With the Health Insurance Marketplace open to the public as of a few days ago, there have already been a number of reports about the massive amount of web traffic the Marketplace is experiencing. Indeed, Comscore data confirm the considerable early interest in the Marketplace among Americans seeking information about their health insurance options under the Affordable Care Act. In the week leading up to the beginning of open enrollment, PC traffic to healthcare.gov averaged about 250,000 unique visitors a day between September 23-27. When the Marketplace officially opened on October 1, however, traffic grew approximately 10x the previous week’s average with 2.5 million people accessing healthcare.gov via PCs in that first day.
With so many people visiting the Marketplace, it’s worth better understanding which information needs are bringing them to the site and what their behaviors are once reaching the site. The following statistics on site usage – even during just the first day of its existence -- reveal several of the health insurance topics important to American consumers:
Clearly there is high demand from consumers to take ownership over their health insurance options and make decisions that they feel will reflect their best interests. Other visitation patterns on the website provide additional insight as to what issues are most on their minds, including the most heavily visited FAQ pages and glossary terms:
While it may be too early to draw conclusions about the impact of the Marketplace on the broader industry, paying attention to and understanding these trends can help companies make better decisions about their participation in the new insurance exchanges. Comscore can help businesses and marketers better understand the current Health Insurance Marketplace through its new service, Comscore Health Insurance Exchange Measurement, which provides detailed, aggregated and anonymous online usage metrics for the new Health Insurance Marketplace. As traffic to and activity on these and related sites evolves, Comscore can provide a wealth of information about the exchanges, including data by local market or state, data regarding insurer sites and health insurance aggregator sites, search data, demographics of the individuals visiting healthcare.gov and the state exchanges, and even insight regarding the most commonly asked questions about the Marketplace among consumers.
Read more about this service or contact Comscore for more information.