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Saturday, 12 July 2008
10 Crucial Elements of a Successful Insurance Web Presence
There is a whole lot more to running an effective insurance agency website than just great looking graphics. In fact, there are ten crucial elements every insurance agency website needs to maximize its presence.
- "Find-Ability" - Regardless of how your website looks visually, or even if it contains all ten of the crucial elements I've described here - if it can not be found by your target market - it's pretty hard to profit from it!
Way back in the day... insurance agents (amongst other traditional business owners with brand new websites) operated off of the "if I build it, they will come" theory. Some still do. Most however, at least have some semblance of understanding that just having a website DOES NOT mean that it can be found - even by them!
Effective promotion strategies like:
- Article marketing
- Link building
- Blogging
- E-Zine ads
- Viral marketing
- Print advertising and
- Joint venture promotions
- Are all website "basics" when it comes to promotion. Just the short list mentioned above could all fill an entire "how to" manual - but a discussion of website design would not be complete without at least a mention of the need for consistent and constant promotion! (Please also see the post "10 Ways to Boost Your Agency's Online "Findability").
- Lead Capture Capability - Whether you choose to implement a simple webform to collect prospect information or an elaborate online CRM system, it is IMPERATIVE that you use something, anything! Setting the stage for follow-up marketing is the key and what you use to achieve that is secondary to the kind of lead capture device that you utilize. Research shows that the average web surfer (prospect) needs to hear from you up to seven times before deciding to take action.
Letting a visitor leave your website without collecting their contact information for a follow-up campaign could be detrimental to your online success. You might offer a monthly newsletter, free reports or the obvious - a free quote in exchange for the prospects contact information.
Insurance Web Designs provides online quote forms, web form capture and e-newsletter features for every website package we offer.
- Pre-Qualification - Your website should answer many of the common questions and overcome the most typical objections posed by your target market. When this is handled correctly your website is able to weed out potentially problematic customers and pull only the best fit clients into your profit funnel. By providing detailed information on your scope of service, and even including a FAQ page on your site, you can begin the pre-sell product and "warm up" your prospects before a personal meeting or phone conversation ever takes place.
- Quality Content - If you're going to set up a website for your insurance agency, it is a real good idea to provide some of the most obvious resources for your clients and prospects alike; ie... an insurance glossary, general (yet informative) insurance articles and information. Typically, you'll find that visitors are coming to your website for a variety of reasons, these being the most popular: they want a free insurance quote, they need to make a premium payment, they don't understand what a "deductible" is and want to see if you have more information about that on your website, they want to make changes to their current policy or find your contact information. If you don't provide your website visitors with these basic capabilities, you are doing yourself and your visitor a disservice.
It's a great idea to present yourself and/or your agency in a personal and warm, inviting manner. Most people want to do business with other PEOPLE and not some nameless website they've found online.
- Ease of Use (aka: Easy Navigation) - Plan the site structure logically. Make every page accessible with a minimum number of clicks - this suggests that no page should usually be more than three layers deep in the site. Provide a sitemap showing every available page - some people prefer to access a site this way. (It also helps search engines spider through your site.) A site-search option which offers a keyword search to all your pages is a valuable addition.
- The 10 Second Rule - Your website must load quickly - period. If you are more concerned with the latest technology than you are with making money then the 10 second rule doesn't really apply to you. For the rest of us, it is extremely important! Not only that, but the most important part of your marketing message must be placed above the fold if you hope to have that visitor stay on your website for longer than 60 seconds!
- Balance - While it is important to have a clean, attractive design - as an "ugly" website is often the kiss of death. It is equally important to use graphics to enhance your message not distract attention from it.
Also, a visitor should not have to deal with side scrolling to view your entire webpage. It's bad enough visitors have to scroll up and down, why would anyone want their visitors to have scroll side to side too?
- Email Address, YES! Email Addresses - Professionalism is important and don't think for a minute that your @gmail, @hotmail, @yahoo or other freebie email account goes unnoticed by your website visitors. Going to all of the trouble of setting up a useful, lead generating insurance website and then leaving your visitors with a freebie email account to contact you with is just plain unprofessional - it goes back to the need of the visitor to trust the website they are visiting. Use an email account that goes with your domain name - ie... if your website address is www.myagency.com - then ideally, you should be using email addresses like, myname@myagency.com.
- Statistics - Website statistics can help you achieve very important goals, one of them being CONVERSIONS. If you know where your website is falling short in terms of losing its visitors, you can find, identify and resolve the issues relatively quickly - or at least be aware of the issues and continue to refine the solution until it does work.
If you are forking over boatloads of cash to the search engines for the term "life insurance quotes" and not getting the results you had really hoped for... and you login to view your website statistics you find out that a majority of your website visitors are using the (less expensive) term "Los Angeles Health Insurance Quotes" to find your website - you've really killed two birds with one stone. You will wind up saving your cash by backing off of the term "life insurance quotes" and putting it into a more productive term like "Los Angeles, CA Health Insurance Quotes" or "Health Insurance Quotes for Los Angeles" but you will also be able to refine your health insurance pages to convert your web visitors into prospects simply by paying more attention to the area that IS generating traffic and interest as opposed to wasting TIME and MONEY on pages that are NOT generating interest.
- Increase Sales Calls/Decrease Customer Service Calls - By providing online insurance quote forms on your website you are setting yourself up to for EXCLUSIVE leads - you do not have to worry that the lead that you just received has also been sent to 10 other insurance agents in your area. Increasing your sales activities is generally considered a good thing in most marketing/sales circles. Decreasing your customer service calls - how do you do that? Simple. Have an online customer service center where policyholders can request routine changes right from your website without having to CALL you to do it! Auto ID card replacements, change of address, etc... these are all great examples of routine calls that you can virtually eliminate just by having an online customer service center!
Make sure your site meets the above, and you will have yourself a great foundation for profitable web marketing.
Wednesday, 02 July 2008
10 Ways to Boost Your Agency's Online "Findability"
(Insurance Web Designs by Cameron Fox)
- Make sure your domain name is meaningful and easy to remember. Short domain names are always better than really long ones. Easy To Remember. An easy to remember domain name isn't always a short domain name. InsuranceWebDesigns.com could have easily purchased www.iwd.com, but it is virtually meaningless to anyone outside of our company! On the other hand, American Automobile Association purchasing www.aaa.com makes all the sense in the world. No Trick Spelling. Try to avoid using dashes if possible. Also, don't use a number in place of the word. For example, insurance4you.com. Or, use a letter in place of a word. For example, insurance4u.com. If you use one of these seemingly "clever" domain names, you'll find yourself (and your staff!) constantly s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g out your domain name. Your time is much more valuable than that. Relates To Your Business. Selecting a domain name that relates to your business just makes good sense. We design websites for insurance agents, so www.insurancewebdesigns.com meets all of the above criteria. It's short (well, short enough anyway!), easy to remember, doesn't use any trick spelling techniques and definately relates to our business. (PLUG: You can purchase domain names online for $9.99 per year here.)
- Pointing multiple domain names to your main website can be a huge advantage. What does that mean? Let's say you own the domain name www.insurance.com (I know! Fantasy at best!) - but you are a very well-connected insurance agent who attends chamber of commerce events, is active in the community and quite frankly is somewhat of a "local celebrity." Let's say you own another domain name like www.joesmith.com (because your name - the local celeb - is Joe Smith) and have it "point to your main domain name www.insurance.com" means that whether someone types in www.insurance.com or www.joesmith.com - they will arrive the very same website. Folks may be interested in your insurance services but can't find your agency's website by using keywords like: auto insurance, homeowners insurance, etc... instead - they can type in your name (in this case... Joe Smith and maybe the word Insurance) and BAM! They are able to find you again and again. (PLUG: Insurance Web Designs allows you to point up to 9 domain names to your main website for free!)
- Don't keep your domain name a secret! Make sure your website address is printed on EVERYTHING! ie... stationery, business cards, ads, yellow page listings, voicemail, on hold messages, etc...
- Check to be sure that your website contains your keywords and description in the proper place. Meta tags are the "hidden code" on a website that only search engines pay attention to and can even see!
- Be sure to "add your URL" to the top search engines. (URL is your domain name - like, www.insurance.com). As a client of Insurance Web Designs, you have the added convenience of having access to our search engine submission control panel which makes it "easy-breezy" to submit your website to the top search engines in less time that it will take you to finish reading this article.
- Don't be afraid to submit your website address to places like www.nationalinsurancedirectory.com and other sites similar in nature. Directories can be extremely useful because most contain a "find an agent" locator and only agents within a certain distance are displayed, limiting the amount of competitors you are listed with.
- Have you tried to find your agency website through your company's agency locator? For instance, if you are a Nationwide Insurance Agent, you would want to be found using the "find an insurance agent" link on their main website, wouldn't you? Check to be sure that the website they refer to isn't just the website that they provide for you as an agent, request that they update your listing to include your business website address as well as your email address.
- Are you a member of Toastmasters, LeTip, Business Networking International (BNI), Leads Club, or other membership driven organizations? Is your agency listed in the member directory? Is the information current? Does it display your email address?
- Reciprocal links are highly valued these days. Consider exchanging links with your policyholders who have websites, or other regional/local businesses such as real estate agents, attorneys, automobile dealerships, accountants, etc... What is a reciprocal link anyway? A reciprocal link is a text and/or banner link to a site that, somewhere in its pages, carries a similar text/banner link to your own site. A reciprocal link is a commitment. This link basically says "The site at the other end of this link feels that my site is important enough to link to, and I feel that their site is important enough that I am willing to let visitors leave my site via this link."
- Minimise use of flash and maximise key words in text. While flash is very "cool" it does more to hinder your ability to be found in the search engines than it does at captivating your audience IF they ever find your website. Identify key words and use them on your web pages. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Think about the words they would type into Google to find a business like yours. Then, be sure to include those words in the text of your web pages.
Insurance Web Designs offers solutions for your "findability" concerns:
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