By transitioning to a headless CMS, and streamlining the user experience, Avant has reinforced its position as a leader in the delivery of comprehensive support services to doctors across Australia.
The challenge
Avant is a member-owned organisation that supports doctors with a range of products and services in the areas of insurance, lending, health, legal and practice management. Over time, the organisation’s website had become siloed and disjointed, with various business units under the Avant umbrella having implemented their own digital technology solutions.
The main business was also on an end-of-life legacy platform that required specialist skills to add new functionality. This was creating a significant risk of out-of-date information, frustrating customer journeys, and impacting customers’ ability to self-service. With the amalgamation of several newly acquired businesses, Avant also faced the challenge of trying to operate from a variety of CMS platforms and websites which further added to customer confusion.
To overcome these problems, Avant sought Luminary’s help to replatform and redesign the site.
What we did
Key objectives of the project were to unify Avant's broad spectrum of service offerings into a cohesive digital branded experience, streamline content publishing for marketing teams and to optimise the user journey for multiple customer segments to drive engagement, lead generation and promote complimentary services.
Enhancing the user experience
The engagement began with a comprehensive discovery process to unearth all of the existing challenges and inefficiencies and to ascertain the needs of the site’s users. This phase of the project encompassed stakeholder interviews, competitor reviews, a content audit, and a deep dive into existing research around audience segmentation.
Some of the key findings from this phase were that there was low awareness of Avant’s offerings outside of medical indemnity insurance – indicating an opportunity to better showcase the broader service offering; that there was a large resource library that needed clearer organisation and discoverability; and that there was a need to structure the site around audience needs rather than products.
Segmented user journeys
From an audience perspective, the challenge was to ensure that the website catered to users at different stages of their medical careers, from students through to practice managers and retirees. By focusing on segmented user journeys, the project aimed to not only enhance the usability and functionality of Avant's online platform but also to elevate the organisation's profile as a holistic provider of solutions tailored to every stage of the healthcare professional's lifecycle.
Component-led design
The design phase then built upon the insights from the discovery phase, developing a consistent design language across all of Avant’s products and services, and creating components and templates that would facilitate a seamless editor experience. The new design provides a uniform look and feel throughout, simplifying the navigation, and allowing for easy consolidation of external sites that may be added in the future.
Migrating to a headless CMS
Central to the project's goals was the migration from a CMS that had long served Avant but had become increasingly untenable due to usability issues, slow performance, and poor SEO outcomes. The selection of headless CMS Kontent.ai as the new platform was pivotal in delivering the security, stability and scalability that Avant sought, while enabling it to implement digital marketing best practices, such as search optimisation.
The result
The project culminated in a website that not only better showcases Avant's full suite of offerings but also provides a more intuitive, accessible, and engaging platform for its members. The site has delivered significant performance improvements, particularly in terms of speed and SEO performance. Following the launch, Lighthouse site health scores increased from 47 percent to 85 percent. From a user experience perspective, new segment-led journeys, a clearer information hierarchy, and seamless integration of content offer a consistent experience, setting the stage for Avant to further solidify its leadership in providing solutions for medical professionals. The site's digital transformation has been recognised with two awards in the 2024 Indigo Awards, in the categories of UX, Interface & Navigation and Digital Design.
Luminary was a great partner to support the development of our new website. The team was incredibly talented and each member an expert in their area and all lovely people to work with. Amanda and Andrew were highly responsive to all our client queries and requests and any issues that arose throughout the project were discussed and dealt with quickly and in a way that achieved the right outcome for the project. Overall, it was a great experience working with Luminary and we are happy to have ended up with a great site that was delivered on time and within budget.
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