8 Steps to Establish Trust & Credibility Through Your Agency Website
Whether a policyholder or prospect interacts with your agency in person or online via your agency website, consumers should be able to recognize the actions your agency is taking to gain their trust.
By implementing the following steps, your agency can create a website designed to foster trust and strengthen credibility.
1. Design a Professional Website with a Great Customer Experience
Studies show that it takes consumers just 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about a website (Semrush). In that minuscule amount of time, your agency website needs to be professional and visually appealing.
Some website design elements that can help provide your visitors with a positive first impression include a clean and simple design that reflects your agency’s brand, and intuitive navigation that guides visitors to the most important information.
Your agency website should be able to tell visitors exactly what steps you’d like them to take within seconds of looking at your website. That means it should also include short and simple quote forms and prominently display your phone number so it’s easy to contact your agency.
2. Showcase Carriers & Professional Associations
Showcasing your partnerships with reputable insurance carriers and memberships with professional associations are other great ways to build trust and credibility.
Because your independent agency may not be as well known as a national insurance brand, highlighting the well-known insurance carriers you have access to on your website’s homepage — as well as on a dedicated page featuring each carrier — can reduce the perceived risk of working with your agency.
By featuring your memberships with professional associations like IIABA and Trusted Choice, you can establish credibility and reassure website visitors that your agency adheres to industry standards and has the backing of recognized organizations.
3. Highlight Your Experience
Another way to foster trust and credibility on your website is by including your agency’s experience and history on your “About Us” page. Tell your agency’s story, emphasize your stability if you’ve been around for several years, and list any milestones you’ve accomplished. Even if your agency is newly established, you can still mention past industry experiences and share stories of how you’ve successfully served consumers.
People enjoy doing business with others they can relate to, so sharing your story, including whether your agency is family-owned or veteran-owned, helps make your agency relatable while setting yourself apart from the competition.
4. Humanize Your Brand with a Team Page
Expanding on your agency’s experience, you can help your website visitors connect with and relate to your agency even more by creating a team page that features professional headshots and bios of your staff. By highlighting each team member, their qualifications (including CPCU or CIC after agents’ names), specialized skills, certifications, and accreditations, you can humanize your brand and help visitors trust that your agency is staffed by knowledgeable professionals who will be there for them when they need to make an insurance claim.
5. Include Social Proof
Social proof is the concept that people tend to modify their actions based on the behaviors and opinions of others. One of the most effective forms of social proof that you should include on your agency website is positive online customer reviews. Reviews inform consumers about the experience they can expect from your agency and help prospects feel confident that your staff will provide that same positive experience.
In fact, studies show that 95% of consumers read reviews before making a purchasing decision (Global Newswire). For local businesses like insurance agencies, 73% of people directly state that reviews increase trust (Finances Online). To boost trust in your agency and influence your website visitors’ purchasing decisions, display your agency’s positive reviews prominently on your website in locations that can make the most impact in a prospect’s browsing journey. Some examples include your homepage, next to quote request forms, and on a page dedicated to online reviews.
When adding online reviews to your website, consider including the photo of the reviewer and the name of the third-party review service (i.e., Yelp, Google, or Facebook) from which the review was originally posted with the review text. This helps consumers see where the review came from and trust that your agency isn’t making up positive reviews.
6. Publish High-Quality Educational Content
Every person who views your website comes to your page for a reason. They may want to get a quote, submit a claim, or gather useful tips related to certain types of insurance. That’s why it’s critical your website offers high-quality, educational content that addresses common insurance questions and concerns.
Not only can your content build credibility with consumers and position your agency as a thought leader, but when you emphasize specific insurance-related keywords, it can also tell search engines that your agency is a helpful resource, which can lead to higher rankings in the search results.
Because Google is more likely to rank websites that produce fresh, relevant content, you should consider consistently publishing blog posts and regularly updating your website pages that detail the types of insurance you offer.
7. Incorporate Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Local search engine optimization, or SEO, is a long-term marketing strategy that helps smaller businesses like independent insurance agencies increase their rankings in local search results on Google. It can also help your agency boost trust with website visitors, as it entails incorporating location-specific keywords into the content on your webpages and blog posts so people can easily determine that your agency services their city.
Your agency should also include images related to your service area with alt text on each image that describes the location. By incorporating localized keywords and images, your website will be more likely to rank higher when consumers conduct geographically related searches, such as “insurance agencies near me.”
8. Ensure Your Website Is ADA Accessible
Another crucial step to build trust through your agency website is to ensure it’s in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), meaning it offers “reasonable accessibility” to people with disabilities. There are many components to designing an ADA-compliant website, but a few key features include writing alt texts for all images, ensuring videos have captions, and adding easy keyboard navigation.
When you take accessibility seriously on your website, your agency becomes more valuable to consumers with disabilities and strengthens your overall trust and credibility by demonstrating your commitment to inclusivity and customer care.
ACT Supporting Partner BrightFire has delivered custom-designed websites and done-for-you digital marketing since 2000, tailored for independent insurance agencies of all sizes. BrightFire also offers discounts and special deals through Big “I” programs Alliance Blue Plus and Trusted Choice. To see what’s possible for your agency, visit https://www.brightfire.com/big-i-alliance and https://trustedchoice.independentagent.com/.
Learn more about BrightFire here.