7 Tips to Turn Your Website into the “Go To” 1-Stop Resource for Online Health Insurance Shoppers
Is your website generating the traffic and lead flow you anticipated? If you’re like most agents with a new website, the answer is probably “no.”
It’s also not hard to figure out why … when you take a look at your website from the consumer’s point of view. Your website is probably missing 7 crucial elements needed to create a lead-generating machine.
What are these 7 elements? Take a look at the top-ranked health insurance websites, and you’ll see all of them. If your health insurance website is underperforming, chances are that it doesn’t have these elements.
Fortunately, adding these elements to your website doesn’t require hiring a web marketing department. But it will take an investment of time and acquiring the right tools.
1) Content!
Have you’ve ever searched the web for information about a product or company before making a purchase? Well, that’s what online shoppers are doing on a regular basis.
Online health insurance shoppers, in particular, want content. They want useful, educational information that will help them with their decision. This is especially true for shoppers early in the buying process.
According to a 2008 Pew Internet & American Life study, online information has a greater impact on consumer purchase decision when a big commitment is involved. 75% of Americans now use the Internet. Most of them now know they can use the web to find the information on anything they want to buy … and they’re doing just that.
Most agent websites, however, are nothing more than online brochures. They have a handful of pages with just the minimum amount of information. For online shoppers trying to make sense of their health insurance options, these websites are useless.
But other agents’ bare-bone websites are a great opportunity for you — if you’re willing to generate useful content for your website visitors … or contract with freelance copywriters to do it for you.
What should you write about? Here are a few consumer-oriented topics to get you started:
- A step-by-step summary of the application process
- The pros and cons of different plans
- Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs)
- Review of leading carriers, with their history
- List of top plans … and why they’re so popular
- Glossary of common health insurance terms
- Solutions for typical obstacles many shoppers face
As you begin writing, remember there’s another fundamental reason for providing a lot of informative content on your website. They help you build trust with your prospects. And that trust can help you turn those visitors into genuine leads and submitted applications.
2) Product Priorities
Very few health insurance agents focus on just one product. That makes sense, since the next health insurance shopper you meet may need a dental plan instead of individual health coverage … or group coverage instead of a life insurance policy.
You want to be ready to meet your prospects’ needs. Regardless of whether you have three or 300 products, however, your website needs to prioritize. Your preferred plan should have a priority position on your site, especially your home page.
For example, many agent websites are designed with a number of product panels or sections. Each panel would highlight a specific program, such as dental or individual health. Well, if you want to specialize in helping “uninsurable” consumers, then that panel should be the most prominent!
Your priority program should occupy more space and be designed to really stand out from the other program options.
3) Testimonials
One of the big trends in online marketing today is word-of-mouth marketing. There’s nothing new about this tactic … except that it’s now amplified by the web. Online networks and social media allows “word of mouth” to reach a lot more people all over the world in a lot less time.
And people are paying attention!
In a 2008 DEI Worldwide study, 2 out of every 3 online consumers surveyed replied that online consumer recommendations were “valuable” and “relevant,” as well as “influenced their purchase.”
So make sure that you collect and use testimonials from satisfied customers. Whenever possible, try to use the full name and photo of your client. On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of hiding all of them on a separate testimonial page.
Choose your best testimonials and place them in a prominent location on your busiest pages. You’ll soon find that a strong testimonial on a popular page can strengthen a call to action, while a similar testimonial on an online form can help overcome that last bit of prospect hesitation.
4) Calls to Action
Speaking of calls to action, every page should have at least one — and they shouldn’t be hidden away. Rather, they should be easy to spot and use.
Calls to action guide consumers from one stage of the shopping process to the next. Many health insurance shoppers, for example, may come to your site looking for information. Once they find that information what should they do next?
If you don’t have an obvious call to action, you risk having that shopper jump to another agent site. It’s an easy element that can pay off with big dividends. Calls to action can be as simple as your toll-free numbers in big bold script at the top of the page or a button inviting visitors to compare rates through your quote engine.
Here are some tips to make your online calls to action more effective:
- Link them to an easy-to-use form, chat box or quote engine.
- Keep them short and to the point.
- Format them to stand out
- On each page, always have at least one call to action “above the fold,” so visitors won’t have to scroll down to see it.
5) Multiple Contact Options
Whenever I find a website missing a phone number or physical address, I always get suspicious. What are they trying to hide?
You may have nothing to hide, but if you forget to provide multiple contact options, that’s what your website visitors may think. Even if you do provide multiple contact options, your visitors may still get the suspicious if you don’t make that information obvious.
Your primary contact information should be easy to spot on every page. That primarily means your phone number. It can also include a one-click access to your email, online contact form or a chat box.
In addition, your website must have a “Contact Us” page that also includes all of your contact options, including your physical address.
6) Quote Engine
Choice and convenience don’t often go hand in hand. If your website has a multi-carrier quote engine, that’s exactly what you get.
Yes, the Internet allows health insurance shoppers to visit multiple websites or contact various agents to compare plans. Unfortunately, that can take hours. The technology behind a multi-carrier quote engine allows them to compare hundreds of eligible plans in seconds and at one convenient location.
Quote engines are ideal for online consumers who already know what they want and are now serious about shopping for the best product.
Quote engines are also a proven market-changing technology. Look at popular travel sites like Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity. They’ve revolutionized the travel industry by allowing consumers to compare airline, hotel and car rental prices in seconds. Along the way, they’ve forced many travel agents out of business.
Health insurance agents have fared better precisely because they have access to quoting technology.
7) Online Application
Marketers have noticed an interesting trend among online consumers. They’re stretching out their shopping process by using the Internet to gather information.
When they do make their decision, however, online shoppers tend to act quickly — which is why the most effective websites now have online application forms. Many of these online application programs are actually provided by the major carriers, so prospects can submit a completed application directly to the selected carrier.
This is why many top producers are now receiving commissions on applications where they never even speak to the client.
Clients come to the agent’s content-filled website to research the information they needed. Those clients then compared plans on the agent’s multi-carrier quote engine. After finding a plan with the right features and price, those clients then completed the online application … without ever bothering to contact the agent.
Putting It All Together
Do you need all seven elements to develop an effective agent website? Maybe not, but why take the risk when the solution is readily available.
These are all low- or no-cost elements that can pay off in significantly higher lead generation and sales. Most are simple tweaks that can be done in one weekend.
However, making these upgrades to your website does require an investment of time — as well as a choice. You can choose to be like all the other agents with “bare bones” websites that are nothing more than online brochures. Or you can be one of the few agents in the competitive online marketplace with a website designed to convert visitors into leads and sales.
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