TDIC Logo

The Dentists Insurance Company

Instilling trust for the insurance industry

Project Overview

The Dentists Insurance Company (TDIC) provides a suite of dentist-centric insurance and risk management solutions. Founded in 1980, TDIC has grown to cover over 24,000 dentists across 15 states. The company has maintained an AM Best A Rating for nearly 30 consecutive years. After a successful collaboration launching the new California Dental Association (CDA) website (TDIC’s parent company), TDIC sought out 10 Pound Gorilla to manage the complete execution of the website overhaul. Our role included project management, business analysis, UI/UX design, and development in collaboration with their internal marketing and design teams.

TDIC’s primary goal was to refresh its website with a modern design conveying the professionalism and trust required in the insurance field and speaking directly to the dentistry community. Additionally, TDIC wanted to restructure its website to serve its two unique audiences — prospective customers wishing to learn about TDIC’s coverage options and existing policyholders who need to manage their coverage and access TDIC’s library of resources.

What we focused on

CMS & Website Customizations

With a large team of content editors making regular updates to the website, one of TDIC’s most significant challenges had been maintaining consistency across pages and its branding guidelines. To overcome this challenge, we leveraged the open-source 2sxc structured content module throughout the site to eliminate the ability of editors to make design decisions. As a result, the TDIC team can combine pre-defined structured content blocks to quickly build new pages aligning with the organization’s branding and maintain a sense of consistency. Structured content also allows content editors of all skill levels to easily update site content without the risk of breaking the underlying source code.

TDIC wanted to make its library of dentistry resources available strictly to existing policyholders. We accomplished this using a combination of the EasyDNNnews module’s paid content feature, which limits access to registered users, and integration with Azure Active Directory Single Sign-on (SSO) to verify a user’s policy status. As a result, TDIC can showcase its extensive collection of resources to potential customers while allowing only policyholders full access.

With multiple coverage options and customers across 15 states, TDIC had struggled to get inquiries from the website in front of the right insurance expert. The 10 Pound Gorilla team solved this with an advanced email routing module for TDIC’s quote forms, support requests, and other website inquiries. The system determines the correct recipient from a list of 30+ based on the user’s state and coverage type. The outcome is a streamlined, user-friendly process that maintains TDIC’s commitment to customer service.

Creative Design Work

To meet the goals and timeline of the project, TDIC asked 10 Pound Gorilla to manage their internal design team and contribute design resources to the project. 10 Pound Gorilla guided the team in web design best practices and reviewed all design mockups to ensure they met the needs of the defined user types. 10 Pound Gorilla also examined the design performance, responsiveness, and accessibility. Finally, 10 Pound Gorilla reviewed, modified, and structured the design files for an optimal development handoff to include clearly defined rules for components at the desktop, tablet, and mobile breakpoints.

Project Challenges, Successes & Lessons Learned

The greatest challenge of this redesign was the tight timeline. To maintain a healthy project cadence, we developed a thorough roadmap for the project that outlined each page throughout the content development, design, review, development, and quality assurance processes. The roadmap helped the 10 Pound Gorilla and TDIC teams work efficiently and ensure the highest level of quality.

Overall, the TDIC redesign showcases the benefits of excellent communication and collaboration. 10 Pound Gorilla and TDIC worked together throughout all project phases — from design and content creation to the final quality assurance testing — and pushed each other to develop an exceptionally usable, accessible, and polished website. The project was not without challenges, but the teams’ communication helped solve problems quickly and keep the project on track.

On-Going Operations & Maintenance

Since completing this project, TDIC has contracted 10 Pound Gorilla for ongoing development, maintenance, and consultation. 10 Pound Gorilla has developed new building blocks and modules based on new marketing strategies TDIC is implementing. We regularly add new features and functionality to existing building blocks and modules to accommodate new requests. 10 Pound Gorilla helps consult the TDIC information technology and marketing departments on best practices for building, maintaining, and updating their website.

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