I recently bought travel insurance (my first time- I'm a bit under-insured at the moment), and came away feeling great about the experience.

After some reflection, I realized that the site design for the website I bought it through is really fantastic. It makes me feel happy and safe.

The company is called World Nomads, and it cost $70 for three weeks, plus $2 to charity (with a very impressive list to choose from).

Here are some things they did right:

• Full costs and coverage without giving personal information.
• Made clear that I can do everything online.
• Recommended by brands I trust (Lonely Planet and Couchsurfing).
• Good community features (journals, forums).
• Strong philosophical statements about extreme sports, drinking/drugs, charities, etc.
• Casual and even joking coverage of tough subjects like injuries, STDs, etc.
• Good color palette.
• Legal documents in HTML instead of PDF or Word.
• Good use of clip art.
• Very techno-savvy and hip (SMS and iPod specific endeavors).
• Great secondary efforts (destination guides, short-term job search, language mp3s, etc.)

And that's just off the top of my head. Blog posts about them are seem generally positive, although not without the usual claim/counter-claim drama.

Overall it was a great purchasing experience, and I hope the insurance itself will live up to it.

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