How to build an insurance sales website and the 10 pages necessary to be successful.
The two options you have to get your insurance website online. The first option is to have a professional build it for you and the second option would be to build it yourself but both have pros and cons to each scenario. There are also costs involved with each insurance site whether you build it or someone else builds it.
Minimum costs for your insurance website:
- Domain Name - $2 ~ $25 per year depending on which type (i.e. .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, etc.) you get. A domain is the name of the site, for example “Google.com” is a domain name. Note, a typical .COM runs about $12 per year. Buy a Domain Name.
- Hosting – Hosting is where the actual files, pictures and videos for your site will be stored at. Hosting is sold on a monthly basis and starts around $8 and goes on up depending on what your needs require. Buy Hosting and Website Builder in One.
- Secure Certificate – The Secure Certificate is what allows you website to make secure transactions between the customer and the hosting server. Note, the secure certificate is the little lock on the browser. The SSL Secure Certificate is sold on a yearly basis and starts at $29 per year. The It should be noted that the level of encryption between a $29 and $80+ is identical, so you can start with the $29 one and upgrade if needed. Buy a Secure Certificate.
To sum up averages costs of your insurance website will be around $125 per year, assuming that you build it yourself.
Let us explore each pro and con before moving on to the ten essential pages for your site.
Having the website professionally built for you.
Advantages: The main advantage to having the site built for you is that you are going to have a great looking site when everything is said and done. By having a professional build your website you save time and money by not having to learn how to program or edit graphics for your new site. There is also the cost saving of not having to purchase the necessary software needed to build the site. Get a Custom Built Insurance website.
Disadvantages: The number one disadvantage is going to be cost as it will be more than if you were to create the website yourself. Another disadvantage will be that you will not be able to make changes immediately to the website as you will have to contact the developer to do so.
Building the Website yourself.
Advantages: Here the advantages are just the opposite of the disadvantages of having it built for you, in that you will save a significant amount by doing it yourself. By building it yourself you will be able to tweak it anyway you want at anytime. You can literally make changes to the website at 3 in the morning if you so choose. Buy a website builder now.
Disadvantages: The main disadvantage is going to be the learning curve of making the website, creating the graphics and publishing, all of which take time to learn and a cost of the software tools.
10 Essential Pages to every Successful Insurance Website.
1. Get a quote – This page will allow potential customers to input their personal information into a secure web form so it can be emailed to you. This form will gather their personal information needed to give the customer an accurate quote.
2. Take Payments – Give your customers the convenience to make insurance payments right on your website. This page can be anything from a PayPal cart link, too an OS Commerce Shopping cart to a simple contact page for you to setup reoccurring payments.
3. Contact Us Page – A secure web form on your site that will allow customers to input their information so you may contact them at a later time. This form will work much like the Get a Quote page and will email you customer information.
4. Directions and Google Maps Page – This page is very important to your site as it will let the customer know where you business is physically located. Often customers would rather talk to someone in person rather than through email or over the phone. This page will allow you to directly link your place of business to a location on Google Maps so the customer may print out driving directions.
5. Information about different Insurance options – This page will be important about letting customers know what insurance services you are offering, whether it be auto, home, fire, flood, etc. This page can also be a selling point to existing customers as they may not know whether or not you sell other types of insurance, which may lead to umbrella policies.
6. Friend and Family referrals - The referral page will be another web form that a customer can input their family or friend information and it will send them (family member or friend) an email about your insurance service. From this page you can also determine whom referred who, in the event that you are rewarding customer referrals.
7. Add customer testimonials – The testimonial page will be a tipping point for new customers because more times than not, a new customer will be swayed solely based upon customer reviews of your insurance company.
8. About us Page - This is a basic page about how your insurance company came to be. Sometimes potential customers will be swayed by how long you have been in business, so if you have been around for awhile then you will want to make it a point on this page.
9. Social Network Integration – This page is actually gaining a lot of popularity lately as sites like Facebook and Twitter become the standard among social networking. This page will contain links to your insurance companies Facebook and Twitter pages. Many insurance referrals are actually starting come through Facebook as friends will recommend the companies to each other.
10. Savings Page – This page will allow you to showcase how much you will save the customer over competitor rates. You can compare and contrast local insurance companies or even the bigger national ones.
Don’t wait, start shopping for your Insurance Website now.
