When you think of Argos, what do you think of? For me, it’s those little blue pens like you also get in betting shops, queues at the tills at Christmas, cheap jewellery (Elizabeth Duke?), and having to force your way through the throngs to get to your alloted collection point before the wait for your goods to come off the conveyor belt.
Not exactly a brilliant customer experience, which is why I was a little surprised and worried when I learned that they’re extending their product range into financial services with a new comparison site, including car, home and travel insurance, as well as mortgages, pensions, credit cards and utilities.
Argos Compare, (they’ve obviously thought long and hard about that, before stealing it from GoCompare and TescoCompare) is what they’ve come up with, and one way they’re trying to distinguish themselves from all of the other comparison sites is by offering vouchers (their gift card) when you take out a policy, although on launch this only applies to 2 types of purchase:
- £15 gift card  if you take out a home insurance policy
- £30 gift card for taking out a car insurance policy
Now, the vouchers in themselves shouldn’t be the decider when it comes to choosing to go with Argos Compare, after all, they can only be spent in Argos, so you’re a little tied with that incentive.
Thankfully, the service is provided by BeatThatQuote, one of the biggest price comparison sites, so the deals that are given should be competitive, but it’s still worth checking the other comparison sites when you’re shopping around for a new insurance deal.
Whilst I doubt Argos are too worried about becoming a dominant player in the comparison market, they’re obviously hoping they can use their brand and their customer base to generate visits to Argos Compare. I was quite surprised to see Argos high in the list of the most searched for terms in the UK, so they’ve obviously got a lot of web traffic that they’re trying their hardest to monetize.
photo credit: alex_lee2001