Carriers that rank high on the Gomez insurance Web site indexprobably congratulate themselves on their good luck-the result, ofcourse, of hard work, creativity, and spending thousands of dollars(or more). But what if these high-ranking carriers are doing a verygood job playing the wrong game? What if Gomez and other Webranking services have no idea what they're talking about? What iftheir evaluation criteria are implicitly based on amisunderstanding of the insurance business? What if “winning” meansembracing a bankrupt business strategy?

To the extent that Gomez (www.gomez.com) and others assume thatcarriers that sell through independent agents should createelaborate direct sales or customer service Web site functionality,I believe they are completely mistaken. Independent-agent carriersthat achieve a top ranking (or aspire to one) may be far off thetrack.

Why not sell direct? It will never work. Consumers won't buythat way. (See the August Sounding Line.) Why not provide onlinecustomer service directly? Because it confuses the customer anddisintermediates the agent, presumably a key carrier businesspartner. (See the September Sounding Line.)

But why do site-ranking groups use faulty criteria? And why docarriers embrace these useless rankings?

Rank and File

It's possible that ranking services just don't understand therealities of the insurance business-the psychology of insurancebuying, the necessary flexibility of the market, the complex roleof the independent agent, and so on. They don't understand thatcarriers' best strategy isn't to promote themselves and theirconnection with the insured, but to help the agents strengthentheir relationship with the customer.

Of course, if carrier Web sites aren't very important, how wouldranking sites like Gomez develop their brands? By ranking agencysites? Who would care? Ranking in general is intended to create aneed-the need to be high on the list, and if you're a big company,at the top. Ranking creates anxiety. Anxiety motivates action.Anxiety funds budgets.

Who wins? The ranking services are called in to do in-depthstudies and make recommendations. Consulting groups are awardedcontracts to bring the sites up to high-rank specs, or carrierWeb-site departments are pleased to find themselves withsubstantially higher budgets. And CEOs can tell their boards abouttheir high rankings or concerted efforts to achieve them.

Everyone wins. Well, not everyone. The stockholders lose becausecorporate resources are being bet on the wrong horse. Agents losebecause their carrier partners are working to weaken agents' localbrands. And consumers lose because carrier-centric Web strategieswill make their lives more complicated, not more convenient.

It's quite a system and one easy to get caught up in. And whenreality intrudes and business success doesn't track rankingsuccess, the solution may appear to do more of the same-when it'sreally the wrong game.

What's a Carrier to Do?

Why do site ranking groups use faulty criteria? Because if theydidn't, they'd have nothing to sell the insurance industry. Why docarriers go along with the games? In part because they're confusedabout their business strategy; in part because site rankings are asimple and definitive metric in a murky world-one that that giveseveryone something to do.

If ranking services and their confederates, the consultants, areleading willing carriers off into the wild blue yonder, what's theanswer? What should carriers be doing instead? Surely there'ssomething interesting and useful they can do with the Internet.Absolutely. Here are some ideas.

Independent agency carriers should adopt an agency-centricrather than carrier-centric Web strategy. Overall, that meanshelping consumers find agency Web sites and providing backgroundservices to agency Web sites and to primary agency automationsystems.

Find an Agent

Not all carrier sites have elements that cater to consumers.Those carriers may have agent, press, stockholder, employee, andsupplier 'sub sites,' but they leave it to their agents to handlecustomer services and relations. That's a reasonable approach. Butfor those carriers who think they need to address the generalpublic, one important element is the agency locator.

Under an agency-centric strategy, it would make sense to featurean agency locator on the carrier home page, perhaps offering alookup with geographic parameters (e.g., ZIP code, area code, orstate/city) and insurance focus parameters (e.g., auto, home, life,small business, etc.).

The search should yield a list that includes a small amount ofgeneral information about each agency, including name, address,phone, fax, e-mail address, a link to the agent's Web site, a linkto a locator map, and a link to driving instructions. It's criticalthat the search, list, and link functions be extremely simple touse and respond quickly to the Web site visitor.

A few months ago I spent some time looking at the agency locatorfunctions on 20 carrier sites, and was appalled at what the twolargest carriers had done. In one case, it took some real sleuthingto find the agent locator on the carrier site. (That may have beenintentional because the carrier was also trying to sell direct.)The second carrier had probably spent $1 million to develop anagency locator that was incredibly slow, virtually impossible tooperate, and did not yield useful information. It was clearly acase of unmanaged techies over-engineering something quitesimple.

Perhaps a more serious problem with agency locators is that toooften they do a poor or non-existent job of providing a link to theagent's Web site. What good is that? Of course, it can be a problemfor the carrier to keep up with agency URLs, but one carrier solvedthe problem by giving its agents the ability to keep the locatorinformation up to date right from the carrier Web site. Rather thanchasing the agents for the information, the agents can just takecare of it themselves.

Co-Branding

Any carrier that targets its site for consumers will certainlyinclude some background information-ratings, history, focus andspecial value, and perhaps details on special products or businesspartners. But this same information-perhaps the same page in aslightly different format-should be available to the agent so theagent can link to them from his site. That gives consumers twicethe opportunity to get the same information, and carriers, ineffect, twice the opportunity to touch consumers.

Many agents want their customers and prospects to know with whomthey write business. They often provide a list on their Web sites,but it would be more meaningful were those lists to link to carrierbackground pages. Most agents aren't up to the task of writing abackground piece for each of their carriers, but each carriercertainly should or has.

So it makes sense for carriers to create these background pagesand let the agents know how to link to them. The instructions couldbe made available through an 'agents tools' section on the carriersite.

When a consumer links from the agency site to the carrier siteand background page, the whole process should appear to theconsumer as if he never left the agency site. The agent's brandingshould dominate, with the carrier's subsidiary.

If a carrier has special products-for instance, aimed at aparticular type of business-it makes sense for the carrier toprovide product background pages that agents can link to from (orimbed on) their sites. The carrier and agent each benefit throughthe presentation of focused-use content.

General Insurance Information

Some carriers include a library of consumer insuranceinformation on their sites. It can provide some value to youngerbuyers or people with specific questions. Agents should providethis type of educational content on their sites as well. Thirdparties also provide educational content that agents can subscribeto for use on their Web sites, but carriers might do well to maketheirs available to their agents. Again, the carrier should getcredit for the information, but it should be presented within thelarger framework of the agent's brand.

Agents can make their Web sites more valuable when they includelinks to other sites their visitors are likely to find useful. Thestate department of transportation, department of motor vehicles,insurance commissioner, and insurance consumer sites areexamples.

Carrier marketing departments presumably create and maintainthese lists for internal use. It could make sense to turn theselists into HTML pages and make them available for agency Web-sitelinking. A small amount of work can be leveraged across hundreds orthousands of agencies.

Thus far I've made some suggestions about what carriers shouldinclude on their sites for direct consumer use (e.g., an agency Website locator) and for indirect consumer use via agent Web sites.Everything I've suggested here is simple and inexpensive to do andputs agency Web sites in the middle of the Internet process. Yetmost carriers haven't done a good job with agency Web site locatorsand haven't even considered the possibility of providing contentthat agents' sited can link to and brand as their own.

None of this is rocket science and would help all concerned. Whyhasn't it happened? Oh, I forgot. It wouldn't do much for thecarriers' Web site rankings.

John Ashenhurst's company, Sound Internet Strategy, providesconsulting, Web site evaluation, and seminar services to carriersand their trading partners. He can be reached at johnashenhurst@soundingline.com or (978) 318-1944.