Inside MetLife’s Redesigned Web Site: Video Screencast
The 2009 redesign of MetLife's Web site was no rush job. Manish Bhatt, MetLife's VP of interactive and Web solutions, estimates that the New York-based carrier had been examining the idea since 2005 for both technical reasons (an outdated Web platform) and business reasons (an outdated public-facing site).
Before jumping into a major redesign, MetLife took the time to detail exactly what it expected from its Web site, explains Bhatt, who joined the carrier in late 2006. "Until that point, the Web site was basically a vehicle for various parts of MetLife to communicate with constituents, whether they be customers, prospects, brokers or consultants," Bhatt says. "We went through most of 2007 doing two things: clarifying what our business purposes were and proving the value of the [online] channel."
That work helped MetLife ($3.2 billion in 2008 net income) identify the primary business driver behind the site redesign: "Basically, to build an engaging and valuable experience for our constituents that would drive people closer to doing business with us," Bhatt recalls. "We felt that if consumers didn't get an engaging and valuable experience, they simply wouldn't want to do business with us."
Meanwhile MetLife was seeing double-digit growth in its Web traffic year-over-year. The company also found that it was able to leverage its existing site -- technical and design limitations included -- to achieve triple-digit increases in customers' willingness to do business with the carrier face-to-face. "Those two metrics, the growing importance of the channel and the validation of the potential success that the channel could bring us, [convinced us] that it made sense to spend a good amount of effort and resources on this," Bhatt relates.
According to Leonard Genovese, MetLife's VP of e-business technology, redesign work kicked off in January 2008 with the platform selection process and the development of requirements. Implementation commenced in the second half of the year, as did the migration of some existing content from the old site.
MetLife decided to implement a brand-new Web content management platform from Tridion (Amsterdam), delivered through Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM's WebSphere portal, Genovese says. "Part of that [decision] was to create our standard platform for delivery of Internet content, as well as to build a foundational platform that we can use to [implement] some of our business strategy," he relates.
The new platform made it easier for MetLife to create and share Web content across multiple Web sites, and it also gave business users more control over design and content. "It's easy for the business to update and edit content," Genovese comments, adding that during the design phases a priority was placed on ensuring that business users would retain this capability.
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