Customizability of Compulife for Websites

[ksigmtsu]

I finally got to work fleshing out the Life insurance quoting portion of my website today, and I already knew that compulife had a very good consumer side quoting form just from having used it on the iliaa site, however, I didn't realize how easily you could customize the form itself and influence the comparison.

This is just with their base product with the health analyzer addon, but I've renamed some table options, changed face amount options, changed the default answers, added additional header lines, etc. Here's some examples of how you can change the form to make it specific to product offering.

Tennessee Life Insurance Quotes

There are 2 text links on that page to 2 different variations on the form itself (3 total), that were achieved by commenting out options, or changing input variables that are available in the html. All are modified from the basic default form that compulife gives to agents to put up on their consumer site.

I'm using the html of the form itself imbedded back into an iframe, then pushing the results back to my dummy contact page till I get the php form done in the next day or two.

For anyone using their software, it really opens up some added abilities when you add options for face values down to 5000, as by default it starts at 50k and won't display FE carriers because their minimums are too low. I defaulted it to 25000, so it will show whole life and UL carriers at their minimum face, all on 1 page, with the age 105 and 121 UL and WL carriers all on 1 page. Takes about 30 seconds of work to do that by modification of the html. Since the cgi for the program itself is ran off site, you can basically change all the values coming from your website, and as long as they're correct options that the script on their end can process it all works as intended.

I know not everyone even wants all this information just there and open to everyone to consume on their site, but if you do want to increase the usability of the software for the end user, those are some really simple tweaks you can make.

 

[Newby]

That looks excellent. But do the insurance companies and AARP sign off on their logos being there?

 

[ksigmtsu]

I'm not positive al, being that specifically I didn't just ask if if worked like I thought it might I just started testing the functions, but all the output values are coming back accurate.

I assume the cgi is actually just processing the data back through a server side compiled version of the same engine provided for end user installation. Since the source is already in c it wouldn't make any sense to rewrite the software twice every time they needed an update then pray for no differences accidentally in the libraries causing corruption in output. Any value that is acceptable in the desktop software appears to be acceptable in the web cgi. I did test unacceptable values to see what would happen and they did produce an error, not corrupt output. It just throws up an error message output.

The design of the software itself is pretty impressive in that regard, because of the design it can handle anything you throw at it because it appears to just be referencing an array field based on the inputs and not really doing a lot of math. I never saw even the natural problems that happen with using floating point so either all factoring is with integer only which makes more sense on financial stuff anyway or it is just building a table of acceptable values in an array and pulling the proper cell, which would account for the speed of the software.

Like I told Bob, the simplicity of the design choices they appear to have made were genius in that regard, it makes the software fast as lightning and very stable. It also has a lot of undocumented functionality that can easily be implemented with a minimum effort.

They could block the way I changed the HTML in a heartbeat, stop other users from doing it, etc, but there isn't a reason to. I'm not doing anything to produce false output, or anything that the software isn't intended to do, just tweaking the input fields.

I would guess that they might not want to give tech support to every jackass that tried to redesign their form like I did making undocumented changes, and I wouldn't blame them, they'd end up with a nightmare on their hands if everyone that owned the software immediately started thinking they were a software engineer, however if people are interested in seeing how to make minor modifications of the software using a text editor, I'd be happy to make a short tutorial to try to show the simple way to do it. It's easy enough that you can do it with notepad if you know just a little about html. The changes won't change the output html itself, it comes out looking like the selected template, it only changes the options available to the user for input, which allows for a form customized to specific product lines limited basically by category.

 

[Robert Barney]

Nice job ksigmtsu! I like what you have come up with. Very impressive. As I said to you in our discussions a couple of days ago, you may find agents beating a path to your door looking for you to do for them what you were able to do for yourself.

As to Al's post, I read it a couple of times to come to the conclusion that he knows darn little of what he is talking about. He may be a software engineer, but it is clear that Al knows DARN LITTLE about what Compulife does and how we do it. I was amazed to discover, when we caught him bootlegging our interet software though a GA, that his response was that he had no idea it was our software he was using. What does that tell you?

Based upon a number of flawed assumptions that he has made, Al continues to publish comments about the Compulife product that are completely off the wall.

I think that Al assumes that the rates which Compulife stores for life companies are in some kind of data structure created using a third party database software product.

THAT IS NOT THE CASE!

Did you read that Al? THAT IS NOT THE CASE.

When we designed our software we wanted a completely proprietary data format that could not be cracked or manipulated easily. Frankly, the data that we have is of significant value. While the data itself is in fact public, it requires an enormous amount of time and work to assemble it into a single software product and keep it up to date. So when we designed the software data structure, we built the data files to look like jibberish to anyone trying to poke into them.

I know of no case EVER, where someone cracked our data files or manipulated anything in the way that Al sets out in his posting. Frankly, I would have trouble cracking it. It's like trying to unscramble an egg.

Further, access to our data files is ONLY permitted through our proprietary CGI script engine. That is the ONLY way anyone can talk to our proprietary data files. The CGI program is compiled C++ code - good luck cracking that.

The CGI software independently validates ANY request made by the .html page that calls the CGI script, and the program will not produce premiums unless they are within the parameters allowed by the company. You can't game the software.

All of the modifications made by ksigmtsu are perfectly within reason and within the scope of our original web quote design. We wanted our web quoting engine to allow for maximum flexibility. Adding smaller face amounts does not modify any of the validity checks within the software itself.

All of Al's cautions and misgivings underscore his FALSE assumption that the Compulife product is an overpriced toy that a programmer could build in 30 days. If I had to start from scratch, and try to replicate it today, I think it would take 3 to 5 man years to get it to the level that it currently is at.

If someone gained access to the internet folders which contain Compulife's data files, and replaced our data files with edited/modified versions, I can assure you that the results would "blow up" and give outrageous errors. Occassionally we ourselves upload a corrupt file and the errors are immediately apparent. Fixing a damaged file is easily rectificed by replacing it.

I should also note that files are separated by category. 10 year rate files are not stored in the same file as 20 year rates. Keeping these rates in separate files minimizes problems associated with any one file being damaged.

Can I guarantee 100% security; no one can. But over the last 30 years we have learned a few things about software and there are many levels of security based upon the way we handle our data and software.

I share all of this to attempt to deflect the damage that Al continues to attempt to do to our reputation by denigrating our software product and service.

 

[ksigmtsu]

In fact anyone that wants to can embed the html off my page to generate quotes, but the more info button is gonna push them to my contact forms and it would be unpreventable because the redirect on that is server side, and to prevent it you'd need to prevent the form output or redirect or reformat it by hiding it. In fact I encourage anyone that wants to, go ahead and iframe my quote html into your page, I'd appreicate the leads, because the php form will look like your page is generating it. It would be more work to steal than it would be worth to avoid paying for the product.

The only way I could do that if I was trying to steal it, which I'm not, would be to resize the iframe to try to clip the more info buttons, but if the person panned over they would still be there. It would look really bad also, because the html is resizing in their css, and if you try to override the css file it only overrides the css for the form, not the output. (I did actually check to see if I could override the css to make it look more like my website)

You'd need to be smarter than me to steal it. Fact is, the product itself is useful and costs less per year than 1 sale, and there isn't a need to steal it. I used the free copy on ILIAA for quite some time myself, any agent that is just adverse to spending any money can use someone elses website and generate partial quotes with it, they just can't customize it, output the carriers they want, etc.

TBH, Bob I think you guys should put the 5000, 10000, 15000, 20000, and 25000 options in the default drop down menu because it makes it show a lot more carriers for FE, however anyone that wants to can enable that with just addition of a little bit of table code, which doesn't require a lot of tech knowledge. All you have to do is copy the 50,000 line a few times, and make the numbers match the amounts you want quoted.

Also, Just as a really really simple thing, you can edit out ANY option in the form by just putting an exclimation point after the open bracket on the table options, ex.:

<!..>

And reenable it by removing the !.

I wouldn't call what I'm doing hacking the form really, I'm just making tweaks to it that appear by the comments found inside the html itself to be completely acceptable and somewhat encouraged. Like I said before, anything I'm doing could be prevented back on the server end with a bare minimum of code.

The most devious thing it would allow would be for you to make the menu dropdown itself not match what is actually being requested from the server by having the 5000000 drop down actually send a request for a 50000 quote or something like that, but it would be pretty pointless, and unprofessional. I can't think of a logical reason you'd want to generate incorrect quotes.

 

[ksigmtsu]

I'm biting the bullet now and teaching myself PHP enough to use the $session variables, by some tweaking of that I can save the form entries for the birthday, face amount requested, etc, and repopulate the form for the user form after the more info button, so they don't have to answer their birthday and other information a second time.

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As an aside, I was just posting this thread so that anyone that wanted to know how to do this could ask questions etc, if they wanted help doing it, and to show what was possible using the Compulife web interface with a little tweaking, because I've never seen a thread about it before, not really to start a fight about the cost of the software or how good or bad it is. It is what it is, I really like the tools it contains and I think the cost is fair or I wouldn't use it.

The real value to me is that I can make forms that utilize the tools given to me by the software, and incorporate what is already there into something that generates a very usable result for myself or an end user.

I want people to want to visit my website because they can get good information there, regardless of talking to me, and want to do business with me because they can tell I want to enable them to find what they want, not sell them something.

 

[Norwayguy]

I'm biting the bullet now and teaching myself PHP enough to use the variables, by some tweaking of that I can save the form entries for the birthday, face amount requested, etc, and repopulate the form for the user form after the more info button, so they don't have to answer their birthday and other information a second time.

Is that wise? I could see someone putting some bogus info in because they are concerned about the info being sold and then requesting more info and this bogus stuff gets prepopulated?

 

[ksigmtsu]

Page 1 doesn't ask the name, phone, or email. What I'm going to use variables for is to transfer the birthday, the face amount requested, smoking/non smoking.

If I wanted to be really cute with that I could also have a pop under on submit that automatically quoted them health insurance, or same thing if they requested health, auto pop under a life quote. Then when they closed the window, they've got a cross sell quote already submitted and displayed on screen.

 

[Robert Barney]

TBH, Bob I think you guys should put the 5000, 10000, 15000, 20000, and 25000 options in the default drop down menu because it makes it show a lot more carriers for FE, however anyone that wants to can enable that with just addition of a little bit of table code, which doesn't require a lot of tech knowledge. All you have to do is copy the 50,000 line a few times, and make the numbers match the amounts you want quoted.

Happy to do that for anyone that wants it.

There is also an option to let someone enter in ANY face they want:

Life Insurance Quotes

 

[ksigmtsu]

Is that wise? I could see someone putting some bogus info in because they are concerned about the info being sold and then requesting more info and this bogus stuff gets prepopulated?

Also, I'm just thinking I'm going to pass the data with $_session variables (if I can figure out how to do that), then pre-populate the last page form, but allow it to be changed if they see something incorrect, and this is all after the quote is displayed. If you enter bogus information in a "contact" form after you've seen a quote, you're pretty bored, or a robot.

Spent most of my day today getting SSL set up on my site, putting in certificates, godaddy has a good deal on SSL certificates right now, its like 12 dollars per year for up to 5 years.

By the time I end up doing this I'll probably be able to just build sites/forms from scratch. Having to teach myself php and refresh myself on html as I go. It's really not that hard.