James T. Armitage, the session moderator and member of Arroyo Insurance Services Inc., notes that developing and maintaining these sites is a lot of work. He says the future dictates that agencies are going to have to build interactive sites if they want to remain successful and grow.

However, Leif Hurst, a panelist and member of SIG Insurance Professionals, says while it is important that agents "flesh out" their websites and try different approaches to reaching out to their clients, there is not one answer for every agency.

"Don't let anyone tell you that one way is best, because they don't know what they are talking about," Hurst says. "There are 200 ways to do it."

To communicate more effectively with their members, Paul Peeples with the Florida Association of Insurance Agents says they developed a member's-only blog creating a private community for members to view ideas and comment on subjects of interest to them.

This same approach can be taken by independent agencies as a way to interact with customers and make the agency's website a source of information of importance to clients. That website can also be used to share forms, data and other important information.

To improve the marketing of their niche business in rental insurance for college students living in dormitories, Cyndy Smith with Haylor Freyer & Coon Inc. spoke about how the firm has worked on its website over the past 10-12 years.

Over time, the agency developed a site where students can purchase insurance and have a policy issued over the Internet and proof of insurance printed with payment by credit card—"one and done," she calls it.

The site also features information about other business the firm handles and was developed with the aid of Artizan Internet Services.

Another feature the site offers is the ability of clients and prospects to chat with agency representatives, something she says the college-age customers utilize often.

The most important thing, she says, is "to make sure we get the information out there."

Peeples notes that the chat feature is especially good as a teaching tool. It produces a transcript at the end of every session. This allows supervisors to review with employees their communication with clients, helps to point out mistakes and allows them to do a better job in the future.

Hurst says he has made changes to his agency's website numerous times over the past months aiming to improve its content and communication with clients.

Utilizing WordPress, he says his site is designed so that content can be posted to the site once and then automatically linked to different social-media sites ranging from Twitter, to Facebook, to YouTube and others.

He says the website continually scores high on Google search engine when it comes to particular insurance products, and that generates six to 10 leads a day. He added that the quality of those leads is high, with close to 70 percent closure rate.