In this, the first installment of our new blog series on insurance website design and development, we’re going to explore the first steps in building or improving a site. These include: purpose, aesthetic themes, and site structure. Where do we begin? Ask not what you can do for your website, ask what your website can do for you! Depending on your products, services, clients, and prospects, there are many different functions a website can help perform. From client portals and dashboards containing sensitive information to reference resources, e-commerce, brand awareness, and beyond, the form of an insurance website is often crucially dictated by its intended function. You should decide what you want your website to accomplish before you decide how you want it to look and feel.
Have a clearly defined idea of what you want your website to do for your organization? Great! Now it’s time to get visual (and auditory!) Think about how you want your website users to think and feel about your brand, your products and services, and the experience of interacting with you. Are you looking to project an image of reliability, constancy, and tradition? Perhaps cool, modern, and edgy is more your style? Or playful, sincere, and relatable? Do you want your visitors to prepare for brief and simple interactions with your site (like a two or three field form or a one step CTA) or do you want them to enter the headspace appropriate to market research, industry analytics, risk management, or other denser topics? Do you want your visitors to stay on a few pages for a long time or to move quickly through your site to a specific conclusion? All of this will affect the best colors, shapes, animations, CTA positions, and other aesthetic elements of your site. Remember, your website does not exist to make you happy – it exists for the specific purpose(s) you outlined in step one!
And now we arrive at structure – the navigation, CTA positioning, number of pages, length of pages, quantity of text, and other factors will all dramatically impact how visitors engage with what you’re presenting. This is less about what you want to say and more about what your visitors will be inclined to consume. The importance of your message is irrelevant if nobody reads it. Where and how you organize information will determine what percentage of your visitors consume it and what qualities they likely possess. If most of your desired visitors are looking for specific information, a search function should work well and be prominently displayed. If you want visitors who are eager to get to know you, an emphasis on About Us and Who We Are pages will help drive your target behaviors. If you’re looking for inbound leads, compelling CTAs driving users toward phone calls, emails, and/or form submissions will serve you best. There are so many permutations of site structure depending on how you want your visitors to behave.
These are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg – are you ready to delve into the world of insurance website design and development? If so, keep checking our blog, and feel free to reach out for more information!