Redefining Your Online Face

A “rose is a rose is a rose”—except when it’s an agency website.

What once looked like a cookie-cutter presence on the Internet is now a diverse array of informational, marketing and transactional media. The myriad of website functions have expanded exponentially, forcing agencies to upgrade their presence or risk seeming out of touch.

In an attempt to make websites as entertaining as a summer blockbuster, agents can get lost in the Technicolor and overlook the box office. But a growing number of agencies are populating the homes pages of their websites with videos, blogs, links to social media, visually arresting graphics and various customer self-service and transactional tools—without forgetting to validate business value.

“Agencies think they need to be on the Web and that is okay, it’s certainly a first step and a lot of sites look really cool these days,” says Steve Anderson, an expert in agency technology issues and editor of The Anderson Agency Report newsletter. “But the question that first needs to be answered is, ‘What is this website for?’ ”

According to Anderson, a website’s purpose can be summed up succinctly: “The money it makes you.” While many agency principals invest in website upgrades because they like the cool features, those are the wrong reasons. “It should not matter what you like; what matters is whether or not your customers and prospects are drawn to the site, enjoy interacting with it, and it translates into building the book of business,” he explains.

Don’t Be Hollywood

Having a “cool site” was one of several goals of Aaron Stein in developing his agency’s Web presence, but it was not the chief one. “Mine is attractive and I follow all the smart advice when it comes to search optimization and such, but what I really wanted was something that would give current and prospective clients what they needed fast, then they could move on,” says Stein, founder and president of Babylon, N.Y.-based Norton & Siegel, Inc.

“Mine has a blog I write, with specific keywords that help from a search optimization standpoint,” says Stein. “They’re full of insurance keywords. I spend a lot of time drumming them up.”

When Stein launched the blog on the site, he learned a valuable lesson. “I tracked some of my keywords, and sure enough, my website popped up on Google’s first page,” he says. “But when you clicked on the blog, guess what was up at the top as an advertisement? Geico, just what I didn’t need.”

The solution was to pay Google $30 each month so that the blog could be hosted without ads. “This way, the only place your blog can take people to is your own site,” Stein explains.

Another smart piece of search engine optimization (SEO) advice: use the free Google keyword tools that come with the account. “It will lead you to what are the most popular keywords to ensure you get the most clicks,” he says.

Stein’s website is plain and simple, which is how he likes it. “Cutting-edge is overrated,” he says. “I’ve seen sites with games and movies and other ways designed to hold your attention. I’ve got a video that introduces me, and recently introduced a live chat feature, but one can go too far. The whole point is to sell insurance, not entertain people.”

Leave that to Hollywood.

Find It Fast

Former professional baseball player Chris Kolkhorst didn’t look to hit a grand slam when he built Kolkhorst Insurance Agency’s website. Instead, he hit a bunch of singles, reaching out personally to each site visitor. His chief goal was to build trust.

The site creates this sense of security by being easy to navigate. “I try to meet the customer where they are in the decision-making process,” Kolkhorst says. “If they’re ready to buy, I make it easy for them to do that. If they’re just browsing for information, I make that easy, too. Above all, I try to convey that we are different than other agencies.”

Because most of the agency’s business is commercial, Kolkhorst sees no reason to offer transactional capabilities on the site. “The businesses we want to attract just aren’t going to buy off the Web—we wouldn’t want that customer anyway,” he explains. “Instead, I focus on reinforcing the things I personally stand for and the reasons why I went into business. I try for it to be a very personal site.”

The site offers new customers a special package of his mom’s “famous homemade peanut brittle” (Kolkhurst grew up in a small peanut farming community outside of San Antonio), and there’s even a Kolkhorst Country Store right at agency headquarters. All the goods are free for the taking (customers only—sorry), including peach preserves, strawberry and jalapeno jelly, dill pickles, salsa and the agency’s private-label coffee.

Kolkhorst’s blogs, which he writes himself, are equally homespun, pertaining far more to his life and family than the world of insurance. “You don’t want people to begin their relationship with you buying an intangible insurance product,” he says. “You want them to begin by buying from you, a person. This is my differentiating feature. In a way, I am my website.”

It’s All About Credibility

Having a former Florida state insurance commissioner (Bill Gunter) as part of your ownership team is a great way to demonstrate the value of your agency—and it’s something Tallahassee-based Rogers Gunter Vaughn Insurance leverages on its website homepage.

The website, according to CEO Sam Rogers, is part marketing and part transactional/self-service kiosk, depending on the visitor’s need. In addition to video, the site features a new blog each week posted by one of the agency’s producers, which connects to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. A button takes clients to a survey they can complete regarding their level of satisfaction with the agency’s product and services. An employee benefits enrollment feature is easy to navigate, as is the process to make policy changes like adding a new driver to an auto policy.

The site’s videos are not dated or static—they’re updated each time the agency has something new to report or tout, such as the Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year award. “If you use videos it really bumps your presence on the Internet searches,” Rogers explains.

The website also responds to one of Rogers’ personal pet peeves. “I hate it when you go to a website and can’t find where you contact or email people,” he says. “We make that crystal clear right on the home page.” Beyond the contact button at the top of the page, the site also passes on the phone numbers and email addresses of individual agency staff contacts based on their respective areas of focus.

The agency has gone from being an SEO afterthought two years ago to being on the first page of virtually every search using the words “insurance” and “Tallahassee.” “The website is primarily a way for us to bring in new customers, but in the next two to three years this will be where our customers interact with us,” Rogers says.

To achieve that, the agency is installing a customer support portal, to be implemented by year end. The portal offers Web-based service options at extended hours. “We’re going from telephones to emails to more personal engagements via the website,” Rogers says. “All our producers have an iPad or something similar. In a sense, it has become their briefcase.”

Don’t Forget to Evolve

Eighteen years is a long time for any business to have an Internet presence—let alone an insurance agency. But Cowart Insurance Agency in Lawrenceville, Ga. can attest to this feat of technological longevity.

This past January, the agency decided the time had come to beef up the site’s then-stale functionality. Today, the site boasts a blog, transactional capabilities with all the necessary security provisions, and something Donna Cowart, vice president of marketing and operations, says most agencies don’t have—”a professional logo.”

The site is colorful and easy to navigate, featuring highly pixelated photographs of skylines, a teenage driver holding his first set of car keys, a home under construction and several happy families of diverse ethnicities. “A lot of agents don’t understand that you need to use professional photos on a website,” Cowart says. “It makes a tremendous difference.”

Cowart writes most of the blogs on the site, which direct readers to magazine articles and informational sites of interest. A recent blog offered tips on safe grilling a few days before the Labor Day weekend.

Consumers looking for a premium quote can easily find it easily on the site, which also features carrier contact information and a downloadable mobile app. There are no videos as yet, although Cowart is exploring the possibility. “I’ve seen other agencies’ videos and they’re fun and quirky, and I think this is something our clients would enjoy,” she says. “We’re dabbling with this now. For instance, we recently posted a photo of our staff at a family outing wearing shirts with our logo. It got a lot of clicks and was posted all over Facebook and Instagram. A video of that would have been even better. Social media is becoming more and more visual.”

Like other agents with cutting-edge websites, Cowart echoes the risk of being too insurance-heavy. “I stick to an 80-20 formula—20% insurance and 80% on how to grow a business, withstand floods and other human interest stuff—really fun things,” Cowart explains. “I’ll have a client come in and say ‘I saw that article you put on Facebook about flood risks,’ which reinforces the value we provide.”

When it comes to lead generation, Cowart finds social media more valuable than SEO. “Social media has replaced the initial handshake and first impression of face-to-face first encounters,” she says. “We’ll ask someone how they heard about us, and they’ll say so-and-so mentioned us on Facebook or sent a link to the blog. We put effort into search optimization, but it’s these kinds of more personal encounters that typically lead to business.”

Focus on Functionality

For the past five years, Seely and Durland, Inc. has been adding more interactive functionality to the Warwick, N.Y.-based agency’s website. The goal is for the site to serve not just a marketing platform, but as a way for current and prospective clients to extract information, pay premiums, file a claim and get a quote.

“Like all agents, we need to drive people to the site, but once they get there they can get six quotes on auto insurance at one time,” says Stuart Durland, co-owner and vice president of operations. “This is a huge competitive differentiator. Consumers would have to go to Geico, then State Farm, then Allstate, and so on, each time keying in the same information in a different format. Here, they key it in once and they’re done in real time.”

Although the tool he uses might quote only three to six carriers, it offers producers the ability to email the inquirer to ask if he or she would like to see quotes from other carriers. “It’s a conversational door opener,” Durland explains.

The quotes are not limited to cars and homes. The agency can provide a quote on travel insurance, antique automobiles and even wedding insurance. Newer features include online chat and CSR24 for clients to build a login for their policies, expiration dates, ID cards and certificates of insurance. “This kind of self-servicing we see as the critical next piece,” Durland says.

Durland’s college-age son recently took on the project of making the website more millennial-friendly. The younger Durland developed and produced video spots for both the site and Facebook, and created blog functionality that also links to social media. To increase site traffic, the agency uses both sophisticated SEO technologies and more traditional agency tactics like raffling gift certificates to local restaurants. “The hitch is you have to visit the site to enter the contest,” Durland says.

Like other agencies, Durland routinely measures visitor traffic, explaining that his Web designer has inserted code into each page in order to track hits. “We believe that creating metrics is crucial to knowing your website is doing what you want it to do,” Durland says.

These agencies understand the purpose of a website, view it as a business tool and realize the functions must grow over time. “A website is a moving target,” Anderson explains. “It’s a process, not a project.”

Russ Banham is an IA senior contributing editor.

• Does it have an online quoting solution for both personal and commercial lines?
• Is it mobile-ready?
• Does it feature enough customer ratings and testimonials, or link to a third-party site that does?
• Does it provide a password-protected portal for clients to find their electronic documents?
• Does it provide specific client online self-service functions?
• Does it offer clients the ability generate certificates and auto ID cards online?
• Does it link to the agency’s social media sites?
• Do multiple pages exist that appeal to particular industry segments, for the purpose of selling specific types of products?
• Does it feature a blog?
• Does it provide in-depth insurance content for their different types of clients?
• Does it speak to the agency’s community involvement, in order to give the agency more of a personality?
• Does a staff member take ownership of the website and coordinate with other staff or outside parties to keep it fresh and current?
• Does the agency participate in the local search tools provided by various search engines?