SIX THINGS THAT ARE CREATIVELY WRONG WITH JUST ABOUT EVERY INSURANCE WEB SITE … AND TIPS ON HOW TO FIX ‘EM (October 22, 2001)

The Web is a "goal-driven medium" in which visitors actively attempt to find specific information. It is, therefore, logical to provide the clearest path to that information, making the navigation familiar and intuitive. While it is illogical to distract visitors from accomplishing their goals, most sites do just that. Giving in to the temptation to be creative for creativity’s sake is one of the most common mistakes.

What follows is advice regarding the top six things that are creatively wrong with most insurance Web sites in existence today and tips for avoiding these traps.

It helps to think of a Web page as a direct mail envelope. Unless you get the envelope opened, the message has been lost. Open a Web site with a strong, but simple offer and follow through with an infrastructure that delivers on that offer.

Mistake #2: Creative That Slows the Experience

The 24/7 nature of the Internet has made today’s consumers impatient. We live in an age when even microwaves are no longer fast enough. When designing and planning for graphic elements, consider the Nine-Second Rule. If something takes longer than nine seconds to download, there’s a seventy-five percent or greater chance that you’ll lose our visitor. Evaluate each graphic element individually by asking how it will impact the consumer’s overall experience. Do you think the element is worth the wait? Will the consumer think so? Conduct mini focus groups with non-marketing people and those representative of your target audience to gather valuable feedback. Avoid the temptation to include things for "coolness" sake. What purpose will it have served if a visitor doesn’t have the opportunity to view it?

Mistake #3: Creative That Provides No Experience

On the flip side of offering too much, there’s the mistake of providing so little interactivity and content that there’s no experience for the visitor. Remember that by its very nature, the Internet is an interactive medium. It’s important to strike a balance between creative overkill and static, flat pages that do little to invite visitors. Consider a consumer’s motivation for visiting your site. Then, create "landing pages" that either deliver on a promise made in your offline advertising efforts or provide an immediate benefit and/or vehicle for responding.

Mistake #4: Not Making the Site Easy to Find In order to experience your site, visitors need to find it. This requires the adoption of a "search engine and site indexing strategy." Savvy marketers follow a discipline of regularly updating and managing the search and index variables of sites and frequently submitting sites to search engines. Managing keywords, meta descriptors, repetitive text, contextual copy and content, header and title information and submission are all part of an effective execution of "search engine optimization."

Search engine optimization can be accomplished internally or externally or combined with specialized software resources. Whatever route you choose, it is important to adopt and manage a search engine and site-indexing strategy that places your site in the first level results.

Mistake #5: Hidden Data Forms

In Web marketing – just as in other modes of direct response advertising – it is still rule #1 to ask for the order. Many of today’s Web sites disregard this axiom by burying the order form or, horror of horrors, not including one at all. An online application or request for information form should never be more than a click or two away and should be accessible from every page on the site. The easier you make it for a prospect to respond, the better chance that he or she will.

Mistake #6: Distracting Creative

Be ever mindful that all creative elements – copy, graphics, data collection forms, and animation – must facilitate getting consumers to be where you want them to be and to do what you desire them to do. Visitors who get distracted or lost along the way will eventually bail out. To avoid this scenario, keep Web pages simple and ensure that transitions from one place to the next are logical. Plan the flow so that visitors can always get "home" no matter what path they choose.

To avoid costly mistakes when developing Web site creative, consider the audience and their motivations for visiting your site. Is it to request additional information? Will they be applying for your product directly? What do you have to offer that your competitors don’t? What is your offer or positioning and how should the audience respond to it?

Before writing a word or clicking a mouse, determine what it is that your audience needs and use these requirements as your guide. Create a Virtual Advisory Board to attain goal-driven feedback on new features, content or designs before you launch. Carefully craft your questions. Instead of making subjective queries like, "What do you think of our site?," ask: "How quickly did you find the rate quote you were looking for?" Or, "Were you able to get the details you needed quickly and completely?" The answers to these questions are the ones that will help you take action.

It is also wise to partner with an agency that has experience in direct response insurance marketing – both online and offline. Leverage the lessons they’ve learned to ensure that your Web site creative makes the most of a consumer’s total Internet experience.

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