An optimized and personalized website is the hub of any successful digital marketing campaign, so learning how to build a financial website is a skill every advisor should learn. Websites are great for bringing in prospective clients and giving them a taste of what you offer as an advisor. It’s also a good idea to look for a website builder for financial services, like FMG. Here’s how to create a financial website that will help you build your AUM.
Create a Personalized Domain Name
Your domain name is essentially your advisory’s identity to your audience. The best domain name should be personalized to help improve search engine rankings, click-through rates, lead generation, and conversions.
Part art and part science, choosing the right domain name requires considerable thought. Once you’ve invested in an online presence, you don’t want to be stuck with a domain name that doesn’t drive traffic. To learn more about how to pick the perfect domain name for your advisory, check out this handy guide.
Choose a Compliance-Friendly Host with Advanced CMS
Once you learn how to build a financial website, there are many hosting platforms for websites, but you need one that is compliance-friendly, reliable, and easy to manage. Use these criteria and research hosting platforms to find the best fit for your online presence.
One of the most critical factors for making the right choice is a host’s content management system (CMS). Your advisory will routinely create and manage content, so it’s essential to make the process as easy as possible. From SEO elements to video to the user experience, hosting your website on a compliance-friendly platform that includes comprehensive content management is a must.
Know Your Niche, and Use It
Financial planning is an industry that offers a broad assortment of services and products, and competition in the industry is fierce. If you want to stand out from your competitors, find your niche. While your advisory can and should provide specific financial services when needed, specializing in a particular area will make lead generation and conversion more manageable.
Financially savvy prospects don’t want just another advisor — they want a professional who understands their unique needs and financial goals. Whether it’s family planning, portfolio building for millennials, or retirement strategies for medical professionals. Niche financial services will attract a targeted audience that is primed to convert.
Invest in Quality Content Creation
Content creation is essential for any advisor site, without content the site would be empty and people wouldn’t visit. Making it crucial for advisors to create quality content that can attract visitors and keep them invested. Things such as blogs, videos, eBooks, and more. All of these work together to improve your site and make it a place worth visiting. From there, site visitors explore more and learn about your advisory, the team you employ, and the best ways to reach you. Content is all about drawing them in and from there, you convert them into prospects and clients; people who are interested in you as their advisor.
The power of video marketing on your website and other digital platforms is undeniable. You can effectively use stock video on your website, but if you want to connect with your audience, you need to create unique video content. Consider two of the most striking statistics for video marketing:
While FMG can provide professional, compliant, and engaging video content, it’s still important for advisors to invest in creating their own personalized videos. You don’t have to be a professional videographer to pull it off, either. When you create videos that let your audience get to know you and your advisory, you build strong connections with your brand.
Familiarize Yourself with Homepage Best Practices
Your homepage is where every site visitor gets their first impression of your website. Whether it’s good or bad depends on many factors—things such as design, loading time, page layout, and more. Remember that first impressions are just as important online as they are in person, maybe even more so. If someone visits your website and doesn’t like how long it takes to load or how it looks, they can just click out of the page. That’s why it’s important to follow these best homepage practices:
Use the 5-Second Rule
The 5-second rule is a basic but incredibly important aspect of any website, especially for financial advisors. It simply tests whether or not a visitor can figure out your content, your product, or what your website is about within 5 seconds. If they can, you pass the test, if they can’t then you need to redesign your site until it passes. The 5-second rule is a test of first impressions. If you pass the test, your site tends to make a good first impression which is essential to converting visitors to clients.
Ensure Easy Navigation
Site navigation is another key aspect of any website. If it’s hard for a visitor to navigate the site from the homepage, then how will they find important information about your services or you? Be sure to have a navigational tab or bar that allows users to quickly find the pages they are looking for. Whether that’s the services page, the team page, or a contact page. The better the navigation, the better the experience of the visitor.
Make Sure the Page is Aesthetically Pleasing
Functionality is important, but if the homepage isn’t pleasing to the eye, you can be sure a site visitor won’t stay very long. Most advisors tend to use their colors to help create the aesthetic of their website. Find what colors work best for you and use them to design a website that visitors are happy to look at.
Stand out from Competitors
Standing out is what most advisors shoot for since they are competing amongst themselves for their audience. This goes double when it comes to a homepage since it’s the first thing a visitor sees. Having a homepage that stands out makes it more likely for guests to stay and explore your website, learning more about you and your business. From there, you can use that to help you stand out from the competition by sharing interests and tidbits about your company and your team. The more you stand out, the more attention you’re likely to garner.
Maximize Optimization With SEO
Learning how to create a financial website without understanding SEO is like building a boat without understanding what makes it float. Keywords, internal and external links, fresh content, and other ingredients make sure your marketing efforts are optimized.
FMG can help you build the SEO foundation necessary to drive more traffic, enhance your social media presence, and stay ahead of your competition. Once your online presence is optimized, we have plenty of tools to help you analyze and fine-tune your SEO to keep your advisory in the limelight.
Create a Gorgeous, Traffic-Driving Website
