Insurance Journal Forums

Hello all,

Is there any agencies/agents/brokers that are currently using a mobile app for either their agents or insureds?

If so, are there any pros or cons that you've noticed?

I'm trying to get some industry feedback and opinions from the user side of the applications.

Thanks for any feedback!

my opinion...you're better off with a mobile enabled website. there are certain wordpress themes that do this well, like Genesis. I also use an app for my website. take a look at it on a smart phone www.pageins.com

I agree that you are better off with a mobile website. You can easily have a way to save a favorite link on your phones main screen... hence giving it the appearance of being a mobile app. The big advantage of using a mobile website, is that all smart phones can use it. In other words, any customer of yours that has a smart phone can save a link to your mobile website on their phones main screen. Additionally as a mobile website, you can control all the updates. Conversely, if you go the route of developing an app, you then have to develop a separate app for each device. In other words, you need an Apple App, and an Android app. Possibly even a blackberry app. The updates are all done through the vendor, so you have to wait for your customers to update the items. I think a mobile website gives you access to more smart phones (hence more of your customers) and it gives you more control over Updates to the info. At the end of the day, a Favorite on your phones screen looks just like an App.

From a development and implementation standpoint a responsive website is much easier to implement than a native mobile application. A responsive website automatically optimizes web pages to fit whatever device screen size is accessing the website.

Unfortunately, consumers appear to prefer native apps and not mobile optimized websites -- at least according to a survey completed by Flurry [http://www.flurry.com/bid/109749/Apps-S ... 3KKk_ldWkc] . The results indicated that consumers spent 86% of their time on mobile devices using mobile apps not mobile websites.

While creating a mobile version of your website is a reasonable first step, there are a number of smartphone features that are simply not available unless you use a native mobile app. For insurance agencies, the biggest issue might be the lack of access to the camera on the mobile device for taking pictures during a claim situation -- primary use for a consumer mobile insurance app.

But, it is more expensive and difficult to create a native application for both the iOS and android platforms. There are a couple of companies that have created mobile platforms that streamline the process and greatly reduce the cost.

I'm simply suggesting that you keep in mind consumer preferences when you are deciding how to move your agency into the mobile world.

I would be interested to hear from any agent using a template mobile app service, what has been the response/utilization from the clients?

My biggest fear is that I go through the time and expense to get one going and the clients' go "meh"...