Revamping Your Web Site: Part Two
You're about to embark on part two of Revamping Your Web Site: Dog Food, Welcome Mats, and More, as published in the January issue of the TAAR Report. To read part one, just click here.
Improving Your Web Site: Three Areas to Consider
Improvement #1: Content
Content is quickly becoming the staple of a reputable insurance site, and for good reason. Well-written, topic-focused content allows insurance shoppers to answer their questions quickly and independently, while simultaneously positioning you as an insurance expert.
High-quality, relevant content is important to search engines like Google, too. When Jane Consumer enters a search term like “health quotes,” search engines like Google scour those 8 billion web pages in search of content that is relevant to Jane’s search request.
Adding great content to your site is one way to gain recognition from search engines and position your site in front of prospects that are looking for what you have to offer. And with more than three out of five people using the web to find information, this is one area in which you don’t want to be lacking.
About Us with Flavor
Even if you’re a one-agent operation, you shouldn’t skimp on the “About Us” section of your web site. According to a July 2006 case study from Marketing Sherpa, a personable “About Us” page lifted ecommerce conversions by 30 percent.
Give your “About Us” page a makeover by scrapping the corporate (read: robotic) speak and incorporating photographs and interesting biographies of the people behind the agency curtain—and give the stuffier corporate information like mission statements and privacy policies their own separate web pages.
At InsureMe, we recently revised our “About Us” pages and received some pretty great feedback as a result. You can get some ideas for your new “About Us” section by checking out the bio page for the InsureMe leadership.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
An FAQ page helps visitors quickly answer their questions, freeing you up to follow up on leads and build relationships with existing clients. Make sure your FAQ section is easy to find, and keep it updated with helpful and timely facts.
Improvement #2: Fonts
It may seem trivial, but the type of font used on your site can be the difference between a visitor thinking your page is a cheesy promotional site (only $19.99 for a limited time!), and a reputable site from a firm they can trust.
But before you go crazy with the plethora of fonts offered by Microsoft Word, bear in mind that best web site usability practice calls for using an 11- to 12-point Arial font. This will help keep your site clean and professional looking and can be easily read by visitors with various screen resolutions and web browsers.
Improvement #3: Contact Information
Have you ever exhausted yourself trying to find a business’ contact information? Frustrating, isn’t it? I recently mulled this point over with fellow InsureMe copywriter, Jeb Foster, who said, “I hate when companies seem to be hiding. I read a great article in MSN’s Slate about a guy who tried to call iTunes. I think it took him a week.”
You can be sure that a prospect who comes to your site won’t try for a week to locate your contact information. So take a good, hard look at your page. Is your phone number and email address easy to find? Do you encourage visitors to phone or email you? Do you readily provide your agency’s address and fax number for those who need it? Take some time to revamp the ways in which you display your contact information.
A Word about Layout and Design
If you're a small agency or independent broker, it can be tough to poor time and money into revamping a web site. So if you’ve read this far, you might be thinking, “This sounds great…but I have no idea how to implement these kinds of changes,” then you need to bite the bullet and hire someone to do it for you. Take some time to shop around; there are plenty of freelance designers out there who will work with you to achieve the vision you have for your site. The great thing about the internet is that a good web site invariably pays for itself and is fairly easy to maintain.
If your budget truly leaves little room to maneuver, make sure you look into simple publishing platforms for web sites and blogs. The majority of search engines (like Yahoo, Google and MSN) offer free web hosting; Blogger.com also offers free blog hosting. (Need a little inspiration to get the design ball rolling? Take a look at the site for UK insurer, Ecoinsurance. As insurance sites go, it’s pretty innovative.)
Put Out the Welcome Mat
For those of you who have read this article and checked out InsureMe.com, you’ve probably noticed that we’re not exactly the best and prettiest insurance site out there. Not yet, anyway. But we’re working on it day in and day out.
I think Stephanie Diamond of the Marketing Message Blog said it best when she stated that a web site is the “welcome mat” for potential customers. And as the Keynote Systems study demonstrated, insurance professionals will need to pay closer attention to the effectiveness of their web sites—not just their pricing—in order to enjoy optimal sales growth.
