When it comes to building and maintaining your agency Web site, you have three main choices: you can code the site yourself; you can use self-service "wizards;" or you can delegate the task to a professional service.
Doing the site yourself (that is, within your agency) can be accomplished through coding HTML or using tools like Microsoft's Front Page. This approach provides a great deal of flexibility and control, but it also requires a good bit of training, skill, and effort. Sometimes having access to a Web-savvy and enthusiastic son or daughter leads agents to take the code-it-yourself approach. We don't recommend it. Too many times the resulting Web site ends up partially finished, full of bugs, neglected, and amateurish looking.
Professional site builders can do anything. It's just a matter of time and money. Some specialize in agency sites, and having done some, may be able to leverage existing design, graphic, and content resources. The best services can be expensive and bargain services tend to create sites that all look alike - both drawbacks. In any case, if you do outsource site building and maintenance, you may not have the control you want and need. You'll have to depend on a third party and what they can and will do when — and for what price.
An automated, self-service, wizard-type approach may be the best way to retain control over the do-it-yourself effort without all the work. And, it may be the best way to take advantage of professional services without all the typical expense.
This article reports on two insurance-specific self-service Web site building services, Norvax and Business Web Builders. Each occupies a different niche. Norvax is appropriate for agencies that want to start with a basic site structure and then go on to edit and add content and perhaps additional pages. BWB, on the other hand, is intended to provide complete, serviceable Web sites with virtually no work or thought on the agent's part — though you have to take what you get.
Norvax, Agent SiteBuilder, search engines, and SiteLever
Norvax is a small Web services company, in business for two years, headquartered in the Chicago Loop, and founded by two young, energetic, Web-savvy entrepreneurs. Norvax provides two Web services of interest to independent agents: (nearly) automated site building (Agent SiteBuilder) and guaranteed search engine ranking (Agent SearchBooster). Their site building service is especially interesting because even though an agent can create a site in a few minutes, it's still possible to go back and customize the site to a considerable degree as well as maintain it easily with a proprietary on-line software package called SiteLever.
I spent some time on the Norvax site recently and then talked with Brandon Cruz, 25 year-old president and one of the founders (and no relation to Penelope). Cruz believes that the Internet can bring agents a great deal of new business, but first the agents have to have good sites, and second the agents need to provide consumers a path to their sites. Norvax serves the first need with an automated site building process supplemented by the ability to do manual tweaking and ongoing content management. Norvax serves the second need through carefully researched and planned search engine strategies and registration.
According to Cruz, Norvax (the name doesn't mean anything) started as a general business automated site building service that allowed businesses to manage their own content, without an ongoing need for internal professional Web staff or outside Web services. Norvax wanted to make it very easy for small businesses to create professional looking sites and then take care of them (add pages, change content, etc.) through their browsers and over the Internet — without having to know anything about HTML. Over time and through a relationship with an insurance carrier, Norvax began to shift its focus from tools and the general business market to solutions and independent agents. The Norvax homepage doesn't yet fully reflect this sharpening of focus, though it does feature a graphic and link to their Agent SiteBuilder service.
Here's how the two-minute, four-step site building (actually prototyping) process works: you choose the way you want the site to look; you identify the lines of business you write; you check off the states you write in; and finally you provide agency-specific information and then tell the service to create the site. The Norvax software builds the site out of your specifications and its style, content, and graphics inventory and passes back a URL where you can view the site.
Norvax provides 16 different site/page layout styles, along with several color schemes and associated image choices for each. That variety of choices minimizes the possibility that two agents using the service will create almost identical looking sites. Norvax supports twelve different areas of focus/lines of business (you can choose up to eight) — on both the P&C and Life sides — providing appropriate quote forms and text for each area (so the agency doesn't need to write content, but can modify it later with SiteLever). It's also possible to tell the service about custom lines and the created Web site will include them to be filled in later. Specifying the states the agency writes in doesn't have any effect on the creation of the site, but plays a role in lead swapping among the vendor's increasing base of agency customers (more than 200 reported as of this writing).
Once you tell the service to create the site, it does so in a few seconds and then solicits your reaction. You can start over or continue the process to subscribe to the Norvax service. By the way, this is only the first step in creating a complete site. The agency must add more/edit content later through SiteLever.
All the sites have the same overall structure/menu: Home; About Us; News; Companies; Quotes; and Contact, as well as a line of business specific menu (of the up to eight choices made during the interview process). The navigation is straightforward and the sites are attractive and commercial looking. But they're not quite complete until the agency uses SiteLever.
What you've created is a prototype or sample site. If you want to move further, you must talk with Norvax, subscribe, and then return to your prototype site to finish it out. You do that with SiteLever, a browser-based content management program. It allows you to view and then modify site pages. You would use SiteLever to provide content for the About Us, News, and Companies pages, as well as make changes to pre-filled pages.
Cruz gave me a demo of SiteLever. It's a clever piece of software and, among other things, brings Word-type editing functionality to the browser near you. So it's not hard to finish and publish a site and then later go back and modify the site by, for instance, adding a news item. Norvax sites are built around templates and SiteLever makes it possible to manage content within these templates. But it's also possible to modify or add templates, so agents aren't eternally bound to the Norvax style inventory.
What is crucial to understand about SiteLever is that it allows the agency to maintain its own site without having to know much of anything about the mechanics of the process. That's especially attractive since once agents delegate site maintenance to another entity, the agency loses a certain amount of control over the process and obligates itself to continuing expenses. The almost certain result is Web site paralysis: nothing much is likely to happen ever again, because it's too hard and too expensive to have a third party make continuing changes.
Norvax charges $199 to get the agent's site up and running via SiteBuilder, and $24.95 per month for hosting and continuing use of SiteLever. By the way, SiteLever also contains a site statistics section through which agencies can view site traffic and related data over time.
Norvax offers SearchBooster as a separate but natural complement to the site building and hosting service. Norvax is a student of search engine ranking and has access to hundreds of millions of Web search sessions. Once it understands an agency's business strategy, it analyses how Web surfers actually go about finding that kind of insurance service. Norvax performs a combination of search engine submission and optimization, Web site programming, content modification, link establishment and online advertising. According to Cruz, the process really works — and they guarantee it! The result of this program is that Norvax SearchBooster agency sites end up with high search engine rankings (within the top 20) on the kinds of searches that matter to them. Norvax has a variety of SearchBooster plans at different setup and monthly rates.
For more information, see www.norvax.com.
BWB, Insurance Dashboard, Insurance Web Wizard, and agency marketing-related services
Business Web Builders (BWB), based in Iowa, has been in business for two years, but only recently released its Insurance Dashboard service, a Web-based service that offers a potpourri of agency Web site and marketing-related services. Insurance Dashboard includes the Insurance Web Wizard, an online, automated, self-service tool for creating and maintaining agency Web sites. Insurance Dashboard also allows agencies to order ready-to-go newspaper ads, direct mail pieces, and media relations materials. Its Insurance Store offers logos, letterhead, and other agency identity items. And agents can buy agency-branded giveaways, like golf balls, through the Insurance Dashboard site. It's also possible to link through to continuing education services. Over time, BWB intends to continue to add more relevant content, including books and lead management services. The Insurance Web Wizard is our focus here.
According to Keith Snow, president of BWB, veteran GuideOne IT, marketing, and Web expert, and architect of the Insurance Web Wizard, many agents don't have Web sites or fail to have good ones because they can't get over the hurdle of creating content for the site. Even if agents contract with custom (or even template-based) site builders, they find they have to create insurance and agency-related text — and that just doesn't come easy. The Insurance Web Wizard process makes it (almost) unnecessary for agencies to have to create content for their Web sites or really think very much about the sites at all.
According to Snow, the Insurance Web Wizard has a number of important benefits for agents. He reports that it's inexpensive ($500 for set up and $35/month), is incredibly easy to use; creates a good-looking site with sensible organization and navigation, is user friendly, and builds sites that look professional, unlike what your brother-in-law might do working on it evenings. On the other hand, it isn't needlessly and pointlessly flashy, the way things can turn out with a custom Web development process (at ten times the cost). The agency is in control. The Web building process takes about 15 minutes, with the site live in less than three days (to account for registering the domain name or moving it). I spent some time with the Insurance Web Wizard and mostly agree with Snow's appraisal.
The Web interview process proceeds through twelve stages. Once it's complete and the agency is happy with the results, the agency can then register and pay for the service via credit card. An e-mail confirmation comes back with a link to the temporary site while the domain name registration and propagation takes effect.
First up in the twelve steps is a form to enter agency identity information and brief history. Next the agency chooses a basic style (1 of 4) and color scheme (1 of 8). The agency can then upload its (JPG or GIF) logo and go on to describe the people, happy customers (testimonials), and carriers associated with the agency. The agent can then accept or decline pages in the standard Insurance Web Wizard site structure (about 25 items), identify licensed states, and then auto, homeowners, life, and commercial coverages offered. Once these steps are completed, the specified sample site is built in about 20 seconds.
Snow has already created appropriate agency-specific links, layouts, graphics, and text, leaving simple variables to be filled from agency input. Thus the agency doesn't need to worry about the content of the home page. It's generated out of pre-existing content and the fields entered or chosen by the agency. The agency can recall its site at any time and then go through the interview process again, this time making different choices along the way, and thus getting a new, slightly adjusted site.
It's not possible to fine-tune Web Wizard created sites. The canned text can't be edited. The four basic layouts can't be changed (except by color). But that's the point. The Insurance Web Wizard is for agencies that want decent sites, but don't want to worry about all the details. Over time Snow says he'll add more style and content choices, responding to what his customers ask for.
The Insurance Web Wizard created sites feature a seven section site organization: Home; Our Agency; Products; Companies; Quote Request; Customer Service; and Contact Us. Our Agency links (if so chosen) to a page describing the staff, a page for history, and a page for testimonials. The Products page links to auto, home, life and annuities, and commercial. Quotes links to auto, home, life and annuities, and commercial forms, as well as a privacy statement. And Customer Service links to claims, vehicle ID, change of address, survey, and Kelley Blue Book.
For more information on BWB and the Insurance Web Wizard, see www.insurancedashboard.com.
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