Are you getting the most out of your agency’s website? Your website can be a powerful leads generator and a billboard for your business that attracts new insurance prospects. But it can also become an albatross of an investment if prospects can’t find the information they're looking or don’t know how to interact with you. To optimize your website’s impact on your business, follow these steps to improve lead conversion.

Step 1: Learn how users are getting to your site.

By using Google Analytics, you gain visibility into how people are interacting with your site. Start by researching how users get to your site (acquisition overview), where they come from (referral source), and common terms they’re searching.

Step 2: Find out why users are coming to your site.

Once you discover how user sessions are initiated, visualize what users expect to find when they get to your site. You can accomplish this by comparing search terms and the referring websites the user was previously on to see if your content responds to their needs. Knowing these expectations, pinpoint areas that might not be providing the information users are seeking.

Step 3: Update your content.

Once key terms and weaker content areas are identified, update the information to make sure users easily find what they’re looking for when they first land on your site. Web analytics experts at Chartbeat report that 55% of users spend fewer than 15 seconds actively on a page. In those 15 seconds, your audience forms a rapid impression of your agency. That impression leads them to either engage with you or leave the site, making content extremely important.

Step 4: Improve SEO.

Are your pages assigned strategic title tags and meta descriptions? A meta description is a 160-character snippet from a webpage. This is the content that populates search engine results pages. Think of this like a store window—the audience needs to be drawn in so they want to visit your website. Since this is often the first content your audience sees, make these elements impactful and engaging to encourage click behavior. If you rely on automatically generated titles and descriptions, a results page will likely cut off your text at an unnatural place, missing your opportunity to show important information.

Step 5: Check your forms.

A costly mistake agency websites make is asking a user too many upfront questions. Your website form length could be an underrated factor when researching abandoned sessions. When evaluating forms, consider how much information you truly need to start a conversation, and eliminate unnecessary fields. The simpler, the better.

Step 6: Call to action.

This is the most important step to optimizing a website for lead conversion. Your website’s call to action should guide the user to a specific behavior. That action could include requesting an agent to contact the consumer, setting an online appointment, or whatever action you want the user to perform. Companies do themselves a disservice when their website doesn’t provide clear calls to action.

Navigate and Optimize: Understand the journey

When you go through these optimization steps, make sure you understand the user’s journey through your website. As you refine that user’s decision path, use these concepts to elevate your message, reach more of the right users, and drive increased lead conversion. For more tips on lead conversion, see our recent blog, “5 Tips to Increase Lead Conversion for Insurance Agencies.”