Content Marketing Today

How to Improve This Insurance Agency Website

The problem: A great Southwest Florida company with a mediocre website.

The solution: Use a content marketing approach that pulls visitors in and offers them solutions to their insurance challenges.

Many of us rant and rave about big insurance companies, their irritating bureaucracies, their frustrating approach to claims payment, and their frequent unwillingness to insure us when we really need insurance.  But, I’m willing to bet that however we feel about the insurance giants, most of us also count on our local insurance agents to give us reliable advice and assistance whenever we need it.

GulfShore Insurance is one such reliable company.  This Naples-based firm has an excellent reputation and has grown steadily over the past 38 years.  Gulfshore could be even more effective by making some basic but important changes to its website. 

Here is a list of opportunities for significant content marketing improvement:

• Its home page focuses more on the company than on its customers. Make the homepage all about the customer.
• You cannot easily return to the homepage since there is no link taking you back there.
• Although the homepage offers a link to download an I-9 form, it doesn’t explain what that is or why it’s important.  In addition, my guess is that there would be plenty of forms that it could provide for its clients as an easy service with a bit of explanation about why each form is important and what to do with it.
• Rather than a strong benefit headline, the only items that are bold, colorful and in all caps are: OUR HISTORY, OUR MISSION, and OUR AGENCY VALUES.  This just serves to reinforce the idea that the website is more about the company than the customer.
• The only photograph on the homepage is a small construction site related picture.  A larger graphic–and better yet a slideshow that spotlights happy, successful clients–would be much more powerful. That kind of graphical treatment would reinforce a fundamental customer centricity. 
• 24/7 online customer service is a strong client benefit but it receives relatively little emphasis with a cryptic navigation button, “CSR 24″ and a more descriptive link that is relegated to the bottom of the page.  Making this benefit much more obvious, higher up on the page would have reinforced the company’s devotion to customer service.
• They do provide an FAQ page which provides answers to some relatively simple questions but sends visitors off to the Insurance Information Institute for more information. This is a big missed opportunity.  Gulfshore could have positioned itself as the most knowledgeable source of information about complex insurance issues in the region.  Instead, they answer just a few questions and abdicate online responsibility to a national Association.
• They have a news and links page which is pretty bereft of either.  They make the mistake of providing links to PDF versions of a print newsletter which renders poorly on the web and can take forever to download.  You can bet that there is plenty of insurance news that customers care about. This news page should be a primary component of the website–not just an afterthought.
• Although they may do an eNewsletter, it’s not obvious from their website.
• This is a large company.  Dedicating an in-house or third-party content creation resource to generate lots of customer centric content on their website and in an eNewsletter would strengthen their trusted relationships with current and future customers significantly.
• They provide no way to sign up for either a print or an online newsletter. That is a huge missed opportunity to capture prospective customer information.

The bad news is that each of these items diminish the positive impact of GulfShore’s website.  The good news is that it would be easy and quick to fix almost all of them.

Be honest.  Does your website suffer from similar flaws and missed opportunities?

Take a look at your website. Perhaps you should get an outside, objective opinion.  Definitely ask your customers whether you’re providing the kind and quantity of information that is truly valuable to them. Ask them what vital information they might need but that you are not providing on your website.

If you have a similar set of problems that need fixing, take the time and invest the money to turn your site from its brochure-like, company-centric appearance into a customer-centric, content-rich magnet for your current and prospective customers.

Because 90% of your customers will go to your website before they ever talk to you, your website will probably be their first and most lasting impression of your company. That is why it may make all the difference in their decision to select you as a trusted provider