Creating Landing Pages That Work: Auto Insurance

How do you create landing pages that work?  Pages that ensnare users into your process of filling out a form, getting more information, getting a quote, etc.?

We believe that the auto insurance industry, in particular, offers many useful examples around how to create high-performing and persuasive website landing pages.

Let's take a look.

If you go to Google and search for "get car insurance," you'll see something like this:

Google Results for Get Car Insurance Search

 

Notice that most of the screen is covered in advertisements:

Google Results for Get Car Insurance Search Showing Ads

 

In fact, 10 of the results are advertisements, and only 4 are "organic" (e.g. not directly paid for) results.  And this is just online!

Here in the US, we are constantly bombarded (online, on television, in print, via direct mail) with advertisements from Allstate, GEICO, Nationwide, Progressive, and other leaders in the auto insurance industry.

One would have to assume that:

  • They’re spending incredible amounts of money advertising their products.
  • The space is massively competitive. We learned, anecdotally, that some auto insurance companies are paying up to $150 USD per click for Google Adwords online advertising, for example (that’s just for a raw lead - not a person that has converted to being a customer!).
  • They’ve worked very hard to optimize their landing pages and their funnels (e.g. convincing and ensnaring folks to “get a quote”) to maximize conversion rates.

Now, back to those Google Search results.  When you click on one of those ads, you'll see a page that looks like this:

Geico Landing Page for Web

 

Or this:

Allstate Landing Page for Web

 

Or this:

Progressive Landing Page for Web

 

Or, if you're on mobile, something like this:

Geico Landing Page for Mobile

 

We believe that there’s a lot to learn here:

  • How to create a persuasive and effective landing page, using typography, photographs, social proof, and other mechanisms to elicit a certain response and encourage certain behavior.
  • How to get folks started in the process.
  • How to easily enable folks to resume from where they left off (if they do indeed leave).
  • How not to distract folks with other content and information that might unintentionally encourage them to fall out of the funnel.
  • How to ask questions in a way that is not overwhelming or intimidating (e.g. perhaps in an iterative, one-step-at-a-time fashion).