Insurance Agency
Website Design

The Keys to A good Insurance Agency Website Design

If you're planning to build a website for your insurance agency, or if you're looking to hire a designer to do it, consider the following carefully:

• The website must be clean, attractive and fast, so it passes the "click away test". The "click away test" simply means that many people take one look at a website and decide that the design is amateurish, too complicated, too slow, etc. -- and they immediately click away to another destination (most likely a competitor).
  
• The emphasis of a good insurance website is on function. Your potential clients want to: (1) find out something about you. (2) get contact information for you, and (3) get an online insurance quote. If you are an individual agent or small agency, focus on covering those 3 things. You do not need to add distracting links, corny graphics and colors, or volumes of information about the insurance industry. Keep it clean and simple. The purpose of your website is to efficiently do business with your clients!
  
• Make sure you include an online quote tool that works! Many small insurance agency sites have klunky one-page quote forms. These forms cram a huge number of questions onto one very long page. No one will be eager to fill out one of these forms!

One of the basic tenets of good website design is that complex functions and forms must be broken up into manageable steps. (This is the "click away test" again). Visit one of the elaborate websites built by the leading online insurance brokers (GEICO, Progressive, etc.)--you will not find a single example of "one  long page" insurance quote forms. Take a hint from companies that are spending big bucks to attract insurance business online. 

You should also be sure to have your own domain name and website. Be wary of using the main company website, it may well send prospective clients to other agents (see below).

Why Every Insurance Agent and Broker needs a Website

The insurance business has traditionally been all about personal contact. Most agents and smaller brokers create a personal relationship with their clients via face to face meetings or by telephone and rely on that relationship to build loyalty. For this reason, many agents may not have given a great deal of thought to the need for a website.

However, consider the following:

• The big online discount insurers are spending millions upon millions of advertising dollars to attract online clients. It is almost impossible to spend more than 5 minutes online without being inundated with insurance offers. And let's face it, the prices offered by these companies are very competitive. While you can hope that your existing clients will remain loyal because of your relationship, there is certainly nothing to prevent these online companies from cutting into your future business growth by attracting away new prospects.
  
   
• Your existing and prospective clients are becoming more and and more Internet savvy, and whether you like it or not, they will expect to find you online. If you do not offer a web address which is specific to you, you run a serious risk that prospective clients will end up elsewhere. If you are an agent representing a single company, you can easily lose business even if a prospective client visits the main company website (farmers.com, statefarm.com, etc.). All these sites include "agent finders" or quote tools that can easily link prospects up with another agent in your area.
  Make sure your business cards, print advertisements and other materials have a web address that belongs only to you .

About Our Instant Insurance Websites

Creating and maintaining a website can be an expensive hassle. When you have to worry about choosing web hosting, HTML design (or hiring a designer), and ongoing updates and maintenance, it's easy to see why a lot of agents might put off getting their business online.

That's where our Instant Insurance Websites come in. We offer an easy to use and attractive design that can be set up and updated instantly, just by filling out a form.  You can have your website running within half an hour, and you can update it instantly at any time!

Our site design is simple, clean and professional looking. We understand that your business is primarily about relationships with your clients. The point is not to make your website the focus of your business. The idea is to give you a website that works with your existing business and offers your clients an additional way to work with you.

Our Instant Websites include customizable text to describe yourself or your business, complete contact information (including an email contact form), optional graphics such as an agent photo and/or a company logo, etc. You can see a demo here .

New! Our instant websites now come with guaranteed inclusion in the Google search engine index. Plus we'll optimize your website to help give you the best possible search engine ranking for free! (Applies to paid subscriptions only; trial accounts will not appear in Google.).  

One of the central features of our Instant Websites is our Quote Builder technology, which is described below. The Quote Builder is completely transferrable, so if you start out with an Instant Website and later decide to design a custom site, you can easily move the Quote Builder to the new site.

When you create your Instant Website, we also strongly recommend that you register you own domain (.com, .biz, etc). This is easy and costs only about $9 per year and will allow your clients to get to your website via a domain name that belongs to you.

Leading-Edge Online Quote Technology

Perhaps you already have a website. But does it offer the features your clients expect? If you offer only an email address or a cumbersome online quote form that crams an endless list of questions onto one long page, your clients will not be impressed.

Our Quote Builder technology makes it easy for your clients to provide all the information needed for accurate quotes. Our system offers a clean, uncluttered and easy to use interface. Your clients will be able to enter an unlimited number of autos, homes or persons to be insured when asking for a quote.

All quotes are delivered directly and only to you, or to the person(s) you specify. You can update all aspects of your Quote Builder at any time simply by logging into your control panel.

The Quote Builder works with any website (and, of course, is included with our Instant Websites). To get the Quote Builder working on your existing website, you simply log into your control panel and specify settings such as the email address(es) you want quote requests sent to and the types of insurance (auto, home, life, health, long term care) you want to include. You then copy and paste a few lines of HTML code to your website and your Quote Builder will start working immediately. The entire process should take no more than 15 minutes.

For a demonstration, try the Quote Builder on our Instant Website Demo .

Sign up Now for a FREE Trial

Free Trial accounts include both the Instant Website and the Quote Builder which can be used on your own site, so you can choose the solution that works best for you. Of course, the Quote Builder is completely transferrable, so you can start with our Instant website and then sometime later, move seamlessly to a custom website if you wish.

Sign up Now