Another step noted on the journey that I blogged about last month – which insurer will be the first to sell through Facebook. Thanks to Carol Tice (@TiceWrites) for leading me to the 21^st Century Facebook site.They have implemented a quoting feature on their page and I used it to find out how much money I could be saving on my automobile insurance!

What I liked about the experience is that I did not have to leave Facebook to get to a quoted price.The site uses effective drop down lists that worked efficiently (they were contextual and really sped up the process) and, even when I selected the wrong option, I could easily and intuitively correct my mistake.Once I completed the input process (took less than five minutes), there was a link to go to the full 21^st Century side to obtain a “complete quote”.

I noted that the current design does not use any of the information that Facebook already knows about me (age, gender, etc), but I am sure that will be offered as a feature at some time in the future.At a minimum, I expect to see prefilled information and a “click here to confirm” option.

Since I had to go to the 21^st Century site to proceed with the transaction, this is not selling on Facebook yet, but I was surprised to see how quickly we are progressing toward that state.