it is crucial that your website is optimised to make data about your company, and it's services, available to all major search engines in a structured format.

The easiest way to demonstrate how structured data can affect your business right now is to look at how Google uses this data to present "Rich Snippets" in results pages. Take a look at the example below for a search for a "tikka masala recipe":

The first result contains no structured data, while the second result does (an image and number of reviews), resulting in much higher levels of user engagement. Since they first launched in 2009 the range of Rich Snippets available has grown to include Reviews, People, Products, Businesses and organisations, Recipes, Events, Music and Video.

Results for our clients

Dock9 has been using structured data formats on our client's websites to increase user engagement with their sites on SERPs. An excellent example of this is our client, DoubleGlazingCompanies.com, which is a company comparison and review site for the double glazing industry.

By structuring the review data in the source code of the website in a certain format, the search engine result displays with a visual star rating, the name of the reviewer and the date of the review. Our client's result on the page is visually more prominent than their competitors.

Similarly, for our client Largemortgageloans.com, structuring the format of a video on their page means that a preview is shown directly in the SERP. Again, our client's result is more visually engaging than their competitors.

How can structured data help my business?

As shown above, by incorporating structured data into your website we can already increase user engagement with your company in search engine results. And with Google reportedly planning a major update which would increase the prominence of such data it is important that your business is prepared.

For a free appraisal of how structured data could enhance your website please complete a Project Planner or get in touch.

We are looking for a highly motivated ASP.NET Developer with at least 2 years commercial experience to join our small but growing team based in London Docklands. We work with a number of large clients in the financial services sector, building complex web applications. Click here for more information on the role.