Abe Boling, host of The Insurance Dream Podcast, recently invited Spencer Breidenbach, BrightFire Manager of Strategic Partnerships, onto the show to share key insights on, “6 Signs It’s Time for an Agency Website Redesign.”
Get a summary of the podcast episode below, or listen to the full podcast episode from The Insurance Dream here.
Podcast Episode Summary
In order to keep search engines, policyholders, and prospects happy, it’s essential independent insurance agencies ensure their websites stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technical updates by refreshing or redesigning their websites every few years.
Below are six signs that can help your agency know when it’s time for a website redesign.
1. Your website’s design looks outdated.
- If your website becomes outdated or is difficult to use on modern devices, consumers may get frustrated when browsing your site and leave without connecting with your agency.
- Compare your agency website to other modern website designs online.
- Ask your peers or kids what they think of the design to determine if it looks outdated.
- Check out BrightFire’s portfolio to see if yours has a similar modern design.
2. Your website has poor functionality (i.e., contains broken links and plugins or is not responsive on mobile devices).
- Refreshing your website design to stay modern and ensuring your website provides the same great user experience on phones, tablets, and computers can increase consumers’ trust in your brand.
- A good indicator of poor functionality on your website is if you notice a major decline in your website traffic or conversions, such as form submissions.
- Also included in your website’s functionality is whether or not your website is secured with an SSL certificate, indicated by your website address starting with “https” instead of “http”.
- This digital certificate encrypts personal data and lets website visitors know that your agency is actively protecting their personal information if and when they submit a form online.
3. Your website lacks automation tools or instant raters.
- Analyze whether your website is making life easier for your staff and improving operational efficiencies. Your website should be working for you and acting like an extension of your team.
- There are several resources your agency can leverage to save your staff time and energy, such as instant quoting integrations to provide your visitors with real-time quotes 24/7.
- There are also integrations that allow you to connect your agency management system to forms on your website, so people who submit a form online are automatically added as new contacts in your AMS.
4. Your website doesn’t follow accessibility standards per the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
- If your website isn’t ADA-compliant, it may be difficult for consumers with disabilities to navigate your website.
- Some things to consider are whether your images include alt text describing what’s shown in each image, as well as whether your website has poor color contrast or screen reader compatibility.
- There are several companies that advertise accessibility plugins with numerous features, but these can actually make it harder for people who are visually impaired to navigate websites.
- Website accessibility is a lot more complex than the quick fix that many plugins may promise.
- For more information, watch BrightFire’s 20 Minute Marketing Webinar on ADA compliance on-demand here.
5. Your website isn’t active and updated with fresh content often.
- You shouldn’t make huge changes too often, because this could negatively impact your SEO rankings. But conducting a redesign every few years with improvements on design, content, and functionality will help your rankings more in the long run.
- By adding a blog to your website and publishing new posts several times each month, you can better engage your website visitors and provide them with helpful, relevant, and timely information as they’re looking for new insurance coverage.
- Google and other search engines will also rank your website higher in the search results if you have fresh content and pages that are consistently updated.
6. Your website lacks social proof by not featuring customer reviews.
- One of the best ways to encourage people to take action on your website is by showcasing real customers and their experiences with your agency.
- There’s an SEO benefit to generating new reviews as well, since Google is more likely to rank companies that receive a steady stream of new Google reviews.
- If these reviews are outdated or not present at all, your website will lack credibility, which will likely result in fewer form submissions and conversions.
- BrightFire websites can automatically feature an agency’s 4- and 5-star Google reviews.
How BrightFire Helps with Agency Websites
- BrightFire helps more than 2,500 independent agencies nationwide with custom-designed websites and done-for-you digital marketing.
- Our expert website developers and designers provide everything you need in an agency website to attract and convert insurance buyers online, including custom designs, lead conversion optimizations, mobile responsiveness, ready-to-go insurance pages, a content management system, sales and support tool suites to empower your sales team and enhance your policyholder experience, automated customer reviews, monthly reporting, weekly blog posts, and managed security.
- We don’t have any contracts, setup fees, or user fees, and we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- BrightFire offers our Insurance Agency Website customers a free website redesign every two years.
Questions?
If you have any questions about what we discussed in the podcast episode or how to get started with a new or redesigned Insurance Agency Website by BrightFire, please schedule a call with sales.
