Have you ever visited a website, clicked on ten different links, and still couldn’t find what you were looking for? It’s frustrating. In fact, most internet users leave the site if it takes more than three clicks to find the information they came for. People visit company websites with a specific goal in mind. If you are lucky enough to get a potential client to visit your site, you should treat their time as valuable. Don’t force them to guess what to click to find what they came for.
Before a prospect visits your site, do some research. Who is your ideal customer? What do they need from you? What are their pain points? Once you understand all this, you can design your insurance agency website with those traits in mind. Lead the user to the information they need.
While Zywave doesn’t provide website design services, we do have some insight into what makes a good insurance agency site. Many Zywave partners design and build their own websites, so for those do-it-yourselfers, we have three tips for making your site as easy to navigate as possible.
3 Tips for Creating a Navigation-friendly Insurance Website
1. Make Important Documents Easy to Find
Remember, your current clients may visit your website just as often as prospects. Retain those customers by giving them what they need quickly and efficiently.
Do you have documents and forms that clients need to access frequently? Consider setting up a client portal like Zywave’s MyWave Elements, MyWave Connection or HRconnection. It’s fully customizable to meet your agency’s needs.
Or if you’d prefer, you can create a dedicated, password-protected page with an organized list of documents, ready to download. Either way, be sure that your clients can easily find the documents from your homepage. If you’re lucky, you’ll not only retain more business, but you might also turn those clients into advocates for your brand. Happy customers make great referrals!
2. Give Visitors Easy Access to Your Contact Information
One of the essential features of any effective insurance website is well-placed and accessible contact information. Potential clients can’t get in touch with you if they don’t know how. And most people don’t want to spend more than a few seconds looking for your phone number and email address.
Ideally, all of your contact information should be in the footer of every page of your website. Your contact information should include your address, phone number, email address and any other forms of contact you might have. You should also have an easy to locate contact page within your main menu.
The contact page can be a little more detailed than the information you include in your footer. For example, it could consist of a map and directions to your office, or a contact form that allows users to send an email. It’s also a good idea to include clickable contact information that allows mobile users to autodial your phone number or instantly email you.
Additionally, check your contact information regularly to ensure that it’s current. It’s an awful feeling to need to get in touch with your insurance agent and be unable to find their phone number.
3. Make Your Employees Easy to Find
Your website should also include an About Us page. It should be a top-tier item in your main navigation menu.
As we noted in another blog post, this page can include quite a bit of information, such as your agency’s story, your clients’ needs and how you meet them.
One essential element to a good About Us page is a “Meet the Team” section. All visible, client-facing team members should have a biography on this page. The biography should be well-written and professional, and ideally, it should include a headshot.
Highlight each team member’s role in your agency, their professional accomplishments, and awards, and any professional associations they may belong to. Be sure to link to your team’s social media profiles as well, primarily LinkedIn.
Stories and photos of real people who work for your agency help to humanize your brand. They give potential clients a sense of who they will be working with. And good insurance brokers know that this is a people-centered business. If you want to attract new business and retain current clients, you have to connect with them on a human level.
It doesn’t have to be complicated
Some insurance agents feel intimidated at the thought of designing a website. But insurance website design doesn’t have to be complicated. If the thought of putting together a sophisticated and technologically intricate website makes you want to pull the plug, don’t worry. Focus on the simple. Make your website easy to navigate, and your clients and prospects will thank you for it.