by

By: Kelly Donahue-Piro

President Agency Performance Partners

Co-Founder Agency Appeal

When you are working on the brand and the online presence for your agency, figuring out what a good insurance website should cost can often be confusing. There is a wide range of differences in websites and our goal is to break down the specifics of what you should be looking for to make sure you get the best value for your investment. It all starts for us with what you really want your website to be!

Decide Your Website’s Purpose

For many agencies they have viewed their website like an online brochure—great to check the agency out, but that’s where the vision for the site ends. In today’s world there are several other options you have for making your website more valuable (think of them as endorsements to a policy, you wouldn’t go with low coverage on insurance, so why limit your website?):

• Service Center: Many agencies are seeing the value of having online tools for clients to conduct basic service requests at their leisure. This helps to free up internal staff and provides a better customer experience for those who prefer to self serve.
• Sales Center: Your website can be your 24/7 sales person always looking to make an introduction to people searching online. If you want to attract more opportunity, investing in SEO and strong calls to action are important to include in your website.
• Branding: Say online leads aren’t your thing, and even if they are, your website should be unique and special to you. It’s your online business card, and with new competition investing a lot in digital marketing your website must be fresh, welcoming, easy to navigate and most importantly—a reflection of you!
• Education: The old give to get philosophy is still true. You can use your website today to give valuable information like blogs, videos and important content that helps embrace your opportunities and invite them to work with you.

Identify the Value of the Investments

Once you understand your website’s purpose, you can now start to build a website package that makes sense for you. Often we look for the line item of how much it costs, but we really should be thinking about the value of what is included. For example, a generic templated website may be inexpensive, but if you invested a few thousand more dollars it could be built with SEO and pay you back quickly. Your website is an important marketing investment to your agency.

Brand Guide

If you are building a website without a brand guide, be prepared to blend in. Your brand guide is the foundation of giving your agency’s look and feel a makeover. It’s renovating your image. This is something that you want to invest with an outside graphic design and branding firm on.

Unique Website Content

Many insurance website companies use canned content on their sites. This means that almost all the content for their site is very similar. Yes, paying to have unique content is an investment, but it helps to boost your SEO rankings and helps support your brand. Generic content is just that: generic.

Search Engine Optimization

The way your website is built to be found by Google is a critical component of turning an ROI on your investment. This is building the highway to your business. Skimping on SEO services is not advised and will often cost you a considerable amount more to go back and add in. We recommend working with an SEO specialist that you like, can relate to, and feel comfortable talking to.