Insurance agents needlessly make life more complicated when theycreate websites for their agencies. Perhaps they should obey a fewof the “rules” for kindergarten students, and make their websitesmore effective.

1. Share everything.

Prospective customers come to your website looking forinformation. Many websites even make it hard to find the agency'sstreet address.

Every site should have pictures of the agency staff along withtheir contact information, including e-mail addresses.

During the last few years, I have reviewed hundreds of insuranceagency sites. About one-third of them don't have adequate e-mailinformation. The other two-thirds include e-mail addresses withtheir staff list. If there were dire consequences to listinge-mails, I'm sure they would have changed their sites long ago.Because most sites draw very few organic searchers, it would seemthe people inconvenienced would be an agency's currentcustomers.

Spam should be properly handled, not avoided at the cost ofservicing your customers. Set your filters accordingly. You can setcustom spam filter policies within your agency to suit eachperson's needs. Your provider is probably already doing a fairlygood job of filtering.

2. Play fair.

Some of the things you don't want to say on your websiteare:

• We're your one-stop shop.

• We provide tailor-made insurance.

• We will assist you with all of your insuranceneeds.

• We will assess your needs and provide the perfectpolicy.

• We use routine policy reviews to help keep our customers'coverage in line with changing insurance requirements and theirpersonal needs.

Think of yourself as a waiter in a five-star restaurant. You maysuggest an entrée, but you would never order for the patron. Yourrole is to provide advice so that your customers can make gooddecisions about their needs.

Your website and other advertising methods should reflect thatrole. More than half of the agency websites I've reviewed containedphrases that would make a plaintiff's attorney grin. Don'toverstate what you intend to do.

With all that in mind, let's re-word the previousstatements:

• We have relationships with a large number of qualitycompanies that provide an array of coverage options.

• We will assist you in making proper coveragedecisions.

• We will assist you with your insurance needs.

• We will help you assess your needs and provide policy choicesfor you to select from.

• We will use coverage reviews to help you keep your coveragein line with changing insurance requirements and your personalneeds.

3. Don't hit people.

Don't criticize your competitors. This includes calling outdirect writers as inadequate, if you're an independent agent.People don't understand the difference between the distributionsystems and will much sooner be turned off by your negative remarksthan they will be educated.

Conversations should be conducted face-to-face and should befilled with positives about your agency, rather than negativesabout others.

4. Don't take things that aren't yours.

One costly company-sponsored website improvement program thatprovides content for agencies' sites uses the same content onmultiple sites. In so doing, they claim that they are enablingagencies to rank higher on Google searches.

Your customers expect you to know what is in the insurancepolicy you're selling. They don't expect you to be a great writer,and they will know professionally written material when they seeit. If you use content from another site, make the properattributions and supply a link to the source document.

By having a website, you've set your agency ahead of those whostill don't have one. After you follow these steps, you will havemaximized that to your advantage.