Internet visibility is crucial to reaching new clients and your website plays a very important role. Your website is often the first impression an investor has and what they see can say a lot about you and your firm. If your website is not engaging, it can send people away immediately. If it’s not responsive, then people searching on mobile devices won’t be able to navigate your site the way it was intended.
The fact is, designing and building a quality website requires professional help. But where do you start when looking for a Digital Marketing Firm to assist you? There are many choices available for your Digital Marketing and Website Design needs. How do you choose one? We hope this article will help you answer that question.
Before you hire a website designer, it’s important to understand what to look for (and what to avoid) to ensure your end result is a captivating, user-friendly, informative website that brings clients in rather than driving them away.
Read on for 5 tips for hiring the best financial advisor website designer:
1) Make Sure They Understand Financial Advisors
Your website is an extension of your financial advisory firm. And your firm is an extension of you. In other words, your website is an extension of your financial advisor branding. While it’s not necessary to hire a website designer who only works with financial advisors, it’s recommended that you work with someone who knows the special needs of financial advisors.
The Digital Marketing Firm you hire should have a grasp on the specific regulatory requirements that financial advisors have, as well as the general look and feel of lead producing financial advisor websites. A successful Digital Marketing Firm that specializes in working with Financial Advisors will be able to share what the best practices of the best performing websites are.
The website designer you choose should take the time to understand the culture of your specific firm and the personalities and priorities of those who work there. This may be less of a tangible idea and more of a feeling that someone can get when working with you or even stepping into your offices. If a website designer isn’t able to grasp this fairly quickly, they’re probably not a good fit for you.
2) Ask for Referrals
When searching for potential website designers, they may provide you with references from previous or current clients. Treat these references just as you would a reference for any prospective employee, because you are “hiring” this firm to work on your website, and therefore will be acting on your firm’s behalf.
Don’t assume all references will be glowing simply because they were supplied by the Digital Marketing Agency. Follow up and make contact with those references to find out how their overall experience was. In order to make accurate and fair comparisons, have a list of questions prepared and ask those same questions to each reference for each potential website designer.
In addition to asking your prospective Digital Marketing Firm for references, you can also reach out to the financial advisory community and see which firms your colleagues are using and if they are happy with the results.
3) Flexibility and Adaptability are Key
As you search for the right Digital Marketing Firm to assist with your new website, look for a firm that is adapting and changing with the current digital marketing trends. Inbound Marketing, and Digital Marketing are ever evolving and you want a website design that is Search Engine Optimized.
The firm you hire should be producing up to date, optimized websites. If not, you may find yourself stuck with a designer who isn’t willing to evolve with the industry and may potentially overlook important details when working on your website.
4) Ask Questions
It may have taken you a while to interview and ultimately decide on hiring a Digital Marketing Firm to design your new financial advisor website. Now that you have, you need to make sure you are all on the same page. What is their service level agreement with you? What is the total cost of the new website? How long will it take? Will you have to sign a contract?
Working with your website designer is a collaborative process. You should be asking questions and they should be asking questions. The design and content of your new website may go through several iterations before you are completely happy.
5) Regularly Assess Progress
It is important to regularly assess the progress made throughout the entire website design project. Depending on the scope and timeline of the website build, you may want to have weekly, bi-weekly or monthly standing progress calls where all parties can discuss the status of the project, any outstanding or late items, or any roadblocks preventing the work from being done.
This is a great way to make sure the website designer is on task, and also a way to keep everything from going into back and forth emails where details are likely to be missed. This is also a great way to prevent project bottlenecks when there could possibly be an easy solution that gets the project moving again.
These progress checks are also a great way to build the relationship between yourself and the Digital Marketing Firm you have hired. There may be other services your firm can benefit from once you have your new website in place. Such as: blogging, social media, landing pages and CTA’s.
who should you hire?
The best Digital Marketing Firm is the one that can create a website that increases your Internet visibility, website traffic, and website conversions. Paladin Digital Marketing has been working exclusively with financial advisors and RIA’s for over 15 years. Contact us today to get started on your new website for tomorrow!
