Dear Liip,
Although the premium calculator superficially looks like a form, there is a lot more going on in the background. There are countless permutations to be taken into account in the calculation: the number of people whose bicycles are being insured, their ages, the combined total of the sum insured and the excess – and whether or not to include cover for the theft of your bicycle from in front of the restaurant where you have just treated yourself to a Quattro Stagioni pizza. I also want to make the calculator look attractive, rather than it just looking like a boring, standard cookie-cutter form.
Best wishes,
Mobiliar
Dear Mobiliar,
So, this is something where the results need to look ultra-simple, even though there is a lot going on under the hood. That’s something we can do. So let’s get to work. Our suggestion: we take the Webform module for Drupal 8, which enables powerful forms to be built without the need for any technical expertise, and pimp it up with two or three little upgrades to ensure the calculations are spot on. This much you know already. However, to ensure a perfect user experience on the website, instead of the normal Drupal front end, we need to build a module that offers a Vue-js handler for the web forms. This will enable us to combine the endless possibilities of web forms with a state-of-the-art front end. As a result, we will never have to reload the page and will have precise control over exactly what visitors to the website can see.
Best wishes,
Liip
Dear Liip,
Sounds great. Let’s do that. It means that we can keep using the web forms that we are already familiar with, and create new versions of the calculator without needing any programming skills – for A/B testing, for example, or to make a calculator for bicycle retailers. And if we ever need to create a new calculator for one of our other products, we can reuse the same framework and save a whole load of money. You can get started.
Best wishes,
Mobiliar
Dear Mobiliar,
We have now finished the premium calculator and everything is working well all round. One particular headache was building something that was generic enough to enable you to create other versions and further calculators in the future, as you requested. We also had to incorporate the many different options offered by web forms. For example, there are conditional fields – parts of the form that are only visible if you tick a particular field that comes before it. Say you tick to say that you are over 26 years old – in that case, your date of birth must also be more than 26 years ago. The birthday field check must take this into account. This was a bit of a challenge, but as you can see, we succeeded.
Best wishes,
Liip
Dear Liip,
Fantastic! Thanks to the prototyping at the beginning of the project and the iterative process that followed, we have managed to develop a thoroughly impressive application, despite us not initially being 100% clear on our requirements. My favourite feature is its extremely generic implementation, meaning that we can re-use the solution to create additional premium calculators for other products, or even some less complicated forms.
Best wishes,
Mobiliar
Dear customers,
Whatever you're looking for, we can help you find it quickly and easily.
Best wishes,
Mobiliar and Liip, your digital agency