Scorpions live here too.

My grandfather and his brother were in North Africa during WWII. They were in the Air Force (back then it was the Army Air Corps). He was with the 64th Division of the 57th Fighter Group aka the Black Scorpions. He said they got their name because the first thing they saw when they got off the plane was a large black scorpion and they had problems keeping them out of their stuff when they slept. I miss him and his ‘war’ stories.

Arizona scorpions are a little different than the big black scorpions my grandfather told me about. They like to hide. They’re difficult to be see. They’re rarely seen during the day and come out at night to eat. And, even at night they’re difficult to see unless you have a black light. Under a black light they glow like a Christmas tree.

I went out the other night to see if there were any around. Watch this, it’s very short compared to a lot of other videos on this site at just under 3 minutes. I apologize about the “Blair Witch” camera work. That wasn’t intended.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was surprised to see the gecko at the end. We see gecko lizards during the day all the time. The gecko actually helps keep the scorpion population down by eating a lot of the same things the scorpions do and removing its food source.

At first I thought about the big auto insurance company with the gecko mascot that is taking market share by writing direct…and taking the agency channel food source.

Then, I thought about how finding your website online is like hunting for scorpions. Your potential customer searches are “auto insurance” or “health insurance.”  They’re not searching for “car insurance in Salt Lake City Utah” where you may be on page one of Google. This search is the equivalent of the the customer remembering to get a black light before searching for you. You’re anonymously hiding in the world wide web of crevices.

Then, I thought about how a highly targeted pay-per-click ad is like handing your prospect the black light before they search for you. Your customer types in the search term and your ad magically pops up in front of them, glowing brightly like the scorpions in the dark.

Then, I realized I can use as a quick teaching example on website design for lead generation.

Get A Quote Or Leave!

When a client lands on your website, do you know what they are doing? Most people don’t search for insurance related terms unless they’re in a buying mood. While there are a few people out there looking for information, the typical customer wants to get quotes, proposals, or find a local agent. They’re very specific in what they’re searching for.

My goal when I set up a website is to give them one decision when they land on the landing page: get a quote or leave. That’s it.

This is a screen shot of my original website (Click to enlarge).

This is a mildly effective site. As you look at it you’ll notice links on all types of insurance products. There is personal, business, life and health insurance. The reader can also read my “Free Report” if they want (As if there’s something magical I have written that isn’t posted somewhere else online for free). There’s also a lot of text to read. The eyes move around as you look at it and there’s a lot of distractions.

While it’s not a bad site, when someone lands on it for home insurance they see an option to get auto insurance quotes and may not get the home insurance because now they want to wait until they have their car insurance data so they can fill out the form. Then you’ve lost them forever.

This is a screen shot of a landing page from one of my pay-per-click websites, which I call micro-sites (click to enlarge).

When you look at it, you know what it’s about…Home Insurance. If you come for advice, wrong place. If you come for auto or health insurance, wrong place. It’s home insurance. The only links “above the fold” (which is what shows up on your screen when the page first loads) is my headline, two links to the quote page and my phone number. Every bullet is a benefit driven bullet to encourage them to fill out the quote form. There’s a photo of me standing there next to testimonials from satisfied clients, social proof we can do what they’re looking for and adding a human touch element.

While this is not a perfect website, in tests driven from pay-per-click ads, the one on the bottom will convert 38% more quotes than my original site. And, as a marketer that’s all I care about.

What’s Your Decision?

As I said above, the customer should have only one decision to make when they hit your landing page. Blogs are great to bring in traffic but they will bring traffic to an article. Then they’ll want to read the article, click around for other articles and get lost, even if they were searching for a quote form.

If you watched the video Where To Start Your Online Insurance Marketing then you saw the Google analytics between my first site, one of my blogs and one of my pay-per-click sites.  The amount of traffic that converts to quotes is ridiculously low on the traditional site and the blog. The pay-per-click site converts almost half the visitors into quotes.  I attribute this difference to two things: the “one decision” option they have when they land on the site and the targeting of the keywords.

So, how does your site rate? Have you looked at it from the customer’s perspective? Or, did it just make you feel good because it talked about how great you and your agency is?

I have a couple case studies from a couple of agents that have been testing what I teach. That will be posted tomorrow. They share some of what I teach so you’ll enjoy those.

Let me know what you think below and how you feel about this.

Here’s the nuts and bolts of web hosting and where to buy domains.

What to look for when buying hosting…

For my insurance websites and blogs, I want a hosting package that allows me:

• To host multiple domains on one account
• 1 click install of WordPress blog software and multiple MySQL databases (which I’ll go into detail in another post and video)
• Linux hosting instead of Windows
• “CPanel” control panel for management of the site, email accounts, etc.
• Fast, responsive service.

That’s it. I’m not going to explain what all these mean or do other than they allow me to easily host websites and make changes.

While bandwidth and disk space on the site are important, it’s rare you’ll run out of either. And, if you actually start getting thousands of hits per day then you can always upgrade.

If you have custom service forms or need security features on your website to collect information then you also want to get a dedicated IP address and SSL (security certificates) but you can always upgrade from a basic account to one that will include these.

Here are the companies I use and recommend for hosting multiple sites:

• Hostgator – Most of my sites are on a couple of accounts here because they’re so quick to respond on the phone and via email tickets to questions. They’re “baby” plan meets all the above.
• Bluehost – They make it easy with only one hosting option.
• Midphase – Their “unlimited” package meets the above and they also provide great support.

Where to get domains…

I don’t recommend owning your domain on the same account where you host your website. While you’ll hopefully/probably never have a problem with a web host, it’s easier to move the actual site from one web host to another if things go bad than to move a domain name.

You can buy domains and thousands of places online and at the hosts above. However, I find it easier to buy all my domains with one or two companies. They’re all in a central account where it’s easy for me to access and make changes if necessary.

Here are the companies I use and recommend for domains:

• 1and1 – Their domain researching is terrible but they’re very inexpensive and give free private registration. Service calls are outsourced to another country and can be frustrating to understand if you’re not familiar with the technical lingo. But, they’re very reliable.
• Dotster – Not the cheapest but easy to use and can do what you need. Also a good place to research domain names.
• Nameboy – I don’t have any domains here. I just use this for domain name research.