For more than 10 years, Property Casualty 360-NationalUnderwriter and American Agent & Broker havenamed top agencies to its Commercial Agency Awards for Excellenceprogram.

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

Kaplansky Insurance Agency
Brookline, Mass.

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

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

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

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

SEO Management

The agency outsources SEO analysis to Mittcom, a digitalmarketing firm. “With the constant fluctuations to search enginealgorithms, we are always trying to acquire more traffic,”Kaplansky said. Mittcom informs the agency of trends, “so we canmake adjustments to get the results we want.”

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

Kaplanksy Insurance's in-house marketing director updates thewebsite with fresh content. Mittcom trained the agency that itcan't repeat the same phrases on its webpages. Each webpage musthave at least 30 to 40 percent unique content to increase SEOvisibility.

Quotes

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

Retraining staff to respond to web leads in the same fashion asresponding to a phone call or walk-in is challenging. But Kaplanskyinstructs staff to think of web leads as the equivalent of thephone ringing—as statistics point that the first agency a prospectreaches is the one that receives the business.

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

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

To boost effectiveness, the agency is in the process ofobtaining unique phone numbers for the different pages of itswebsite.

Mobility & Social Engagement

Social platform engagement is encouraged with a live Twitterfeed on the site. The homepage includes links to the agency'sFacebook and LinkedIn pages, the agency blog and itsnewsletter.

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

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

The mobile site gives contact information for all of Kaplanskyoffices in Massachusetts on its home page, and gives links forquotes, claims, payments, policy changes and carriers. These linksappear in all pages of the mobile site.