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 (read:Alliance Insurance Group and Kaplansky Insurance) each week until the winner is revealedJune 3. Click here to find out the winner!

Bryan Insurance Agency
New Windsor, N.Y.

In 2009, "We had a static page that only provided basicinformation about our agency," said Amy Bryan, principal atBryanInsurance Agency.

Recognizing the need to deliver more to its clients andprospects, the agency redesigned its webpage with Insurance WebsiteBuilder in 2009. For the bargain price of $500 and a monthly fee of$60, the Bryan website now is a dynamic page, with flash, video,forms, blogs and mobility.

She chose Insurance Website Builder because of thedesigner's familiarity with the industry. "Instead of developingfrom scratch, we went with them because they had customer service,quoting and other forms set up already," she said.

Amy Bryan monitors her agency's website traffic through GoogleAnalytics each week. She reports that the website receives morethan 1000 visitors, of which 50 percent is unique, each month.Visitors are engaged on the website – on average they visit betweenthree and four pages per visit.

 Website Integration

Amy Bryan monitors Google Analytics and SEO management monthly.She integrates the website with videos and pictures to increase thewebsite's metrics. But the video has another beneficial purpose,one judge noted: "The video talking about the community involvementshows that they are interested in more than just sellinginsurance," he said.

Agency carriers provided Bryan Insurance with SEO trainingseminars, where she learned it's important for website tags andkeywords to speak the customer's language, in order to maximizesearch results. For example, customers may search for "carinsurance", not necessarily the industry term "auto insurance."

"Search engines like new information," she said. "You have toconstantly update your website or you will fall down in the rankswhen people are searching for insurance in your area. If motorcycleinsurance is a common search, add tags and key word phrases thatare specific so the agency pops up on the search engine."

The website also is integrated with local area marketing andsocial media. The agency's Facebookpage  includes a 2013 referral contest, a fan of theweek and weekly posts. "All of this has turned into sales leads forus," Bryan said.

Mobility & Contact

Through her research with Google Analytics, Amy Bryan found thatthe website wasn't attracting visitors from devices such as tabletsor smartphones. She realized that the website wasn't optimized forthe mobile web and corrected the design with Insurance WebsiteBuilder.

The design also updated to include the agency's address andcontact information on every page.

These changes, seemingly small, would prove an invaluableservice to Bryan's clients.

In October 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused much destruction on theEast Coast, and many of Bryan Insurance's clientssuffered considerable damage.

 "We had people contact us through the mobile sitebecause cell phone service wasn't working," Bryan said. "But theyhad Internet access, so they sent a message through the claims orcontact us form online and we were able to get ahold of them."

When a visitor fills out a quote or claim form, the websitesends Amy Bryan a text message and an email.

The mobile site is broken into three categories: Products& Services, Contacting Us and Quick Resources. Products &Services include quotes, forms, policy management and otherservices. Quick Resources includes links to the blog, testimonials,calculators and an insurance glossary.

Blog

Amy Bryan details the agency's website objectives as brandmanagement, servicing and education.

The website's blog covers the educational aspect. Recent blog postsinclude "What You Need to Know Before Becoming aVolunteer" and "Your Young Drivers – Help Them Play itSafe".

SEO management plays a role in blog topics as well. "Every timeyou are blogging, Google pulls your website up in the ranks," Bryansaid. "If you are talking about flood insurance and linking toFEMA, that helps get people to our site, which turns intoleads."