Of course, if carrier Web sites aren't very important, how would ranking sites like Gomez develop their brands? By ranking agency sites? Who would care? Ranking in general is intended to create a need-the need to be high on the list, and if you're a big company, at the top. Ranking creates anxiety. Anxiety motivates action. Anxiety funds budgets.

Who wins? The ranking services are called in to do in-depth studies and make recommendations. Consulting groups are awarded contracts to bring the sites up to high-rank specs, or carrier Web-site departments are pleased to find themselves with substantially higher budgets. And CEOs can tell their boards about their high rankings or concerted efforts to achieve them.

Everyone wins. Well, not everyone. The stockholders lose because corporate resources are being bet on the wrong horse. Agents lose because their carrier partners are working to weaken agents' local brands. And consumers lose because carrier-centric Web strategies will make their lives more complicated, not more convenient.

It's quite a system and one easy to get caught up in. And when reality intrudes and business success doesn't track ranking success, the solution may appear to do more of the same-when it's really the wrong game.

What's a Carrier to Do?

Why do site ranking groups use faulty criteria? Because if they didn't, they'd have nothing to sell the insurance industry. Why do carriers go along with the games? In part because they're confused about their business strategy; in part because site rankings are a simple and definitive metric in a murky world-one that that gives everyone something to do.

If ranking services and their confederates, the consultants, are leading willing carriers off into the wild blue yonder, what's the answer? What should carriers be doing instead? Surely there's something interesting and useful they can do with the Internet. Absolutely. Here are some ideas.

Independent agency carriers should adopt an agency-centric rather than carrier-centric Web strategy. Overall, that means helping consumers find agency Web sites and providing background services to agency Web sites and to primary agency automation systems.

Find an Agent

Not all carrier sites have elements that cater to consumers. Those carriers may have agent, press, stockholder, employee, and supplier 'sub sites,' but they leave it to their agents to handle customer services and relations. That's a reasonable approach. But for those carriers who think they need to address the general public, one important element is the agency locator.

Under an agency-centric strategy, it would make sense to feature an agency locator on the carrier home page, perhaps offering a lookup with geographic parameters (e.g., ZIP code, area code, or state/city) and insurance focus parameters (e.g., auto, home, life, small business, etc.).

The search should yield a list that includes a small amount of general information about each agency, including name, address, phone, fax, e-mail address, a link to the agent's Web site, a link to a locator map, and a link to driving instructions. It's critical that the search, list, and link functions be extremely simple to use and respond quickly to the Web site visitor.

A few months ago I spent some time looking at the agency locator functions on 20 carrier sites, and was appalled at what the two largest carriers had done. In one case, it took some real sleuthing to find the agent locator on the carrier site. (That may have been intentional because the carrier was also trying to sell direct.) The second carrier had probably spent $1 million to develop an agency locator that was incredibly slow, virtually impossible to operate, and did not yield useful information. It was clearly a case of unmanaged techies over-engineering something quite simple.

Perhaps a more serious problem with agency locators is that too often they do a poor or non-existent job of providing a link to the agent's Web site. What good is that? Of course, it can be a problem for the carrier to keep up with agency URLs, but one carrier solved the problem by giving its agents the ability to keep the locator information up to date right from the carrier Web site. Rather than chasing the agents for the information, the agents can just take care of it themselves.

Co-Branding

Any carrier that targets its site for consumers will certainly include some background information-ratings, history, focus and special value, and perhaps details on special products or business partners. But this same information-perhaps the same page in a slightly different format-should be available to the agent so the agent can link to them from his site. That gives consumers twice the opportunity to get the same information, and carriers, in effect, twice the opportunity to touch consumers.

Many agents want their customers and prospects to know with whom they write business. They often provide a list on their Web sites, but it would be more meaningful were those lists to link to carrier background pages. Most agents aren't up to the task of writing a background piece for each of their carriers, but each carrier certainly should or has.

So it makes sense for carriers to create these background pages and let the agents know how to link to them. The instructions could be made available through an 'agents tools' section on the carrier site.

When a consumer links from the agency site to the carrier site and background page, the whole process should appear to the consumer as if he never left the agency site. The agent's branding should dominate, with the carrier's subsidiary.

If a carrier has special products-for instance, aimed at a particular type of business-it makes sense for the carrier to provide product background pages that agents can link to from (or imbed on) their sites. The carrier and agent each benefit through the presentation of focused-use content.

General Insurance Information

Some carriers include a library of consumer insurance information on their sites. It can provide some value to younger buyers or people with specific questions. Agents should provide this type of educational content on their sites as well. Third parties also provide educational content that agents can subscribe to for use on their Web sites, but carriers might do well to make theirs available to their agents. Again, the carrier should get credit for the information, but it should be presented within the larger framework of the agent's brand.

Agents can make their Web sites more valuable when they include links to other sites their visitors are likely to find useful. The state department of transportation, department of motor vehicles, insurance commissioner, and insurance consumer sites are examples.

Carrier marketing departments presumably create and maintain these lists for internal use. It could make sense to turn these lists into HTML pages and make them available for agency Web-site linking. A small amount of work can be leveraged across hundreds or thousands of agencies.

Thus far I've made some suggestions about what carriers should include on their sites for direct consumer use (e.g., an agency Web site locator) and for indirect consumer use via agent Web sites. Everything I've suggested here is simple and inexpensive to do and puts agency Web sites in the middle of the Internet process. Yet most carriers haven't done a good job with agency Web site locators and haven't even considered the possibility of providing content that agents' sited can link to and brand as their own.

None of this is rocket science and would help all concerned. Why hasn't it happened? Oh, I forgot. It wouldn't do much for the carriers' Web site rankings.

John Ashenhurst's company, Sound Internet Strategy, provides consulting, Web site evaluation, and seminar services to carriers and their trading partners. He can be reached at johnashenhurst@soundingline .com or (978) 318-1944.