There are a couple of important metrics that make the answer more complicated than it might appear.
First, is the average amount of time that investors spend on financial advisor websites. We have spent a lot of time analyzing Google Analytics data and the average time on site appears to be two to three minutes. In fact, the last study showed two minutes and thirty-three seconds. Because investors spend so little time on financial advisor websites, it is imperative they find the information they are seeking quickly and easily.
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Second, the surveys also showed investors will not spend additional time searching for information. This means financial advisor websites must have intuitive navigation so they can find the information they are seeking quickly and easily. Investors will exit websites before they will search for information. Time on site and bounce rates will confirm this for financial advisors.
Competitive Websites
Most investors do not have an objective method for evaluating the quality of financial advisor websites. Their judgments are more subjective when they compare advisor websites to each other. They interact with the websites they like the most. This means the sites that convert the best (visitors to contacts) create the best first impressions and deliver the right information in an intuitive format.
Transparency
If investors were more objective in their selection process’ they might select the financial advisors that own websites that practice the most amount of transparency. Most investors will not know how to select the best advisors based on the content on their websites. However, they will notice if one financial advisor website describes how a firm is compensated and another does not.
If advisor compensation is an important criterion, then investors will be more inclined to contact advisors who practice this form of transparency.
For example, advisors can have three strategies for handling compensation on their websites:
- Provide a complete description with a fee schedule
- Ignore the topic completely
- Describe how they paid, but not how much
Top Five Categories
There are five types of information that should be included on every financial advisor website:
- About Us
- Our Team
- What We Do
- Who We Serve
- Why Select Us
Keep in mind, this is important information, but the information still has to be competitive with the other sites that are being viewed by investors.
Knowing the right categories of information is step one. The real work is step two, which is adding the right content to each page.
About Us
It is important to describe the firm’s background:
- How it got started
- Quotes from the founder(s)
- Why the founders’ started the firm
Our Team
An investor may already have the name of a firm professional and want to learn more about them. Their online bios should include:
- Credentials: Experience, education, certifications, licensing
- Ethics: Fiduciary, compliance record
- Personal: Years in community, family, memberships
- Role: Types of advice and services
If affiliated professionals are listed on the page, be sure to note they are affiliated and not employees of the firm.
What if there is no team? Then it becomes the Our Founder page.
What We Do
This is where it gets a little dicey. Advisors should use very little jargon when they describe their services. They should use language that is understood by the vast majority of their websites’ visitors. If it is a critical word be sure to provide an explanation. Advisors do not want to alienate visitors on their websites. Think of all the work that was put into getting them to the advisors’ websites.
Financial advisor websites need clean, simple descriptions of the services that they provide to their firms’ clients.
Some advisors portray themselves as specialists who provide a limited number of services. Most advisors describe the services that are delivered by the professionals on the Our Team Page.
Most advisors provide planning and investment services. There are several types of each service that should be listed on each page. For example, planning could be: Financial, Retirement, Estate, College, and Charitable.
Some advisors also sell investment and insurance products.
Some advisors also provide tax and legal advice.
Who We Serve
This is another somewhat dicey topic. We know investors are seeking professionals who have experience working with clients like themselves. For example, business owners will seek financial advisors who specialize in working with business owners. Retirees seek advisors who specialize in working with retirees.
It pays to describe three to five types of clients that have similar characteristics:
- Business Owners
- Executives
- Professionals
- Pre-retirees
- Retirees
Broad categories, like professionals, should be broken down into categories, for example: Doctors, attorneys, engineers, etc.
Why Select Us
This could arguably be the most important page on the website. It gives investors the top five reasons why they should select a particular firm. In other words, this is the page where financial advisors differentiate themselves.
For example, small firms are represented as boutiques. Firms may be independent because they are not owned by banks or insurance companies. RIAs and IARs are financial fiduciaries when they provide advice for a fee.
It will take a certain amount of creativity to provide differentiating features that benefit investors. More unique characteristics are even better.
It is not enough to say a fee-only firm is a financial fiduciary. It pays to describe how this feature benefits investors.
Free Offers
Some website visitors are seeking information about financial advisors. They will use this information to determine who they interview as part of their selection processes.
Other visitors are seeking financial information. If the advisor becomes the source of the information, the advisor can convert a need for information into a contact for their CRM system. Some of a firm’s best prospects will be investors who initiate contact because they need information. Very often this is a precursor to their need for a financial advisor.
The best free offers are gated eBooks that address financial pain points that are experienced by an advisor’s ideal types of clients. Gated requires registration to download the eBook.
Some free offers are not very productive: Free consultations, plan reviews, and portfolio reviews. For example, investors will be reluctant to divulge financial information to advisors they barely know.
Distractions
Last, but certainly least, financial advisors may have to fight a predisposition to load their websites up with white papers, calculators, and other content that distracts visitors from learning more about their firms.
Google is the one that coined the word “distractions” to describe a lot of extraneous content that distracts from the real mission of a website. Deliver the information investors are seeking and convert visitors into qualified leads and contacts.
