Guest Blog Post: 8 Must-Haves for Creating an Amazing User Experience on Your Insurance Website

What Does Your Website Say About You?

The internet has been around for a long time, and yet some folks don’t understand just how important it is to so many facets of everyday life. In fact, for most businesses, it should be the hub of all marketing efforts. Do you know what your website says about you? Done right, it can help you make a fantastic first impression before you even talk to a prospect. The flip side of that is if it’s not done right, you can make a not-so-fantastic first impression just as easily.

Don’t believe it? Consider this: there are many ways to drive business, from email marketing to social media and print campaigns to paid advertising. And no matter your approach, most people will end up back at your website to learn more or get started. If your site looks amazing, is easy to get around, and has all the information your prospects want, they’ll stick around and, hopefully, become your next customer. If not, well, that’s another story.

Just like you wouldn’t show up to a prospect meeting in ripped jeans and a stained shirt, you can’t show up to the internet like that either.

Does Your Website Have What It Takes?

At this point, you might be thinking, “I know insurance. I don’t know what a good website needs!” The good news is that you don’t have to be a web designer to understand the types of things your clients and prospects want to see on your website. We’ve compiled a list of eight must-have features insurance agency websites need, and once your website incorporates them, they can help you focus on doing what you do best: selling insurance!

Eight Important Features Your Insurance Agency Website Needs

You want your website to stand out from the competition, attract leads, and help you service your existing clients better. Here are the eight most important must-haves your website needs to help you accomplish your goals.

1.  Impressive Design

Did you know that 74% of insurance shoppers begin their search online? Once they’re on your site, it takes less than a second for them to form an opinion about your agency. First impressions matter, so it’s vital that your website looks amazing, is designed for local SEO performance, and accurately reflects your agency.

2.  Lead Capture Forms

Every agency wants to capture as many leads as possible, and your lead generation forms are the way to do it. Keep forms short and sweet to increase your chances that prospects will actually fill them out. Using integrated landing pages, conversion-driven forms, and other calls to action to clearly communicate what you want visitors to do next is critical.

3.  Video Proposals

Video is increasingly becoming a preferred method to connect with brands and services, whether they’re an insurance shopper or not. Meet your clients and prospects where they are by recording password-protected videos to highlight policy features and explain complex concepts. Your close ratios can increase by as much as 15% through the use of video as a communication tool.

4.  Personality

What’s the one thing that sets you apart from other insurance agencies? Your team! No other agency has the terrific team you do, so show them off. Highlight your team, your location, and anything else that makes you special. Using tools that can personalize the website for visitors is a fantastic way for you to shine.

5.  Live Chat

When people have questions, they want answers immediately. Perhaps even more important, they want easy ways to talk to you. A recent study found that two-thirds of website visitors aged 18 to 49 want to be able to chat with someone live through a website, but only one-third of business owners think customers prefer to communicate that way. If you’re not embracing live chat on your website, now is the time to start!

6.  Client Service Center

You might be starting to notice a trend here, but having easy, accessible communication options on your website is where it’s at. Make it simple for your clients to report a claim, make a policy change, request a certificate or ID card, or pay a bill. You can accomplish most of this by making forms available on your website.

7.  Interactive Content

It’s easy to fill up a website with lots of words and information for your clients and prospects to read, but that can get boring pretty quickly. By utilizing tools that increase engagement, you can break through the noise and sell value, not price. You can also improve your website’s ranking on search engines (SEO) because Google and others consider the time spent on a page when factoring SEO scores, and interactive content keeps people hanging around longer.

8.  5-Star Review Capture

When prospects learn of your agency, they’re going to want to know what others think. To find out, they’re going to search for you online. Having five-star reviews on Google and Facebook provide the social proof you need to establish credibility. By capturing feedback from your best clients and encouraging them to leave reviews for you online, you can control the narrative in your favor. This is also great for improving your SEO!

Boost the User Experience on Your Website

Now that you know what your website needs to succeed, it’s time to put a plan into action. Begin by assessing which of these features your website is missing, then decide how you’ll go about adding them. One way to do that is by using an all-in-one website platform solution designed specifically for independent insurance agents.  

How ActiveAgency Can Help

The ActiveAgency platform contains innovative and proven tools like Clickable Coverage, Hello Producer, Video Proposals, and more. You can also manage your site effortlessly with ActiveAgency Dashboard, a central hub that makes it incredibly easy to use all the tools and built-in features to maximize results, see how you’re doing with team leaderboards and performance metrics, and get unlimited support from an award-winning, human-powered team.

ActiveAgency was created by Forge3, whose cost-effective digital marketing strategies have powered progressive-thinking agencies big and small since 2004. They are location-independent with team members across the United States servicing more than 1,200 clients on two continents. To learn more about Forge3 and ActiveAgency, or to schedule a demo, visit our website.