In this review we'll take a look at the agency's Web strategy and how they designed their site to implement it, their site promotion activities, the content available to the visitor, and the structure and look of the site. And, along the way, we'll make some suggestions about changes that might be beneficial.
Gettysburg is a town of about 10,000, famous for the battle that proved to be a turning point in the War Between the States, and for Lincoln's succinct but profound address we memorized in school. With the battlefield a historic site and pilgrimage for some, tourism is now Adams County's second largest industry.
Hockley & O'Donnell, almost 30 years old, is a medium-sized agency with a staff of 16 in its home office and eight more in its two branch offices that operate with their own identities (Hopcraft Hockley & O'Donnell in Carlisle, PA and Insurance Brokers of Maryland in Thurmont, MD). Each location has its own Web site though the content of all is almost identical. The three sites are hosted by a local provider for $280 per year. Over the last five years, the agency has grown through the acquisition of about a dozen other agencies.
The agency writes a standard mix of commercial and personal lines business (55/45) and enjoys about $13m in annual written premium. It focuses on serving its local community and does not pursue regional or national niche marketing. Commer-cial lines is divided into four areas of expertise: Habitational & Recreation-al; Non-Profit & Municipalities; Manufacturing & Construction; Retail & Wholesale. Local competition comes from smaller agencies and captives. AMS Services provides the agency's management system, AfW.
I had an opportunity to review the site recently with Justin Hockley, the agency's technology guru. As I asked questions and made suggestions, he had ready answers. It was clear the agency has given a great deal of thought to their strategy and implementation.
Web strategy: marketing, service, sales
According to Justin, the agency has three goals for their Web site:
The process of conceiving, planning, building, maintaining, and monitoring the site has been deliberative and thoughtful. The first step was to create a committee of four to "scour the Internet" looking at agency and carrier sites and beyond the industry as well. Each member came back with a list of what they liked and didn't and why. When they got together after doing their research, they reached consensus quickly in some areas, though others required finding a middle ground or acknowledgement they would experiment for a while.
The committee was unanimous in wanting to keep the site simple, easy to navigate, and professional looking. They did not want "flash or glitter" or anything "cheesy." They knew they wanted to cover their three agency focuses: personal, life/financial services, and commercial. As much as possible, the visitor was to be able to navigate directly from the home page to the desired page.
By the way, "flash" can also refer to "Flash," a Macromedia tool for creating flashy, animated Web sites. Though Macromedia claims Flash is appropriate for low-bandwidth (slow modem) connections, Flash sites take forever to download. And worse, Flash sometimes hangs up the receiving PCs or Macs, requiring a re-boot. You don't want to do that to your customers. Flash may be appropriate for entertainment sites but in my opinion, it's nothing but a dangerous indulgence for agency or company sites.
Implementation
Once they agreed on what they wanted, the group met with a local Web design specialist to explain their vision. He came back with a prototype, incorporating their ideas and some suggestions of his own. They worked through revisions until they had a design they liked. Along the way, Justin created the content text for the site and had it reviewed and tweaked by a professional writer. During the implementation process, several issues elicited engaged and sometime passionate discussion in the agency.
The group decided they wanted to use graphics rather than text for their links. That would make the site more visually interesting. The graphics needed to be meaningful to the visitor, so they decided to create slogans or tags to accompany the graphics. For example, they chose to use their logo as the home page link and added the text "Insuring Your Peace of Mind" to create psychological positioning. Using logos and graphics for links can work well, but can also pose some problems (see "Hockley & O'Donnell: Graphics as Links," below).
Forms
They knew they wanted to include application forms on their site, but they disagreed about the contents of the forms. One faction favored ACORD forms, pointing out the potential for complete data capture. Another faction worried about the customer being overwhelmed with these technical and perhaps privacy invading [in-facing] forms - with the likelihood the customer would abandon the entry process - to no one's benefit.
They found a compromise, and designed their own forms that were reasonably complete without being offensive. Have they hit the sweet spot? The forms are extensive, though much easier for the layperson to understand than ACORD forms. And shortly after opening their site for business they sold a $1 million, 30-year term life policy through the site that paid for all their Web efforts. Beside applications, they wanted to include some service support. Since auto changes make up a considerable portion of their service requests, they included that form first.
One subject that concerned the agency was how much information to put on the site that might benefit a competitor. For instance, by listing their company partnerships, the agency risked revealing information the other agencies might know only dimly. They decided it was more important to provide the information to prospects and customers than keep it from the competition.
Company links
A related topic was which companies they should link to from their site. The site lists 14 companies but links only to 11. There is no link to Progressive, for instance, because Progressive also sells direct and sending a prospect to the carrier site might mean losing a sale to the carrier. On the other hand, Travelers also sells direct but the agency site links to them. It makes more sense to me to treat each company the same. If they are listed on the Web site a link should be provided. If the agency doesn't want to link, the company should not be on the list. Trying to control the visitor by refusing to link won't stop the visitor from going to Progressive. It will only make the visitor suspect the agency of being disingenuous.
Finding the site
A site without promotion is a site likely to be lonely. Hockley & O'Donnell
have promoted their site right from the beginning. All outbound mailings include
a 3" by 8" stuffer that alerts the addressee to "Internet Services Available
Now!", lists the services available, and encourages the customer to use them.
The promotion is continuous, not transitory, and it's almost free since it
piggybacks on mailings that need to be done anyway. Too many agents put up
a Web site and sit back and wait for traffic. That's a bit like printing some
brochures and leaving them in a box in the office hoping someone will come
to the door and ask for one.
Hockley and O'Donnell have chosen to use their agency name as their Web address. If you know their name, you can guess, correctly, that you should look for www.hockleyandodonnell.com. Two issues could arise. First, a visitor might try to use an ampersand (&) rather than "and" or use an apostrophe (') in "O'Donnell," not realizing that neither can be part of a Web name. Second, the visitor might key "Odonel," "Hockly," or some other misspelling. The agency could register www.hockleyandodonel, or www.hockleyandodonell.com, and a few other variants, but that's probably overkill.
The H&O home page contains both Keyword and Description HTML tags that provide grist for the Web indexing engines - and include misspellings of "O'Donnell," a good idea for facilitating searches by people who have heard but not seen the name. Do the search engines do the job? Yahoo doesn't, and the more I use it the less useful it seems for any purpose. On the other hand, Alta-Vista worked perfectly for "gettysburg insurance agency" and "hockley odonel." MSN returned the agency on the second page, as did AOL. MSN Yellow Pages worked, but neither Yahoo! nor AOL were useful in finding the agency via Yellow Pages. Justin reports that he's going to look into fee-based special positioning considerations with the major search engines. The agency resubmits its home page to the engines about every six months to encourage keeping the site in the game.
I couldn't find any links to the site through other "Gettysburg" sites.
I was able to find the agency listed in the financial services section of the Chamber of Commerce site, but not a link. Other area sites focused on the battlefield or tourist/retail services - nothing to help someone from out of town find an agency. Perhaps the professional service providers in Gettysburg should put up a site. Or H&O might pick some realtors, attorneys, and accountants with whom to have reciprocal links.
A search through the IIAA's site for Gettysburg agents returned the agency, but not its physical or Web address. And no map/driving instructions were provided (see the IIAA story, page 14). When I went to the IIAP site (Independent Insurance Agents of Pennsylvania), I encountered a page that could do no more than ask for feedback - no offer of any kind of services.
How do the agency's companies fare? Do they support the agency and its Web site? Do they help a consumer find the agency? For an appraisal of this agency's company help see the side bar "Hockley & O'Donnell: Company Help," below.
Site content
The site contains the following content and basic navigation:
Having nearly everything available from the home page makes the site simple and flat, a goal the agency set from the beginning. The Personal, Life, and Commercial pages provide credibility-building background. The auto and homeowners quoting is intended to provide marketing tools to prospects and self-directed cross selling to customers. The auto change request provides an element of service and convenience. Online applications allow the prospect to accomplish most of the sign-up process via the Internet.
The library of insurance background information makes it possi-ble for customers to find answers to many of the general insurance questions they might have. They can get there on their own or be directed there by a CSR. Complete Auto provides prices, leases, and so on - matters of interest to many consumers. The Antique Auto link helps customers find that coverage (one the agency doesn't handle) with potential commission back to the agency. Contact information is always important and should be available everywhere, as it is on this site. The testimonials page is intended to be the home of some multi-media files, but the link should be dropped until the page is ready. It doesn't make sense to send a visitor to an empty page. The PS page is a personal message from one of the principals, an important personalizing element.
Does the content accomplish the goals of providing agency identity information, service capabilities, and cross-selling? Yes, some, and maybe. So far the agency is satisfied with its site and has received consistently high marks from customers. About 160 leads have come through the site and have been saved for continuing follow-up. Can an ROI be calculated for the site? Probably not exactly. But it is successful and the agency pays a great deal of attention to it, using WebTrends to monitor hits, page views, and customer time spent. Justin reports an average visit of six minutes. He contrasts that with the time someone might spend looking at an agency brochure - a big difference! The site has an impact. One important item I didn't mention earlier: the home page loads quickly, most is visible in four seconds, and all the graphics are in place in under ten seconds on a 56KB line.
What does the agency want to add? Something more in the commercial area though the details are undecided. A request for certificates for BOPs and contractors is being considered, but not users printing their own certificates at will. That might cause problems. A change of mortgagee form is being considered. The agency is considering online chat and a 24x7 presence though available options are expensive.
Suggestions
Without lingering much longer at this Gettysburg site, I can offer a few comments and suggestions. I don't pretend to be an expert on the cosmetic aspects of page design, but my intuition tells me that the home page could be made less confusing. There's a scattered, inconsistent feel to it. The site also makes use of frames, a tempting technique, but one that should usually be avoided. The site should include a map/driving instructions feature. It's easy to do and doesn't cost anything.
In many cases, links are available only at the bottom of the page, out of view. They should be visible at the top part of the page. The bottom margin is most appropriate for copyright statements and a repetition of links already available at the top of the page. Some pages have a great deal of blank space, yet much of the text is out of sight below. That does not make sense. It would be better to use a double column format to get everything at the top and visible.
The insurance information page is very confusing. Though 80 files are available, that's not obvious looking at the page. Only a handful of links to articles are visible and it's not obvious there are more below. The articles are not arranged in any particular sequence, requiring the visitor to slog through all the titles to find something relevant. It might be better to put all the titles in a three-column table with sections grouped by topic.
The company links are intended to help existing customers research companies. It might be worthwhile giving them some help. A summary for each company could be provided, as well as several links into different sections of the company site (financial strength might be one, expertise another), plus a link to the company home page. One problem with the company links: some open separate browser windows, some don't. A consistent approach should be followed.
The site has auto and homeowners quoting and applications, but they're not linked. All the quote information has to be re-keyed into the application forms.
And of course, more content, links, and services could be added - and it will be as the agency evolves its site.
Overall, a good site
Overall, what do I think? It's a good site, a good effort, and created by a focused team that will steadily expand and deepen it, provide more good information, service assists, and sales support. My thanks to Justin Hockley for his help in the review process.
How does your agency compare with Hockley & O'Donnell?
Hockley & O'Donnell: Graphics as Links
The Hockley & O'Donnell graphics are attractive, but I found them somewhat confusing (I'm easily confused). When I went to second level pages and wanted to get back to the home page, it took a few seconds to realize that the agency logo was the home page link. I could tell that the logo was a link when I passed the mouse cursor over it (the little hand popped up), but there was no indication what it linked to. One could argue that any idiot would know that the logo went to home, or discover it quickly through experimentation. But if the goal is to reduce friction for the visitor, some improvement might be in order.
There are two complementary ways of making graphics as links more accessible. The first is to put a text link near the graphic link. The second is to make use of the Title feature in HTML. When the mouse cursor rests on top of a link (graphic or text) in a browser window, the browser looks to see if the link has a Title field. If it does, the Title text is displayed in a pop-up box at the cursor. So, in the case of the Hockley & O'Donnell site, a simple improvement would be to add a "Home page" Title to each use of the logo and relevant Titles to all the other graphics. Titles can be added to text links as well and can sometimes serve to explain the meaning of short text links. One additional thought: one problem with graphics as links is that they don't change once they've been exercised the way text links do, and, therefore, the visitor may inadvertently return to the same page over and over. If a text link accompanies the graphic link, the visitor will have some indication that the link has been used.
As long as I've dipped into HTML a bit, it's worth mentioning another coding improvement that could be made to the site. Browsers are built around the concept of being able to back up to a previous page. With Internet Explorer, you can display a list of the last several pages and then jump to the one you want. The browser generates the list from the HTML page Title fields. Unfortunately, the H&O pages all have the same title, "Hockley & O'Donnell" and therefore the browser drop-down list of past pages viewed isn't useful, since every page has the same name.
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