Covid-19 has changed our travel arrangements – and our car insurance options – substantially over the last few months.
When lock-down began, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) provided a wealth of advice and support to drivers, helping you navigate the complexities of getting the right insurance during the height of the Covid-19 crisis.
Recently, the pledges made by ABI members to support customers during the Covid-19 crisis were extended to 31st October 2020. For car insurance, the advice states: “It remains the case that office-based workers who are working from home or employees who are driving to their workplace as a result of the pandemic do not need to contact their insurer to update or extend their cover arrangements.”
While Covid-related restrictions may continue to change the way you travel, one thing is the same. If you intend to drive anywhere, you still need valid car insurance.
However, if your financial situation changes, or you intend to stop driving or reduce your mileage, you may need to change the terms of your insurance policy in the coming weeks. With the UK predicted to face the worst recession since records began, it’s now more important than ever to not only get the right insurance in place – but also make sure you’re getting a good deal.
In our latest research, we’ve compared three major car insurance comparison sites: GoCompare, MoneySuperMarket, and Confused. We assessed each site’s homepage based on its accessibility and compatibility across different devices and browsers. We used the WCAG 2.0 standard’s Success Criteria levels of conformance – where Level AA demonstrates a higher level of conformance, compared to Level A. The winner of this battle is the one that performs best across these two tests.
The accessibility battle
Accessibility is a necessity. Any website visitor must be able to understand, navigate and interact with a website at ease. At Digivante, we perform accessibility tests for a range of companies, helping them uncover issues that may prevent or discourage disabled users from using their website.
For this assessment, we ranked the travel platforms based on five fundamental accessibility areas:
- Controls and Forms
- Design and Usability
- Interaction
- Structure and Layout
- Multimedia Accessibility
We usually use a range of test cases when we conduct accessibility tests for our customers. For this specific assessment, we chose one specific test case and ran it against each homepage of the three car insurance comparison websites.
Every site failed on 3/5 of the test cases – although each one had different shortcomings. This is a disappointing result, where car insurance comparison sites are now a go-to resource for many people who want to find the best insurance deal. Let’s look at the results in more detail.
- GoCompare failed 3/5 tests in the Control & Forms, Design & Usability, and Structure & Layout areas. We only observed one error for Control & Forms, under the Labels or instructions A Standard. However, under Design & Usability, numerous links on the homepage were not in complete isolation, violating the AA Standard covering Sensory characteristics. Under Structure & Layout, nine contrast errors were observed, under the Link purpose (in context) A Standard.
- MoneySuperMarket also failed 3/5 tests across Control & Forms, Design & Usability, and Structure & Layout. Labels or instructions were missing (for Control & Forms) with two missing form label errors identified. Under Design & Usability, social media icons were not displayed when CSS was turned off, again, violating the AA Standard covering Sensory characteristics. Under Structure & Layout, three errors were revealed for missing links, under the Link purpose (in context) A Standard.
- Confused failed 3/5 tests in Design & Usability, Interaction, and Structure & Layout. Under Design & Usability, all social media icons were not displayed when CSS was turned off. Under Interaction, some elements were not highlighted on the screen when using the Tab button, violating the Keyboard A Standard. For Structure & Layout, some 24 errors were observed relating to missing links, under the Link purpose (in context) A Standard.
Result: this was a tight result. We observed failures for all three websites related to Design & Usability and Structure & Layout. GoCompare and MoneySuperMarket both had failures on Control & Forms, with GoCompare having fewer errors. So, we ranked GoCompare in first place. Confused had a failure on Interaction, which is a higher priority for many users. Plus, we found 24 Structure & Layout errors. So, we ranked MoneySuperMarket ins second place, and Confused came third.
The compatibility battle
Next, we investigated the performance of each comparison site based on compatibility. These compatibility tests check how a website performs when using different devices and platforms. Here, we want the websites to provide a consistent user experience, regardless of how the user is accessing the site.
For this assessment, we selected five smartphones and four web browsers, running the same test case on each. For this test case, a guest user navigated to the homepage, and then accessed the login section. In contrast to the myriad of accessibility errors we uncovered in the previous tests, the results for the compatibility battle were a surprise.
All three sites were awarded a perfect score of 9/9 with no issues raised for any test.
Result: with all websites registering a 100% pass rate, we placed GoCompare, Confused and MoneySuperMarket in joint first place.
And the winner is…
With all three sites acing their compatibility tests, this battle was won by the most accessible car insurance comparison website. So, for this Website War, we ranked GoCompare first, MoneySuperMarket second, and Confused in third place.
This test provides a snapshot of the many different testing services we offer at Digivante. With our community of 55,000 carefully managed and vetted professional testers, working in 149 countries, we can test your website and online applications, evaluating your conversion paths, online launches and new functionality to make sure everything works first time, every time.
If you’d like to find out more about our unique and innovative approach to website and app testing, please book a discovery call today.
Would you like to feature in our next Website Wars? Contact us today!
