Best Practices for building Insurance Websites - Part 2

Step 2 – Understand your Target Audience

Before you get down to defining strategies that can enable your goals you need to understand your Target Audiences and their needs

1) Prospects – Looking to buy Insurance can be categorized as follows:

• Those who know exactly what they are looking for. They understand their need and know the product they are looking for.
  
• Those who have a specific need and want to identify products that fit their needs. E.g someone who needs to buy a Child Insurance Plan that would provide them a sum of money for their child’s graduate education.
  
• Those who know they need insurance but are not familiar with the various categories of insurance (Child, Health, Pension, Growth, etc.)

2) Customers – These are existing customers who can be categorized as follows:

• Those looking for specific information to do with their existing relationship
• Those looking at using the web as a channel to pay renewals
• Those looking for additional products. They could then fall into any one of the categories mentioned in 1 above

3) Agents – Existing & Prospective Agents

• Existing Agents
• Self Servicing Requirement – Looking for specific information for themselves – product related, access to the Agent Portal, etc.
• Client Servicing Requirement – looking for product related information, NAVs, etc.
• Prospective Agents – Looking at a Career with the Insurance company – this could be an agent with a competitor and wants to switch someone completely new to Insurance and is looking to make a career in the Insurance Industry

Based on the objectives, the needs of the target audience need to be prioritized and the website structure laid out accordingly.

by Subir Singh (subir.singh@edynamic.net)