For more than 10 years, Property Casualty 360-National Underwriter and American Agent & Broker have named top agencies to its Commercial Agency Awards for Excellence program.

This year, the CAAFE awards include the category of Best Agency Websites. An independent panel of judges reviewed each submission and graded websites on factors including appearance, mobility, brand awareness and multimedia. Count down our finalists (read about other finalists Alliance Insurance Group and Bryan Insurance Agency) each week until the winner is revealed June 3.

Kaplansky Insurance Agency
Brookline, Mass.

“Originally, our website was like so many insurance websites—it was a brochure online,” said Ely Kaplansky, president and CEO of Kaplansky Insurance Agency, speaking of the agency's website before its August 2010 redesign.

The firm chose Agency Revolution to take the website to the next level. At a cost of $130,000, the digital marketers provided a custom built site, 3 years of site updates, client support, content, marketing campaigns and training.

“Our website is a work in progress,”Kaplansky said. “Once you stop working on it, it becomes obsolete.”

And the agency's work has proven results: The agency receives more than 2,000 visitors a month who visit about 2.5 pages, which marketing and sales coordinator Chris Misterka calls a “drastic increase” compared to the website prior to the redesign.

SEO Management

The agency outsources SEO analysis to Mittcom, a digital marketing firm. “With the constant fluctuations to search engine algorithms, we are always trying to acquire more traffic,” Kaplansky said. Mittcom informs the agency of trends, “so we can make adjustments to get the results we want.”

For example, if the agency's boat insurance webpage receives a large number of page views, but the time on that page is only 15 or 20 seconds, then Kaplansky knows that what is on that page isn't drawing attention. “Maybe we change the photo, or change the copy,” he said. “Getting a page click means nothing if somebody isn't spending time on the page.

Kaplanksy Insurance's in-house marketing director updates the website with fresh content. Mittcom trained the agency that it can't repeat the same phrases on its webpages. Each webpage must have at least 30 to 40 percent unique content to increase SEO visibility.

Quotes

On every website page is a quote form. When a prospect enters his or her zip code into the form, he or she is then prompted to enter a name, address, email and phone number. The prospect's information then gets passed on to the appropriate, localized Kaplansky Insurance office. That staff member then adds the prospect information to the agency management system.

Retraining staff to respond to web leads in the same fashion as responding to a phone call or walk-in is challenging. But Kaplansky instructs staff to think of web leads as the equivalent of the phone ringing—as statistics point that the first agency a prospect reaches is the one that receives the business.

Web leads capture information for future marketing. If the lead didn't close, Agency Revolution will start a series of emails to the prospect to earn their business. The agency also drops a “cookie” (a piece of data stored in the visitor's browser that analyzes web activity) onto the prospect's computer so the agency's ads pop up throughout the prospect's browsing session.

“You can measure leads that come in and determine the close ratio,” Kaplansky said, “but It's challenging to measure who finds our information as a result of the website.”

To boost effectiveness, the agency is in the process of obtaining unique phone numbers for the different pages of its website.

Mobility & Social Engagement

Social platform engagement is encouraged with a live Twitter feed on the site. The homepage includes links to the agency's Facebook and LinkedIn pages, the agency blog and its newsletter.

Kaplansky Insurance's mobile site was developed a little more than 6 months ago, and it is popular—in the past year, the mobile site has ranked behind only the Kaplansky's homepage and contact pages in terms of traffic.

“Seventy-two percent of all insurance purchases begin on the Web,” Kaplansky said. “And 40 percent of those come from the mobile phone.”

The mobile site gives contact information for all of Kaplansky offices in Massachusetts on its home page, and gives links for quotes, claims, payments, policy changes and carriers. These links appear in all pages of the mobile site.

Special Reports /

Kaplansky Insurance Agency: Best Agency Website Finalist

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