What Do You Want From Your Website?

Jun 8, 2021, 2:30 PM

At Hastings Mutual, we’re always trying to improve our website and bring you more valuable online services (among the many other things we offer). The challenge, though, is often right at the starting line: what do our customers want?

• Is it more simple-to-use tools like our Find an Agent button? 
• Is it clear explanations of our products and how you benefit from them?
• Is it something else?

We aren’t always sure, though we’re always willing to listen to comments from our agent partners, our policyholders, and visitors to our site. We also do our own research, and follow the recommendations made by the top companies in the online world.

Here are a few things you can do for your company’s web presence, whether it’s a simple Facebook page with a few photos or a comprehensive website that you update daily.

Test your site speed

Google reports that visitors using their phone to reach a website will leave if the page takes more than three seconds to load… and the average webpage takes 22 seconds to fully load on a mobile device.

A speed test (there are plenty of websites that will perform it for free) will tell you how fast your website loads, and what you can do to make it load more quickly. Technology is always changing, and the things you used when you first set up your website might have been replaced by something better by now. Make sure you’re using the best technology available.

SEO performance

SEO or “search engine optimization” is adjusting what’s on your website to make it easier to find by people who are looking for you. Put “Hastings Mutual” in the search bar and you’ll find us. Put “insurance” in the search bar and you’ll find us eventually, but there’s a lot of competition out there, and we want to be in the running. Well, really, we want to be the first entry you see.

So we’re doing keyword research the topics you want us to discuss, here in the blog, in videos, and in other places on our website. We’re checking the links of companies sending visitors our way. We’re also making sure our site looks good on a laptop, a tablet, and a phone — check all three for your site; each may look a lot different, and leave out valuable information.

Research your analytics

You check the performance of your company all the time: the balance sheet, relationships with customers, how your employees are faring. You can do the same with your website, Facebook page, and more. See who’s on your site and what they’re looking at, so you can emphasize those topics, or concentrate more on topics that need a little boost.

There are plenty of tools to do this already included by your website host and at social media sites. A little time spent searching will uncover a lot of information and asking how to interpret the data will help you learn even more.

Let’s leave the web tools behind for a moment: What do you want to see from Hastings Mutual? What can we do that will make your experience better? Let me know in the comments.

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