When was the last time you thought about your financial advisor website’s homepage? If your answer was never, or rarely, then it’s time for a lesson on the importance of this cornerstone of your financial advisory firm’s online presence.
Here are 6 reasons why your financial advisor website’s homepage is important:
First impressions matter whether it’s in the physical or digital space. Just like you wouldn’t want your financial advisory firm’s office to be messy or unkempt, you don’t want your financial advisor website cluttered and difficult to navigate.
With so much competition, a less-than-desirable first impression can cause a visitor to leave and go to another firm’s website in a matter of seconds. Yes, this can happen in seconds and not minutes. Check your bounce rates in Google Analytics for more information.
Pro Tip: This first impression impacts the length of time investors stay on your website learning more about your firm.
So, if your homepage takes too long to load or if there are poorly designed navigation buttons directing visitors to your financial advisor content, you can lose these investors before you even get them through the front door of your online office.
Try this exercise: Go to your financial advisor website and stop on the homepage. Try to see it through the eyes of a first-time visitor seeking financial advisors or information Is it visually appealing? Can you find what you are looking forward to in seconds? Did the pages meet Google's requirements for loading times?
Take note of these things and anything else—good or bad—that you may notice. Now click on a link from the navigation menu. How does that page look and perform compared to the homepage? Is the branding the same? Does it look like it’s part of the same website, or is there a disconnect?
Pro Tip: Request a complimentary Paladin Scorecard Report to learn more about the efficiency of your website.
Whether it’s social media or a 3rd-party website backlink, your financial advisor website is the destination for nearly all of your financial advisory firm’s online activity and channels. Even if someone never opens a search engine and performs a search, your website is still going to remain the primary information hub.
That’s because if you’re sharing content on your social feed, the content links back to your website. What happens if someone finds your financial advisory firm’s social media profile and wants to learn more about you or your firm?
They’ll be directed to your contact information that links back to your financial advisor website. The lesson here is that no matter how many new online channels or social media platforms pop up, your financial advisor website, and subsequently the homepage, remain vital.
Pro Tip: 82% of investors will visit your website to learn more. 64% will Google search your name. This search method is popular because investors can maintain their anonymity while conducting their searches. Website appearance and content are vital to your marketing success.
One of the biggest branding mistakes is being inconsistent. Your financial advisor branding includes logos, colors, fonts, imagery, and tone. If these things aren’t consistent on your financial advisor website’s homepage and elsewhere online, you are sending mixed signals to potential leads.
For example, if you have recently updated your financial advisor branding, it takes more than simply putting the new logo on the homepage to implement the new branding fully.
This includes reading the content for tone and relevancy about the updated branding. Also, the images used on your financial advisor website’s homepage need to be consistent across all pages of the website.
Pro Tip: If Baby Boomers are your target market then the graphics on your website should be predominately Baby Boomers.
If your home page is treated as an afterthought and given less attention than other more content-rich areas of your financial advisor website, then it’s time to rethink your strategy. The key is to think of your financial advisor website’s homepage as “content” just as you do blog posts, whitepapers, and other financial advisor content on your website. Without this mindset, the homepage can go overlooked when performing audits to refresh and update content, putting it at risk of becoming “stale” in the eyes of Google.
Pro Tip: Your entire website is about the delivery of your firm’s information. Make the home page about why investors should select your firm. Many investors buy benefits versus features.
Regardless of where visitors ultimately end up on your financial advisor website, they most likely go through the homepage from top to bottom before getting there. That means your financial advisor website’s homepage needs to provide a snapshot of everything it has to offer, whether someone is looking for content on specific topics or is browsing the site to learn more about your products and services.
This can be accomplished by having well-curated navigation menus and a user-friendly layout that allows visitors to find and access information quickly and easily. This is once again where site speed and web design elements come into play.
Small details such as large image files and multi-page redirects can slow down your financial advisor website significantly.
While it’s impossible to know for sure how much Google’s algorithms value homepages when ranking your financial advisor website, it’s widely believed that the homepage is at the top of their list.
The main reason is that, like the average person visiting your financial advisor website, Google uses a website’s homepage as a guide for what can be found on your website, and more importantly, how easy it is to find that content.
With the help of a solid SEO and keyword strategy, optimizing the homepage is one more way to get Google to notice your financial advisor website.
Now that you know why your financial advisor website is so important, here are some tips for making it perform better.
Perform a site speed test on your homepage
This will tell you how long your financial advisor website’s homepage takes to load. Most of the online tools will not only tell you the exact time, but you can see how your site compares to similar websites. Google is looking for 2.8 seconds for website loading times and scores of 90 or higher for website operating efficiencies ( Desktops and Mobile).
Use Google’s Free Tools
Google offers additional free tools to help you measure and analyze your financial advisor website’s performance. These include Google Analytics, Google Search Central, and Google Keywords among others.
Make Updates Regularly
Even if the information on your homepage doesn’t change often, refreshing content can help keep things current, as well as possibly help with SEO and your search rankings. Because Google wants to deliver the most accurate and current results to a query, a homepage that hasn’t been updated for months will be less appealing to Google compared to one that gets updated frequently.