Best Life Insurance Websites
Most Popular Online Sites Include MetLife, Prudential and AFLAC
Nov 2, 2009
This article compares and ranks the online traffic for the websites of the 15 largest US life insurance companies.
Life insurance companies increasingly use their websites as online marketing tools to attract prospective new clients. For example, MetLife’s home page has widgets that enable online visitors to receive an instant quote on family life coverage or view an online video that explains how to select the right type and amount of life insurance.
Presented below are the top 10 life insurance company websites with the most monthly visitors and search engine visits. Also listed are the life insurance sites that generated the most total visits as well as those that experienced the highest percentage of one-page visits.
Most Popular Life Insurance Websites
Not only is MetLife America’s largest life insurer, MetLife’s website attracts the most online visitors monthly. Headquartered in Des Moines, Principal Financial is much smaller than MetLife or Prudential yet garners a comparable number of online users.
- MetLife … 797,662 monthly visitors (up 8% over the latest 3-month period)
- Prudential Financial … 696,929 monthly visitors (up 14%)
- Principal Financial … 693,650 monthly visitors (up 30%)
- TIAA-CREF … 600,888 monthly visitors (up 22%)
- AFLAC … 484,734 monthly visitors (up 4%)
- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance … 260,465 monthly visitors (up 36%)
- New York Life … 259,204 month visitors (up 65%)
- Northwestern Mutual … 217,591 monthly visitors (up 51%)
- Lincoln National … 195,281 monthly visitors (up 20%)
- Mutual of Omaha Insurance … 120,888 monthly visitors (up 4%).
New York Life is a larger competitor that lags a number of smaller online rivals, although the life insurer’s website did grow at the fastest-rate over the past 3 months.
Top Life Insurance Websites for Search Engine Traffic
MetLife, Prudential and AFLAC were targeted by the most search engine visits based on average monthly statistics. However, New York Life achieved a higher percentage of visits from searches when compared to page views from returning users, links and other types of web entry.
- MetLife … 539,427 monthly search engine visits (23.4% of total online visits)
- Prudential Financial … 437,079 monthly visits (18.5%)
- AFLAC … 277,249 monthly visits (15.8%)
- TIAA-CREF … 264,793 monthly visits (11.1%)
- New York Life … 235,261 monthly visits (28.1%)
- Principal Financial … 205,889 monthly visits (10.2%)
- Lincoln National … 172,687 monthly visits (23.9%)
- Northwestern Mutual … 113,955 monthly visits (20.7%)
- Mutual of Omaha Insurance … 108,691 monthly visits (24.3%)
- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance … 96,706 monthly visits (13.6%).
Principal Financial and TIAA-CREF had the lowest percentage visits from search engine traffic. This suggests that existing clients and sales representatives generate a higher percentage of the traffic for those life insurance websites.
Best Life Insurance Websites for Page Views
Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association - College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) finishes first with the highest number of page views principally because the TIAA-CREF website services more than 3 million academic users plus individual and institutional investors. Page views per user increase when online visitors stay on a website to read a number of different pages on the site.
- TIAA-CREF … 2,385,526 monthly page views (average 3.97 daily page views per user)
- Prudential Financial … 2,362,588 monthly page views (3.39)
- MetLife … 2,305,244 monthly page views (2.89)
- Principal Financial … 2,018,522 monthly page views (2.91)
- AFLAC … 1,754,738 monthly page views (3.62)
- New York Life … 837,228 monthly page views (3.23)
- Lincoln National … 722,539 monthly page views (3.7)
- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance … 711,070 monthly page views (2.73)
- Northwestern Mutual … 550,506 monthly page views (2.53)
- Mutual of Omaha Insurance … 447,286 monthly page views (3.7).
Online Life Insurance Sites with Highest Bounce Rates
The following life insurer sites had the highest percentage of visits limited to only one page view. Almost 60% of Guardian Life’s home page views resulted in visitors leaving for another site without pursuing more information on the Guardian site.
- Guardian Life Insurance Company of America … 59.4% bounce rate (102,188 one-page views)
- Northwestern Mutual … 52.2% bounce rate (287,364)
- Principal Financial … 51.4% bounce rate (1,037,520)
- MetLife … 45.4% bounce rate (1,046,581)
- Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance … 44.9% bounce rate (319,271)
- Unum Group … 44.3% bounce rate (71,130)
- New York Life … 43.7% bounce rate (365,869)
- Western and Southern Financial Group … 42.9% bounce rate (19,681)
- Mutual of Omaha Insurance … 40.7% bounce rate (182,045)
- AFLAC … 39% bounce rate (684,348).
In contrast, more than 60% of visitors to AFLAC’s home page stayed on to view more of AFLAC’s online content.
Top Scores for Life Insurance Websites
Life insurance companies that can increase the number of visitors to their websites increase can awareness of their insurance products.
More importantly, the best websites are designed to entice users to further explore and interact with online features. After landing on an engaging home page, Web surfers are much more likely to request rate quotes and buy insurance products online.
Therefore, a company like Mutual of Omaha with a comparatively high search engine traffic percentage (24.3%) coupled with a lower bounce rate (40.7%) is currently better able to develop online sales than Principal Financial with its much lower search engine score (10.2%) and higher bounce rate (51.4%).
Sources
This article provides independent calculations and insights based on data from the leading Internet traffic monitoring site, Alexa. The above statistics were calculated using a comparative benchmark of 20 million monthly visitors to the Suite101 website averaged over the past three months.
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