Your website is essential. It is one of the most powerful things you can have as an insurance agent or an insurance agency. Your insurance website helps you become more memorable, credible, and professional to your website visitors. Most importantly, it can help you grow your business, find more leads, and close more deals.
Because your website is such a powerful and essential tool in your marketing strategy, it’s important to make sure it is as effective as it can possibly be. To do that, you should ensure that your website has these ten features included:
- Your business information. It is crucial to include your agency’s information on your website, so your visitors know who they are gaining information from. This may seem obvious, but when ensuring you have the other nine aspects I’ll mention in this list, it can be easy to overlook adding your information. You should always include your agency name, or your agency’s name, your phone number, business hours, address, and things of the sort. This information should be accessible to your website visitors at all times and from any page of your site that they are on so they do not need to actively search for it. A good place to insert this information is the header or the footer of each page.
- Quality content. Websites for insurance agencies need to include important information about each type of insurance that is offered. You want to be sure you aren’t adding text, images, and videos for the sole purpose of filling a page. You need to make sure your information is serving a purpose and is useful for the person visiting your site. With insurance websites, of course you need detailed content about the types of insurance you provide. Another thing you might want to include would be insurance company websites. If your client needs to access their carrier’s site, they can do so from a click on yours.
- A modern design. The internet has essentially taken over the world. We don’t need to leave the house to find information we’re looking for. Therefore, you should be ensuring your website is a nice place to visit. Your website is available to the general public 100% of the time. When you’re working, when you’re sleeping, and when you’re out of town. Think of it as a virtual representation of yourself or your office. You wouldn’t want someone walking into your office and being turned off by the visual appeal, so your website shouldn’t be any different. Modern insurance websites should be crisp and clean and updated. Think back to Facebook’s first prototype – it had a very boxy feel to it, and while that was great and innovative in the early 2000’s, it is now 2020 and we have the power to add so many new elements to websites to make them visually appealing.
- A mobile friendly design. While it is extremely important your website is ‘pretty’ on a desktop or laptop computer, you need to make sure it translates to a mobile device. More than 60% of internet users access the internet from their cell phone. There is no good in having a website if 60% of people can’t visit it or see how great it really is. Another reason to make sure your website is mobile friendly is because Google likes websites that are. If your website is not mobile friendly, but your competitor’s website is, they will show up in Google search results before you. This could ultimately give your business to your competitors.
- Social media links. Adding icons that link out to your social media platforms is a great thing to have on your insurance website. These buttons are especially important if you are actively posting social media content. They allow your consumers and clients to easily find your social media pages and follow them if they please. By adding social media icons, your viewers are more likely to follow you on those platforms. By following you on social media, your viewers have the opportunity to share, like, and retweet your content, which allows more people to contact you if they need insurance.
- Easy navigation. Your insurance website design is very important. It needs to be easy to navigate so your consumers can find the information they’re looking for without being overwhelmed. One rule of thumb is to create menus or tabs to separate content. One thing you should ever do is lay out all of your information on one page, particularly in the insurance industry. If someone is shopping for car insurance, but you also offer home, boat, and landlord insurance, they now have to dig through all of that content to find what they’re looking for. It’s not only overwhelming, but it’s also not pretty at all and can be the reason your viewers click the ‘back’ button and open up the next Google search result.
- Consistency. You should have a pretty clear look and overall feel to your website. Use the same fonts, colors, and theme throughout your entire website. Being consistent with your website look is a good way to ensure that you are coming off to your website visitors as a professional. Your website should be cohesive, but it should follow suit with your brand as well. Your website colors should be the ones that you use on your business cards, your logo, and any other marketing tools you have. This helps your audience recognize who you are and it makes you easier for them to remember, as well.
- Quality visuals. Images are a great way to help your reader make their way down your webpages. Images help break up text heavy pages. Write a paragraph or two, add a photo, then continue with your article. Images also help guide the reader in the right direction. If you have powerful visuals, your reader will be attracted to them, and if you do use images to break up your text, you are guiding them down the page, prompting them to read on. Of course, your images should be related to what you are talking about. So, if you’re selling life insurance, there is no need for cat photos (as fun as they are).
- Internal links. If you’re unfamiliar with this term, it is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a link on your webpage that leads to another one. Internal links allow your readers to visit other pages that are relevant to your content. Obviously, if your readers are on your webpage, they are interested in the topic at hand. By linking out to other resources, you are allowing your viewers to obtain more information.
- Calls to action. You need to tell your audience what their next step is. Give them clear instructions on what you want them to do. Tell them to call you for a free quote or to sign up for your email newsletter. What you want your website visitors to do is totally up to you, just make sure you tell them what it is, otherwise, they probably won’t do it. If they don’t have an action to take, that lead isn’t converting, and that is a deal that you aren’t going to close.
If you don’t have a website for your insurance agency, there is no time like the present. Or, if you have a website, but it doesn’t include all of the aforementioned features and you need a revamp, this is a great place to start. If building websites isn’t in your wheelhouse, or you just don’t have enough hours in the day to do it, try enlisting the help of a service that will do it for you. One of these services is S3 Solutions. From there, S3 Solutions will build you a brilliant website with these features that is sure to convert visitors into deals!