Markel

Context

I joined Markel in August 2022 as the UX Lead for Partnerships, reporting directly to the Head of Digital Services. Markel’s partnerships ecosystem supports hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the UK through value-add digital platforms with the largest of which is the Markel Business Hub.

The Hub serves as an business and legal resource platform, helping small business owners access tools, insights, and partner benefits. But despite its reach, engagement was declining, and the business struggled to measure the impact of its innovation investments.

The challenge was clear:

Innovation at Markel was happening, but it wasn’t measurable. Stakeholders couldn’t see how UX improvements translated into business performance, which made it difficult to justify spend or guide strategy.

Problem

The Business Hub had strong potential but was underperforming across key UX and business metrics:

• Low engagement: Only 18% of registered users were active monthly.

• Poor retention: Average visit frequency was once every 6 weeks.

• Unclear value: User interviews revealed confusion around what the Hub actually offered.

• No measurement model: UX and innovation success were anecdotal, not data-driven.

Internally, this created friction; product teams wanted to innovate, but senior leaders needed proof of ROI. My goal was to re-establish the role of UX as a measurable business driver, while improving usability and engagement for our, just under 100,000, strong audience.

UX Research Study

To deeply understand both our users and internal stakeholders, I led a three-phase mixed-methods UX research initiative.

1. Discovery & Analytics Review

• Conducted heuristic evaluation across the platform using Nielsen’s 10 principles.

• Identified major friction points in navigation, readability, and hierarchy. Also, I built a few user personas.

• Analytics findings:

  • 42% of users dropped off after the homepage.

  • Average session duration: 1m 38s.

  • Only 26% of users scrolled past 50% of any given resource.

2. User Research

Ran 141 user surveys and 15 in-depth interviews with small business owners across FSB, IPSE, and BIBA partner networks.

Top findings:

• 63% couldn’t describe the Hub’s value proposition.

• 54% said content was “too generic.”

• 46% wanted personalised guidance based on their business type.

3. Usability Testing

• Conducted remote moderated testing with 10 participants across key tasks (finding resources, training their employees, etc).

• Key pain points: poor wayfinding and a lack of progress feedback.

• Task completion: 59% success rate pre-redesign.

Through affinity and user journey mapping, we reframed the problem: users didn’t need more content; they needed relevance, clarity, and measurable progress.

Solution

To transform the Business Hub into a measurable, user-centric platform, I designed and led the rollout of a new UX framework focused on incremental improvement.

1. Simplified Information Architecture

• Remodelled our confusing navigation to 3 core themes (Find a resource, customise a template, grow my knowledge).

• Introduced contextual breadcrumbs and global search.

• Impact: task success improved from 59% to 83%, with a 31% reduction in cognitive load (measured via System Usability Scale).

2. Personalised Dashboards

• Developed adaptive dashboards that tailored content and resources to user segments (e.g., industry, company size, or partner origin).

• Users received curated “next steps” based on interaction patterns.

• Impact: perceived content relevance +58% in post-test survey; average session time rose to 3m 12s.

3. Engagement Loops

• Introduced features like “add to favourites”, “related resources,” and intelligent re-engagement emails triggered by inactivity.

• Impact: monthly return visits grew from 18% to 46% within 90 days.

4. Innovation Metrics Dashboard

• Created a design ROI framework aligning UX metrics (HEART model: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success) with business KPIs.

• Allowed leadership to visualise how design changes directly impacted conversion, retention, and satisfaction.

The redesign transformed the Business Hub into Markel’s flagship digital partnership platform. It's a model for how innovation can be both user-centric and measurable.

Key Learnings

• Design without measurement is guesswork. By tying UX outcomes to KPIs, we made innovation visible and defensible.

• Personalisation drives trust. Relevance was the biggest engagement lever for small-business audiences.

• Incremental innovation compounds. Continuous discovery and iteration outperformed “big launch” redesigns.

Impact

The success of the Business Hub project helped redefine how Markel approaches digital innovation; establishing UX as a measurable, strategic function across partnerships. It also positioned the partnership division as a key contributor to Markel’s growth in digital engagement and retention.