17 Things A Great Financial Advisor’s Website Should Have

In our digital age, increasingly, people are going online for their financial needs. In the highly competitive financial industry, for a financial advisor to elevate themselves above the competition, they must consider critical elements such as financial advisor website design. Additionally, for your financial advisor business to succeed and achieve maximum growth in the marketplace, you must think about things like mobile marketing services and local SEO. In this article, financial industry marketing experts discuss 17 things a great financial advisor’s website should have.

Find Your Niche, Insights Page, News Page, Meeting Scheduling Tool

“The 4 most important things that make a financial advisors website great:

Good story/niche – Differentiating your story from other financial advisors can be challenging. It’s important to ensure that you have a good story to tell, but that’s not an easy task. Think about what makes you different? Do you solve specific problems? Do you have a specific philosophy? Do you have a specific type of ideal client? Once you change your story from ‘We help everyone retire comfortably’ to ‘We help women senior executives at a local business with their income challenges’ you can then develop that into strong content that will tell your story in different ways including on your website.

Insights Page – Many financial advisors build their websites, but fail to update it with their timely market and personal finance insight. Advisors should create timely content in the form of articles and videos regularly to share their insight with clients and prospects. The content should answer the questions of clients and prospects. Share your insight about how to select a financial advisor in your home town, how to think through a financial plan, how to get more income out of your portfolio, how to talk about money with your children, among other things. This insight will help clients and prospects learn more about you. It will also help you be found on Google when investors are searching for information.

News Page – There is nothing more valuable than news coverage for a financial advisor. When you are featured in a local or national news publication, you become an expert. The article helps you tell your story to thousands of people and gives you credibility that you can repurpose in your other sales and marketing efforts. Use on your website, in your email marketing, social media, and post to your conference room wall.

Meeting Scheduling Tool – If you are still scheduling meetings with email back and forth, you are wasting time and not impressing your prospect. Instead, use a scheduling tool that connects to your calendar. When a prospect clicks on your Scheduling link from your website, he can easily schedule an open time (free consultation) that also works for him. Confirmations will be automatically sent.”

Dan Sondhelm, CEO, Sondhelm Partners

Calendar Link, Active Blog Page, Homepage With Clear USP, and Video

“An excellent financial advisor’s website should have:

A calendar link – You need to make it as simple as possible for leads to book an appointment with you, and it easily shows them when you are available and it also helps you keep your calendar organized and up-to-date. In fact, in a 2019 survey about the effectiveness of digital marketing for financial advisors, found that advisors who get 6-10 or 11+ clients per year had a calendar link right on their website. A popular meeting scheduler that many of the advisors we work with use is Calendly.

An active blog page – Life Strategy Financial has an amazing blog. Everything about this advisor’s blog is great – their cadence is great and they’re optimizing their blog posts using best practices like header tags, links, and meta descriptions for a boost in SEO.

Killer homepage with clear USP – Most site visitors form an opinion about the credibility of a website in just 0.05 seconds, so your homepage and more specifically the area above the fold is incredibly important. An advisor’s homepage should make a good first impression. We’ve found that about 50% of advisors who include in “as seen on” section on the homepage generate 8-10 or 11+ clients per year. Adding this is a great way to build trust and make a good first impression and is a good alternative to using testimonials, which North American advisors are unable to use in their marketing efforts according to rules and regulations put forth by the SEC.

Video – Video is huge in 2020 and has grown even more rampant in the age of COVID-19 and social distancing. The average user spends 88% more time on a website that has video. Veritas Wealth Management uses not only a video background as their homepage hero which is immediately captivating to any visitor but they include personal videos on their homepage as well. This is a really nice touch to give visitors a chance to virtually meet their advisor, Troy, to get to know him personally and professionally in a visual and engaging way rather than having a resume or long-drawn-out bio.”

Samantha Russell, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Twenty Over Ten

Break Content Into Engagement And Conversion

“I’d break the content into 2 buckets – engagement, and conversion. For conversion, prospects want to see who they are dealing with (people and reviews) and what services are offered.

On the engagement side, advisors need to offer reasons for prospects to visit, these include content, lead forms, and ebooks, These help with discovery, SEO optimization, and lead generation.”

Trey Robinson, Partner, Story Amplify

Listing Of Financial Advisor Fees

“In 2020, every advisor website should have a listing of their fees. For too long there has been a lack of transparency in the financial world. Customers should know ahead of time what they are going to be charged and how the advisor gets paid.”

Adam Beaty, Certified Financial Planner, Bullogic Wealth Management

Personal Philosophy, Services Offered, Client Scenarios, About Page, FAQs, Contact Page, and Blog

“As a client, I offered to write the website copy for my own financial planner as he didn’t have one.

When we sought a financial planner, we needed to find someone willing to understand and work with us on our rather unconventional goals and minimalist lifestyle. We were not wealthy and didn’t own a home – but thanks to his services, my husband and I were able to plan and take a five-year sailing trip halfway around the world.

I had my own ideas on what information I believed a financial planner should offer, reinforced by what others asked when I recommended my financial planner. I also researched other financial planner sites with the intent of keeping the best and ditching the rest.

My list:

1) Philosophy: What is my planner’s perspective on how they view and do business? What is it based on? What makes my financial planner’s services different?

2) Services: What is offered?

3) Client scenarios: Who are some typical clients? What was their problem, challenge, or goal? How did my financial planner solve it?

4) Process: How does the process work? Who does what, when?

5) Fee/compensation structure: What can I as a client expect to pay, and what is it based on? Is there any inherent commission-based potential for conflict of interest?

6) About (founder, staff): How did they get into financial planning? How did they develop their competence? What kind of person are they-why should I trust them?

7) FAQs: On financial terms. Financial term definitions.

8) Contact Page: Information, phone number, email, address. Ability to book an appointment linked to an availability calendar

9) Account Access: the ability for clients to link to their accounts from the website 

10) Blog: ongoing observations about the market, planning, advice, lessons learned, success stories, important related financial issues

In addition to the actual content, the tone should be simple, straightforward, and friendly, written from the perspective of what’s in it for me, the client, or prospective client. Bottom line: The website should communicate to me whether my financial planner’s service and philosophy were a fit with my needs and goals, with ample experience to develop competency, could explain financial issues in easy-to-understand terms and as a human being, came across as someone I could trust with my money. Of course, the devil’s in the details.”

Dana Greyson, Freelance Writer, Editor & Marketing Coach

Having an excellent online presence is key to the success of any financial advisor business. To attract and engage potential clients, financial advisors must have exceptional web design services in place for their company. Ultimately, having a professional, user-friendly, search engine optimized website will help you increase your client base to thrive in 2020.