Redesign Your HOW TO - Top Advisor Marketingtopadvisormarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/Financial... · 2017-11-22 · A website's statement of purpose should go beyond the typical

H O W TORedesign Your

FINANCIAL ADVISOR WEBSITE

OVERVIEWThis eBook is a financial advisor primer on building or re-building an effective financial advisory firm website.

It covers the basics to help ensure you put your best foot forward with a list of DO's and DONT's for the following categories:

CREDIBILITY & PROFESSIONALISM:In the first 10 - 20 seconds

MESSAGE:Clarity, Conciseness and Relevance

NAVIGATION:Intuitive and Prioritized

PURPOSE DESCRIPTION:What, Why, How and for Whom

CALL TO ACTION:Easy and risk free next step

GREAT WEBSITES 101 FOR FINANCIAL FIRMS©TOP ADVISOR MARKETING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 02

CREDIBILITY & PROFESSIONALISMIn face-to-face communication, 93% of the message comes from visual and vocal cues1. The message, the words being used, only account for 7% of what is being received. The same can be said for a website.

Clients and prospects will make a decision about a company's message, about their relevance, based primarily on how they look. If a potential prospect is browsing the internet to find a finan-cial advisor, the question about "Is this someone I want to work with" will be answered almost entirely on the first impression. The content will play a tertiary role after "look and feel" and "navigation".

Research by Chao Liu and colleagues2 concludes that the time people stay on a website follows a predictable pattern called, "negative aging Weibull distribution3".

PROBABILITY OF LEAVING A WEBSITE OVER TIME

In the simplest of terms, what this chartmeans is that people don't stay on a webpage very long before moving on.

In fact, there is an incredibly large portion of visitors who leave after only 10 seconds.In the first 20 seconds half a website's visitors/prospects will have left to lookelsewhere.

A full 60% will leave in the first 30 seconds.

What does all this mean?

It means that businesses have an exceptionally small window of opportunity to make a favorable impression. Creating an enticing first page that encourages viewers to stay beyond the first 30 seconds is critical.

Businesses often turmoil for hours, and sometimes days, on things like getting that one sentence on the fourth paragraph on About Us page exactly right. This is not energy well spent -- captivating your audience with visual credibility and professionalism is.

Source: 1 A.Barbour, Louder Than Words: Nonverbal Communication 2 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2009916.2009955 - 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibull_distribution

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THAT BEGS THE QUESTION - WHAT MAKES A GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION?

Obviously, the first impression has to resonate with the ideal audience. For instance, a website selling skateboards to teenagers needs to make a "different" first impression than a website catering to financial services. But it goes deeper than that. A financial services firm with a target audience of the extremely affluent should make a different first impression than a firm whose ideal clients are in the wealth accumulation stage.

That said, there are some basic principles that should be adhered to for financial services:

DO:Ensure your site uses a color palette that is warm and inviting to your audience. That is easy to say but difficult to accomplish. There are volumes written on color theory and marketing4. A rule of thumb is - stay away from bright and brash and stick with deep full colors.

Make effective use of whitespace. Over the last 2 - 3 years, the look of financial services websites has changed dramatically. Sites that were designed over 3 years ago almost always look old and outdated by trying to cram too much content; both on the first page and on inside pages. Whitespace has become essential to look appealing - and current.

Have a prominent message that is unique. If you think a financial planner website that starts off by saying they are honest and have the client's best interests in mind is unique you would be wrong.

Make it easy (in the first 10 - 20 seconds) for your prospect to understand who you are, what you do and why you are different.

Prioritize Goals and Tactics and set simple and realistic targets5.

DON'T:Don't focus on too much Razzle Dazzle. Unless your target audience is the 20 something generation that can appreciate it.

Do not ever sacrifice presentation for content. You may have the most brilliant and most compelling 10 paragraphs about why clients should do business with you but, unless you can peek their interest early, no one is going to read it. That is a difficult challenge to overcome. A website is different than a whitepaper. Overview content needs to be concise, relevant and to the point. If you want to tuck your brilliant content away on an inside page where people can read it at their leisure you can do that -- then pay attention to your web-stats6 and see how many people spent the amount of time on that page it would take to read that brilliant content.

Don’t rely on Video or Audio as your singular spotlight. It's an investment beyond 20 seconds that people may not want to make. Also, with the growth of mobile devices, many people are not browsing from their desktops and video has some inherent bandwidth challenges. Video is good -- its role should be supportive and not primary.

Source: 4 http://www.precisionintermedia.com/color.html 5 topadvisormarketing.com/website-resources/ 6 http://www.google.com/analytics/


A COMPELLING MESSAGE

Well designed websites have messages that evoke interest and drive engagement. They need to portray a sense of belonging and inspire an urgency to fulfill a need.

Your message needs to be simple. So simple that you can quickly share it and teach others how to share it as well.

In order to be compelling, a message also needs to be unique. Unique in a way that has value to your target audience. Typical financial advisor websites will claim they are knowledgeable, friendly, trustworthy and they put the client first. That isn't unique. Prospects see that on almost every financial advisor website they visit. Spending the time understanding and defining your difference is well worth it7. Remember the point in Credibility and Professionalism described above when it comes to the amount of time you have to communicate your message. In 20 seconds or less, your prospective client needs to quickly understand how your services solve their problem.

DO:Ensure you clearly understand who you want to attract.

Tell a good story. The right story will make it much easier to convince people to do business with you8.

Ensure your message clearly projects the value you provide in a way that is meaningful to the people you want to serve.

Speak the language your target audience understands. If you are catering to the growth investor, you must speak their language. If you are catering to people just starting to build a portfolio, the words you use should be different.

Use charts sparingly to help with your message and make sure they are simple to understand.

If they can't understand it without you explaining it - don't use it.

Position your message with confidence.

DON'T:

Do not try to be everything to everyone.

Abstain from composing excessively complicated phraseology when straightforward language would suffice. (i.e. Don't use big words when little ones will do.)

Don't talk down to your audience yet don't over complicate.

Source: 7 See Tactical Branding Guide - a primer for creating and leveraging a powerful brand at topadvisormarketing.com/branding-resources/ 8 See Why a Good Brand Matters for Financial Advisors at topadvisormarketing.com/branding-resources/


INTUITIVE NAVIGATION

Navigating a website should be easy. Just because you can have 5 or 6 levels of navigation doesn't mean you should. Understanding where you need to go to find what you want should take less than a second. For example, if someone needs to click Wealth Management to see the link to subscribe to your monthly update, the navigation is not intuitive.

A well designed site should have one main navigation with descriptive titles. Some sort of secondary navigation is a good way to compartmentalize a website. A third level of navigation is confusing and frustrating.

Over the last decade, there has been a prominent trend to create “hover” or “mouse over" effects9 that highlight text in some way when the mouse hovers over an item to indicate they are links to other areas of a website. For instance, the text can change color or the background may change. The tides are changing and more and more people are surfing the web with mobile devices where there is no mouse and therefore no ability to use these effects to help with navigation.

13.2% of website visits are done through mobile devices like a tablet or cell phone10. In other words - assuming your target audience falls within the norm, 13% of them are looking at your website from a tablet or smart phone. Times are changing. DO:

Ensure your navigation uses words that describe what will be at the other end.Make your main navigation prominent and consistent throughout your site.Use the footer area for less searched for but still important links that can be found right away when needed.Ensure your navigation works "intuitively" from mobile devices.

DON'T:

Don't use sub-levels upon sub-levels of navigation. Don't use more that 3 levels of navigation (menus). For example the main menu for things like About Us and Our Services. A top navigation for things like Log-In and Contact-Us and a side menu for more refined navigation once a user is off the home page. A separate footer with additional navigation is fine as long as it is not "necessary" to use the footer to find things on the site.

Source: 9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouseover 10 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237855


PURPOSE DESCRIPTION

Although Vision and Mission fall squarely within the parameters of Purpose Description, the concept of Purpose goes well beyond that. Aside: Volumes have been written about Vision and Mission statements (see the footnote if that is of interest to you).

A website's statement of purpose should go beyond the typical outlining the motivations and direction of a business. In the simplest of terms, the website for a service business should define what is going to happen, why it will happen that way and who is going to do it. Maybe that is an oversimplification of a pretty subtle concept.

When visitors look at a financial services website in particular -- assuming they have gone beyond the 30 second exit mark -- they should be able understand whether or not the culture and processes of the company suit their needs.

A VISITOR SHOULD BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY:

• How this company does things • Why it does them and, • The proverbial "What's in it for me?"

DO:

Create a visual representation of your process in a way that demonstrates not only what you do but why you do it and the benefit to the client.

Be concise and use summaries in your statements.

Allow prospect to select more information if they are interested.

DON'T:

Don't use flashy sequential presentations that force the prospect to go through every step of your process.

Don't be verbose.

Although compliance will ensure you don't make exaggerated or unsubstantiated claims - regardless, resist the urge to oversell. Simple truths always create the best response - especially when these truths hold value to your target audience.

Source: 11 A good primer can be found here: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_90.htm


CALL TO ACTION

A Call to Action is a visual prompt that is presented to a client or prospect to make it easy for them to take that first or next step with you. Typical calls to action in financial services are things like signing-up for an event or subscribing to a newsletter.

Calls to Action attempt to gather leads that can be nurtured. Nurture campaigns are often attached to Calls to Action to help move prospects along from casual interest to contact.

DO:

Make it easy for prospects to take that first step.

Make that first step risk free.

Be interesting. For example, although a newsletter subscription list is a good source of contacts to mine in an attempt to move to the next level, the actual act of registering for a newsletter is boring. A sidebar link that says nothing but "Register for Our Newsletter" won't likely receive much attention. Ensure prospects can easily see the value that is specific to them of registering.

Be Professional. You aren't an "As Seen On TV" company. Use the right content and presentation that will resonate with your audience.

Be Consistent. Your Calls to Action are part of your brand image.

DON'T:

Don't use blinking and flashing text and images. They may draw attention but they get "old" real quick. Instead, ensure your Calls to Action are attractive, relevant and properly positioned to receive the right attention.


Documents

Redesign Your HOW TO - Top Advisor Marketingtopadvisormarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/Financial... · 2017-11-22 · A website's statement of purpose should go beyond the typical