Insurance Age - Brokers and the web Q&A

Insurance Age - Brokers and the web Q&A: "Brokers and the web Q&A
As more and more consumers search the world wide web for their insurance quotes it becomes even more imperative for brokers to start using this medium more effectively.
Although most of the insurance searches are based around personal lines products such as motor or home there is the strong possibility that basic small and medium-sized enterprise products will also become available online for consumers to purchase.However, many brokers may not even have a web presence or a limited one which only gives basic details such as their address, contacts and a list of products.
That being said, other brokers are waking up to the potential of this media. Insurance Age spoke to one such broker, Simon Hickman, marketing and operations director at Access Underwriting.
When did you first realise you would have to set up a website and start trading on the web?
Soon after we first started trading in 2000 we realised we would need to be able to communicate with potential policyholders so that they could obtain more information about us in order to make a decision on whether to deal with us or not. We also wanted to be able to sell some associated risk management products and this required a shopping cart and online payment facilities.
How did you go about setting up the website?
We started by searching for web developers on the internet and looked at their portfolio of work to see if they had developed websites which contained good online payment facilities and where we liked the look of some of the designs. We then obtained prices and made a decision.
The web developer sourced the web space. The development was quite quick and all communication regarding this process was done by Microsoft Messenger. We have revamped the site once since then and are now in the middle of another major redesi"