Power Your Website with BondExchange’s Quoting Technology
Obtaining coverage for your customers requires work. Some policies demand more work than others, but it’s a fact of life that you have to expend time and effort on every policy you issue. It’s not a bad thing; after all, issuing and renewing policies is how your agency stays in business. However, the time you spend filling out applications and corresponding with underwriters for one policy takes away from the time available to spend on the next one, the one after that, etc. If the work required to obtain a type of coverage outweighs the commission being generated, you may wonder if writing it is even worth it.
Our goal at BondExchange has always been to reduce the amount of work required of agents to obtain a surety bond, and we are excited to announce that this goal has come to complete fruition. That’s right, we’ve figured out a way to decrease agents’ workloads to zero.
How did we do it? One word: SuretyPro
What is SuretyPro?
SuretyPro is a completely free-to-use tool that allows agents and their customers to quote surety bonds directly from their websites. With SuretyPro, you can:
- Create custom applications (that contain your agency’s branding) for specific surety bonds
- Emded these applications on your website
- Create shareable links for these applications that you can share via email, text message, and social media
What Does SuretyPro Do?
SuretyPro eliminates all work required of agents to obtain surety bonds for their customers. With SuretyPro, you can simply direct your customers to your website or send them a custom application via text or email. They fill out the application, and you receive a commission shortly after the policy is issued.
How Does SuretyPro Work?
To gain access to SuretyPro, simply:
- Login to your BondExchange account (Don’t have an account? Gain access now!)
- Click “Edit Your Profile”
- Click “Get SuretyPro”
From here, you can create a custom application for a specific bond (or use a generic one applicable to all bond types), design it to match your agency’s branding and copy a shareable link. You can create an unlimited amount of custom applications and shareable links.
Additionally, agents installing SuretyPro will be able to quote bonds straight from their website’s URL, without directing their customers to another website.
How Do I Install SuretyPro On My Website?
If technology isn’t your thing and you have an in-house developer or external third party managing your website (even a singular tech-savvy intern will suffice), we recommend delegating the task of installing SuretyPro to them. Just tell them how you want it to look and where you want it to go, and they should have no problem installing it for you.
However, if you don’t have access to a development team or are simply a maverick who insists on doing everything themselves, then you can install SuretyPro as follows:
- Once you’ve settled on your SuretyPro design, click “Copy Code” or “Application Only” (depending on which frame you prefer)
- Navigate to the back end of your agency’s website, go to the page you want to include SuretyPro on (if you want to include it in your header/footer, go to your site’s menu settings), view the page in HTML or select an HTML insertion widget, paste in the code that was copied to your clipboard in Step 1 and publish the changes to your live site
SuretyPro is comprised of HTML code, which is essentially language that tells computers how to implement and display web content. If you are able to alter your website yourself, and know how to do so, then you should have no issues installing SuretyPro. If you are having trouble installing the feature and don’t have access to developer assistance, then contact BondExchange, and we will be more than happy to help you install SuretyPro on your website.
Better Than Your Standard White Label Link
SuretyPro is unique in that it lets you and your customers quote bonds directly on your website. Before SuretyPro, the only way to “quote bonds on your website” was to link out to a carrier/broker’s application on their web domain. They may have designed the page to include your logo and branding (white label), but the application is occurring on their website and their URL, not yours.
This matters for two important reasons:
- The carrier/broker is getting all of the SEO benefit, meaning that their website will perform better in search results as a result of your customer filling out the application. In this setup, you’re essentially doing affiliate marketing on the carrier/broker’s behalf
- While the page may have your branding, the website URL and page description are for the carrier/broker, potentially causing confusion among the customer.
There is nothing wrong with using white-label technology, SuretyPro even has a white-label version, but an embedded application is able to rectify the two issues outlined above and provide more value for your agency. Here’s how:
- Search engines like pages that are transactional, and having an embedded application on your product page where customers can purchase policies helps that page, and your website as a whole, perform better in search results. With embedded applications, you get the SEO benefit, not the carrier/broker.
- There is no transition to an external website with embedded applications. Everything is happening directly on your domain and URL, meaning you don’t have to explain to your customers why the link they clicked took them to a different website, and you don’t have to reassure them of the legitimacy of the application they are committing.
The Bottom Line
The saying “hard work pays off” has a lot of truth to it. From landing on the moon to curing diseases, humanity has accomplished a great deal through the sweat of its brow. However, the saying “work smarter, not harder” is equally relevant, and using SuretyPro allows agents to do just that.
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