User Stories: SSS Maternity Benefit Calculator
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Challenge: Simplify and explain the complex maternity benefit process and requirements in Philippine social security system
Solution: Interactive maternity benefit calculator
Result: Over 160 000 impressions and 10 000 clicks in 6 months
Usually, what happens when you get a brilliant business idea is that you need to test it in the market, to see if there’s a need for your product or service. But if your business is born from a real personal experience you already know there’s a spot for you!
Businesses that are born from real personal experiences often demonstrate signs of success sooner as the market need question is already checked. There is a clear problem that makes it difficult for people in similar situations to get around and you tackle that.
Today I want to introduce you to such a business case. sssbenefits.com was created after one mother went through all the processes and research to get maternity benefits from her home country and now her calculator is helping many others!
Background and challenges
Cathy is an online entrepreneur, with an extensive experience in the tech world, starting from freelance projects as a technical writer up to owning multiple online businesses.
“When I got pregnant with my firstborn, I learned about the maternity benefits that I could be eligible for from my home country, Philippines”
Cathy, online entrepreneur
The website she created about Social Security System (SSS) maternity benefits has been growing in popularity ever since its launch and now serves as a great resource for moms in Philipines, that find it difficult to understand all the processes and requirements related to maternity benefits in their home country.
All the knowledge on the subject has come from personal experience, but in Cathy’s case, such a big work wasn’t left in the drawer for personal use. She decided to share it with other soon-to-be moms and make the process at least a little easier.
“After researching and going through all the process to get the benefit, I decided to create a blog for it to share with other women who are in a similar situation. My target audience are the female members of the social security agency in my home country.”
Cathy, online entrepreneur
Many brilliant tools are created to help people solve the complex puzzle of bureaucracy, regulations, documentation, and processes. And another big part of that puzzle is to learn about your possibilities. There are many cases related to uncertainty about the payment or benefit amounts that apply to one's case, or if they’re eligible at all.
“From the beginning, I clearly understood the need for an interactive calculator for my website. My target audience wants answers that are delivered fast and clear. And one of the answers they seek is how much is the amount they could get from their maternity benefits. Having an interactive calculator on my blog solves this particular problem, instead of them having to manually calculate.”
Cathy, online entrepreneur
Creating the maternity benefits calculator
Cathy knew that she is going to add an interactive calculator for estimating the benefit amounts from the very beginning.
“I simply google “embed calculators for website” and Calconic came as one of the top search results. Among others, I tested it and found it to be more sophisticated and easy to use. It also offers templates which saves time when building calculators. The learning curve is short too. ”
Cathy, online entrepreneur
The calculator was built fast and smooth, and the no-code trait of the tool made it easy to implement. The SSS maternity benefits calculator has a very simple structure for anyone to use.
“It added more value to my site. Aside from providing information, the website now features an interactive calculator which is very sophisticated and not complicated to use.”
Cathy, online entrepreneur
A woman needs to choose the expected month of delivery, and it automatically states what the semester of contingency is. This part doesnt even require a calculation. Calconic calculator allows you to assign values and show a personalized answer using the conditional visibility feature. Such a simple solution but making it more clear and simple for the end user.
Then on the lower part of the calculator, the user has to enter the six highest Monthly Salaries Credit (MSC) before the contingency semester and the calculator counts the results for 3 possible scenarios affecting the benefit amount.
That is the:
- Maternity benefit amount
- Maternity benefit amount for solo mothers
- Maternity benefit amount for miscarriage
Results
The calculator performed better than expected and now is the top-performing page on Cathy’s website.
“To this date, my page “SSS maternity benefits calculator” continues to be my top performing page according to Google Search Console. For the first half of 2022, they’ve gotten a total of 169K impressions and a total of 10.9K clicks.”
Cathy, online entrepreneur
Such results prove that interactive calculators can not only help users convert or simply answer their questions, but increase traffic and benefit your SEO efforts.
And last but not least, it’s a good lesson to many businesses with complicated structures, that there are ways to improve your customer experience and simplify complex processes.
“I think the calculator itself is unique because no one has created a similar calculator so far. Not even the social security agency that provides the benefits.”
Cathy, online entrepreneur
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Gintė @calconic: Hope you enjoyed Cathy's story. If you’d like to share your website calculator and become our next User story leave a comment below!
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