No matter how many digital marketing tools become available for financial advisors, it all comes down to a solid platform – productive financial advisor websites. Without it, digital marketing efforts like content marketing, social media, and local SEO will be for naught because the financial advisors’ websites are not converting visitors into leads.
If you’re not familiar with HubSpot, it is a state-of-the-art inbound marketing platform that features tools and programs that take digital marketing for financial advisors to the next level. In fact, it can help any digital marketer improve online results, ranging from relatively small financial advisor practices to multi-billion dollar AUM businesses.
One of the tools on the HubSpot website is a free measurement and analysis tool called the HubSpot Website Grader. Note: Over the years, this tool has also been known as the HubSpot Marketing Grader and HubSpot Blog Grader. As of 2021, it is known as the HubSpot Website Grader.
While Google Analytics will tell you virtually everything you could ever want to know about your website’s performance, HubSpot’s Website Grader analyzes your financial advisor website data from a marketing perspective and gives your website an objective grade, ranging from 0 – 100%.
From there, you have the ability to subscribe to HubSpot and utilize the platform to make improvements on the areas that were deemed weaknesses by this free HubSpot tool.
Following is additional information about the 4 main website elements that HubSpot’s Website Grader tool uses to assess and grade your financial advisor website.
Consider the following about your overall website grade. This score considers the more behind the scenes aspects of your financial advisor website, which includes:
When it comes to a website’s page size – less is often more. Even if your financial advisor website looks neat and organized, that might not be what’s happening behind the scenes. Many websites are plagued by unnecessary code, scripts, and general “clutter” that isn’t needed and weighs down the performance of their websites.
The cause can be an inexperienced web designer who duplicates existing pages to make new ones – thereby carrying the inefficiencies to yet another page. Pro Tip: Consider creating new web pages that are free of unnecessary code and clutter when developing new pages for financial advisor websites.
This is directly affected by the page size – the lighter the page size the quicker the load time. Image sizes (detailed below) also affect how fast a page loads. A fast page speed is crucial for a positive user experience. If a visitor is waiting for your page to load, there’s a good chance they’ll move on and never come back.
Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding when it comes to website images is how they compare to photos we print and display in our homes and offices. A printed photo requires a high resolution to avoid being blurry and pixelated.
However, an online image requires a much lower resolution and should be formatted that way before being added to financial advisor websites. That’s because the higher the resolution, the larger the file. When a website has too many large files, it slows down the entire page loading process.
While SEO is comprised of many elements, HubSpot’s Website Grader grades a financial advisor website’s SEO on the following factors:
Simply put, search engines need a website’s “permission” to index pages of that site. Indexing is a necessary part of having your website appear in search results, so a low score here means big trouble for SEO strategies and results.
The proper use of meta descriptions tells search engines and visitors alike what your financial advisor website is all about. Without them, you run the risk of getting a less than favorable position on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and/or a low click rate in search results overall. Consider meta descriptions as free real estate – it’s a shame not to use it!
Before visitors click on a link, they can “preview” the page they will be sent to through the use of descriptive link text. If used properly, this can help reduce bounce rates and increase a visitor’s time on pages and financial advisor websites.
When building a website, it’s essential to consider all of the ways a user may interact with that site. Having a mobile responsive website means that no matter the device (desktop, mobile phone, tablet, etc.), the user will have a good experience and not lose functionality due to poorly designed screens.
As a major aesthetic element of any website, font is extremely important when considering mobile functionality. Too small, and the user can’t read it. Too large and it takes over the whole device. Finding the right balance is key, so using industry standards and best practices will help assure a good score in this category.
An important visual, as well as a functional element of a mobile-friendly website, is allowing appropriate space for CTAs such as contact buttons and links. On a mobile phone, the space is limited, and it can be frustrating for a user to not be able to click on the appropriate action simply because the buttons are overlapping or too small to tap.
The biggest takeaway from this category is the use of HTTPS over HTTP. Without getting overly technical, HubSpot is grading your website based on whether or not there is the extra layer of security added by using HTTPS vs. HTTP. “S” means the site is secure.
This requires some work on behalf of the website owner to acquire and install a security certificate that adds a layer of encryption to make your website safer from hackers and viruses/malware. If HubSpot doesn’t see HTTPS, then a website’s grade for security will be low.
Conversely, improving the security grade is as easy as installing the right elements on your financial advisor website. Also, while not explicitly stated by Google, having a secure website is a major factor when the financial advisor’s goal is improved visibility in a major search engine.
Don’t be discouraged if your financial advisor website receives a low grade from the HubSpot Website Grader service. One of the best aspects of digital marketing is how quickly you can see improvements online when putting the right tools in place for your digital marketing strategy. Additionally, many digital marketing agencies specialize in using HubSpot tools to help financial advisors optimize the quality of their websites and their overall digital marketing results.