Q1 2010 Life Insurance Trends: Insurance websites gain maturity to become integral to the business

The Customer Respect Group today released findings from its latest review of leading companies in the insurance industry.

The objective of the review was to measure trends and innovations as the industry enhances its online presence.

During the past 12 months, there has been significant investment in the online channel as websites migrate from information repositories to be an integral part of the customer experience. The key trends and developments found on Life Insurance websites  in 2009 were:

• Integration of the company website as a critical component of customer pre-sales research
• A greater focus on collecting and supplying leads for the agent
• Greater support for customers to self-serve and manage their existing policies and accounts

The leading Life Insurance companies evaluated in 2009 were Western & Southern Life, MetLife and Thrivent Financial, with Progressive leading the Auto Insurance companies.

According to Terry Golesworthy, president of The Customer Respect Group, “Websites are now much more critical to insurers, and whereas previously the objective was to simply get the customer to contact an agent, it is now becoming more important to give customers control over the process”.

Read more detail about the key trends of 2009 on our website.

Do you know – with certainty – what your site visitors’ key tasks are? Find out before your next site update!

If you had clear evidence, backed by scientific objective data, of which tasks were responsible for a large proportion of your website traffic, would it influence your priorities for the next site revision?

Based on over 10 years of online research by world-renowned web content expert and founder of Customer Carewords Gerry McGovern, Task Identification is a unique technique that allows your customers to tell you about their top goals and tasks in precise, statistical terms. Unlike focus groups and clickstream data analysis, Task Identification reveals what site visitors actually want to do – described by their words (‘Carewords’). It moves the focus of website design from a company-centric to a customer-centric view. Most crucially, it is based on evidence and data, not opinion and design trends.

The Customer Respect Group is now offering Task Identification. We can provide you with objective data so you can make sure your home page contains clear paths to these tasks, and that the navigation system and lower-level pages support those tasks to completion. The process is suitable for all types of websites, including financial services, telecommunications, government, and technology, as well as intranets.

Read more about Task Identification and other Customer Carewords services on our website.

You can also register for a free webinar with Gerry McGovern at 10 AM EST on 22 February.