366 marketing

Building great insurance websites can be difficult. However, here are a few tips that might make it easier for you. While we have cautioned about not using website builders, here are some things you should do. Most of this advice has to do with saving time. Saving time directly translates into saving money.

Budget: Know your budget and stick to it. Whether you have $5,000 or $50,000 to spend will greatly influence what you can do with your website. But even if it is only $5,000 that is still enough to have a good site. Be sure to share your budget with any web designers or marketers that you consider contracting.

Avoid stock photos (for people): Sometimes businesses see stock photos as a cost saving measure. However, if you do your research and use a good photographer for your website, it can save you money in the long run. It also helps with your customers if they can see pictures of the people they talk to on your site. Instead of random guys in suits. By the way, if you need a good release for your staff to sign, download customizable video and photo release.

Know what you want: I cannot emphasize enough that you need to know what you want from your financial services site going in. That means that you need to know your goals, your message, your unique selling proposition, your marketing strategy, all of these before you write one line of code.

Know what you like: You need to have an idea of what you like before getting started, while your web developer is going to help you refine your vision, having a broad base of “we like this, and we hate this” is going to save you tons of time. If you already have a style guide pass that along as well. If there is anything, you want to change in the guide be sure you bring that up as before you build your insurance website.

Use a CMS: A CMS, or Content Management System, is going to make things easier and less expensive in the future. With a traditional website, you have to go back to the developer or designer to make changes to your site. So whenever you have a change, i.e., add a service or change your about page, you get a charge.

It is much easier to use a CMS where you can make the changes yourself. In fact, your web designer should offer some training to one of your staff members in the proposal, so you have this option.

Team: Pick your team wisely. Make sure that they have the time and desire to help with this project. Your website will probably be your financial services companies biggest marketing spend of the year, so make it count.

With these caveats in mind, you can build the best insurance website and stick to your budget. If you want to learn more about building a great insurance website, get our Guide to Building the Foundation for a Great Insurance Website.

Often we get used to the status quo. Whether it is our own house, or an old industrial website design. I have been avoiding the raised floor between my kitchen and my dining room for three years now. It is involuntary that when I cross the threshold, I lift my foot, so I don’t trip and fall.

The problem is that when we have visitors over they are invariably looking at something else, trip and try to throw themselves into the sink.

Luckily at the house, I can explain that we are keeping it as a mid-century example of primitive burglar alarms (a lie). However, when someone is visiting your website you aren’t there to tell them why your site looks the way it does. You know, old.

While old homes can be charming, old industrial sites give a poor first impression of your company. Fair or not, people assume that your business is like your website. If your website is old and outdated, well. Not really fair, but a reasonable assumption.

Outdated websites also hurt how you appear in search engines and limit your leads.

So here is how you can update your site and make it look like the cutting edge company you are.Industrial website design 366 marketing.jpg

Flash: Flash was an excellent way to have animations or illustrations on your site a few years ago. Now, however, it often will not work on newer devices or browsers, so it looks like a big blank spot. Not the best look for your site.
Static: Make sure your site is responsive and looks great no matter where people access it. More and more people every day are visiting your website on a tablet or mobile phone. If it is difficult to see or easy to not use, they are on to your competitor’s site.
Dates: See that little copyright down on the bottom of your site. Does it say last year? Or, say, 2007. Change it immediately. If you have testimonials from 2002, you might want to update those.
Tiny Pictures: As websites have progressed there is more reliance on larger images. If your site is text heavy, with small images, it tends to look more dated. You need to use larger, better pictures. Extra points for using pictures of your real employees on your pages instead of stock images.

Limited pages: Many times on dated industrial websites you click on something and only a part of the page changes. You are still on the same page just a bit of text has changed and maybe there is a new picture. You need to build each page around an individual idea, product or offering. This is not only a design flaw, but it also hurts how your site ranks and pulls in visitors. Modern industrial websites have every click go to a new page because every additional page means more pages that the search engines can crawl. Added pages equal more pages that you have the opportunity to rank, and more places people can find you.
Blog: Speaking of helping your site generate leads you need to have a platform to speak to your customer and present yourself as a thought leader. Not only does it let you share your ideas with prospects it also gives you a better opportunity to be found via search. A blog also gives you something to talk about on social media.
Landing pages: You need more landing pages or pages where you are offering valuable content to your visitors. Not just contact us pages, but pages that will rank in the search engine and generate leads.

Want some help with your industrial website design? Contact us maybe we can help.