Imagery for insurance websites

We have just purchased a set of images for a general insurance website design we are working on currently for our client.

We recommended royalty free (RF) images since these are affordable and come without the restrictions on usage that are common with rights-managed images.

Royalty free-images have these benefits:

• Unlimited usage – when you purchase aRF image, it can be used virtually anywhere for as long as our client wishes and across different projects. This means that for a relatively low cost our client has access to high-quality images that they are a re-usable asset for an indefinite amount of time.
• Creative flexibility – we are licensed to crop and manipulate RF images as we see fit. For example we might decide  the character that monochrome images have would work well for a particular project – with RF images we are free to manipulate the images we have purchased in this way.
• Affordability – the cost of RF images is based on the file size and resolution, not on the usage. We always advise our clients to spend a bit more and go for larger images than might be needed for small thumbnails on an insurance website. This then enables these same images can be reused elsewhere on paper-based advertising for example, where a bigger higher resolution/larger image is required.

It is true that because RF images are not licensed exclusively to the purchaser there is the risk that an identical image is being used by a competitor and we always stress this scenario to our clients when advising on types of image licensing. If budget and usage is less of a consideration than exclusivity, then of course rights-managed images win-hands down as they are only used by one client in any particular time period.

So to reduce the risk purchasing RF images that have been seen on insurance websites, brohures and other advertising spaces many times before we use image libraries like Getty Images. Their RF images are more expensive than micro-stock providers such as istockphoto.com but for this reason they tend not to over-purchased and used in 100′s if not 1000′s of designs.  In this way we balance cost against non-exclusivity when selecting and purchasing imagery for our client’s websites.

The divergent costs for IFA website design

Areoff recently provide a quote to an IFA for redesigning their website.

After studying our quotation to provide website redesign, usability, SEO as well as an option for putting a CMS for editing pages and publishing new content, they commented that our costs were ‘considerably divergent’ from a quotation they received from a leading telecommunications company.

Their alternative quote was 50% cheaper than ours.

However, when I studied their quotation which our prospective client was kind enough to share with us I immediately noticed that there was also a considerable divergence in the website design service being offered. These were the main features of their quotation:

• We will create a maximum of 6 pages including a contact form.
• We offer a choice of colour schemes, and 6 different site and navigation layouts.
• We offer the option of one Image Rotator, scrolling up to 5 images.
• You may supply up to 2 images per page in your page content.
• The contact form will collect name, e-mail address and a message from anyone wishing to contact you.

This suggest that they would receive a very rigidly structured template based website instead of the bespoke build Areoff provides to all it’s clients. And what happens if you want more than 6 pages in your website, which is more than conceivable, if not immediately, then maybe in a few months.

Their quotation also made absolutely no reference to SEO friendly features like the inclusion of proper and complete meta-data, header tags, DIV/XHTML page structure and semantic URL’s amongst other things that Areoff always provide as part of a website design service – our believe is that a website should be search engine ‘ready’ from day-one.

Lastly, the telecommunication provider’s proposal made no mention of a CMS which is crucial if a client wants to be able to edit existing wording and add new content to their website. The benefit of a CMS such as the packages Areoff offers is that it goes a long way towards future-proofing a website since it enables the client to add on a whole host of additional features as they need them like blog posts/news, calendars, additional forms, galleries, polls. And a CMS allows you to have as many pages as you like for no extra charge, which has to be a better deal than the ‘pay-as-you-add-pages’ approach that was proposed to our client in the alternative quote.

So our message to all IFA’s looking to have a new website designed or an existing one redesigned: look at the value that is being provided to you by a design/development company rather than just the bottom line cost. More often than not the cheaper of the two proposals can end up working out more expensive – less visibility on search engines due to a poor build, fewer conversions from your website due to poor usability and inferior levels of interaction with visitors, and the ongoing hidden costs of adding and amending content on your website.

New concept white-label insurance micro-sites

We have just provided our online insurance client with a design draft for a new concept white-label micro-site.

This project was briefed and instructed by our client last week and we and have been working with them on the concept, copy, design and strategy over the past few days.

The intention is to produce similar white-labelled micro-sites that are ‘ready to roll’ for their affiliates who require more than rebranded quote/application forms to slot into their own websites.

We look forward to finalising the design next week and enabling the effective and rapid roll out of micro-sites for our client’s affiliates.

The basics of marketing your website

We spoke to a potential client this week who was sold a website design following a tele-sales call. They paid £180 to have a basic website for their company.

Six months later they still have not had the website produced for them and their domain name resolves to a hosting company sponsored listings page.

They then told us that their fleet of vans has the website address emblazened in very large letters. We explained that if a potential customers sees their website address and then goes to check out their website to see what the company does, where they are located or even just to grab their telephone number to get in touch, it’s a potential lost customer. Any person looking at this website, or more accurately hosting company sponsored listings page would rightly assume the company may no longer be in business – particularly in this current unstable economic climate where small to medium sized businesses are going to the wall with frightening frequency.

We explained that we could design an effective but reasonable priced website for them, within just a few days, although we did state that £180 was not a feasible price – companies purporting to be able to produce websites for this kind of money are not running sustainable businesses.

We would certainly not leave a client with a sponsored listings page when their web address is being actively marketed in such a prominent way to the public and would immediately put up a company holding page that at the very least gives contact details while the site is being built.

We await to hear back from this potential client who was genuinely appreciative of our honest and valuable website and marketing advice.

Website design templates

We have just put the finishing touches to a website design template for general insurance website we have been working on for our client over the past several weeks.

The template has been sent to a web development company to build into html pages that will make up the final website. We have supplied them with a number of page types including:

• home page
• product page,
• SEO page
• PPC landing page
• non-product page
• white-label design specification

In addition to providing the design template we have also specified a number of technical factors including the header tag and URL structure, both of which are crucial in the architectural make up of the website and SEO.

The next steps while the web development company are building the pages is to work with our client on devising a meta-data strategy and structure for each section of the website and individual pages.