These days, having an effective and attractive website is just as important as having easily identifiable business cards. Your website is your digital business card that not only represents your firm and services, but it can be the very thing that converts a lead into a client. For this reason, every firm needs a website. Not just any website, a winning one too!
So, as a financial advisor, how do you build a website that converts? Your expertise may be with the numbers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t exercise your creative muscles too. Thankfully, with the right guidance, this task won’t be as complicated as compiling your latest compliance report. In this article, we will give you our greatest tips to help you create a webpage that’s interesting, engaging, and that puts you in front of your ideal audience.
The Importance of Having a Strong Webpage:
For some, having a website may seem as one of those things you just have to do. Being in the digital age, this couldn’t be more true. However, having a website for the sake of having one won’t set you apart from your competitors or help grow your client base.
A few firms take the time to set up a strong online presence. When done correctly, this strategy can act as a window into your business operations and services. Traditional marketing efforts simply do not offer the same results.
Think of it this way, people are no longer flipping through directories to find their local financial firm. Instead, they are turning to search engines to do the work for them. With a strong website, you can snag a top spot on Google and win over a new client. Without one, you are giving up a huge portion of the market.
One of the greatest benefits that come with hosting a website is that it can do most of your client acquisition work for you. You can set up pages detailing what your firm does, who works for you, and where they can find helpful content that nurtures your visitors along your sales funnel. Starting to see the importance now?
5 Key Considerations to Create Your Firm’s Website:
The idea of putting together a homepage for your business can be intimidating, especially if you don’t know where to start. Here you will find everything you need to know to take your site from 0 to 100 in a few simple steps.
Get the Basics Right
Like with any project, perfecting the fundamentals and creating a strong base is essential. With your website, you want to ensure that your basics are solid before going on to trickier steps. The reason for this is that if your base fails, all your hard efforts may not pay off in the long run.
For starters, get off the mark by registering your domain. You will want to make sure that this is in line with your business name and is easily searchable. For instance, if your URL is separated with lots of hyphens or full-stops, this may confuse website visitors. Furthermore, if your URL doesn’t match your brand name, this can cause unnecessary confusion.
Next, settle on a professional theme that suits your brand image (more on this later), and doesn’t affect your site’s SEO or performance. A simple and sleek design is often more effective than one with fancy bells and whistles. You should also keep in mind who will be creating the site for you. If you’re DIY-ing it, the theme should match your level of expertise.
Lastly, you will want to ensure that your site is properly protected. For financial firms, this point is particularly important due to the fact that you’re dealing with sensitive information and you want to portray your service as trustworthy from the get-go.
Determine the Visuals
While it can be easy to get caught up with putting as many images or logos on your site, it’s vital that these match your brand’s imagery. The visual design of your site should be professional and reflect how you operate as a firm.
You will need to confirm:
- Color palette
- Logo
- Brand personality
- Font pairings
Remember this needs to be consistent throughout. When in doubt, you can split test pages with various visuals to see what generates the lowest bounce rates and highest click rates.
Build the Necessary Pages
As we’ve already mentioned, your webpage can act as your firm’s digital business card. This means that they will need to have access to all of the necessary information needed to make a decision. Pages such as “About Us”, “Services”, “Contact Us”, and “Meet the Team” need to be detailed.
You can take this a step further by incorporating marketing content into your site and by listing your firm’s expertise. In terms of marketing, you can look at creating a blog as well as a testimonial page.
Focus on SEO
If you really want to get your site noticed, you have to focus on SEO. SEO has the power to get your content ranking on google and make it easily searchable. Search engine optimization is made up of keyword research, internal linking, and key page structures that make it easier for search engines to discover your site. You may want to turn to professionals who can create blog content and optimize your webpage SEO for you as it can be complicated and time-consuming.
Make it Mobile-Friendly
Last, but not least, you have to build your website with mobile in mind. According to Quora Creative, mobile devices account for 53% of paid-search clicks. In addition to this, 88% of consumers, searching for a local business using mobile devices, end up calling or visiting the business. Failing to optimize for mobile can jeopardize your hard work and client list.
Final Thoughts
Creating a website doesn’t have to be a mammoth undertaking, but it does need to be constructive. By simply focusing on getting the basics right, having strong branding and visuals, and optimizing for SEO, then you will soon see success. Bear in mind, it’s far more effective to have a functional website than one that is problematic.