Website Fixer-Upper Session Two

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us today. We are thrilled to be back with another, webinar session slash workshop because it’s really interactive. I don’t wanna just call it a webinar, All about websites. So we’re gonna give everybody just, a minute or so to sign on, and, then we will be getting started.

If you are just joining, I would love to know, if you wouldn’t mind sharing maybe in the chat, what would you most like to learn today about your how to take a look at your own website and determine, you know, whether it’s doing a good job.

Is there something in particular you would love help with, whether it’s the messaging, whether it’s the photos you’re using, whether you’d maybe you’re like, how do I get more people to, schedule a time on my calendar or give up their email for my guide or my, you know, ebook. Let us know in the chat what you really want us to focus the most time on because this is all for you, and we are in charge. We can do whatever we want. We can spend more time on certain things. So let us know in the chat what would be best, for us to maybe spend the most time with.

And, while we’re letting everybody sign in, just a couple housekeeping items. Today’s session will be recorded because we know that’s the number one thing everyone will ask, and you’re all going to get, the recording. So you do not need to worry about if you have to step away or anything like that.

Alright.

I can, some good things in the chat here.

Yeah. There’s definitely three themes, getting people to the site, converting them, emails, and, you know, capturing emails, getting leads, and messaging.

Okay. Got it. I will say we are not focusing today on getting traffic there.

That is, you know, really what happens before they get to the website, and that involves a lot of other elements.

Maybe that’s a good you know, for our next website session that we do, Susan. But today, we’re really gonna be focused on once someone is there, what do we do? Because ninety seven percent of all website visitors do not convert. So a lot of times, it’s not that you even need more traffic. It’s just that you have a leaky hole there, and we need to fill it. Yes. So we will we’ll make sure we focus on the other two.

And I think, you know, another question that’s come in that just makes me think about a way to position some of your advice.

The question was, you’re amazing, Sam, but how do I know that FMG is gonna be able to help me provide the content that differentiate differentiates me? And I think we do wanna maybe clarify and this this relates to the Bob Barriss webinar I did last week, which is what a vendor can do and and also what really is something that only you can do. And and this is what we’re gonna try to help you with.

Yes.

Such a good question, and we will make sure we, differentiate that. And I’ve even I see another person had a question about if I have somebody else, you know, through my broker dealer or through a third party marketing group that I’m already using, how much of this is gonna pertain to me? A lot of it because we’re still going to give you really good takeaways that you could go to them and say, hey.

Let’s take a look at these things that I learned. So let me go ahead and share my screen and get get us going here. Susan, can you see the slides?

I’m sorry. It went through.

I was on mute. Yes. I can see it.

Okay. Great. Alright, everybody. So, for those of you that are just joining us, you’re in the right place if you’re here to join the website fixer upper webinar. And this is brought to you by FMG, an award winning marketing suite that has been built just for you, financial advisers.

As you can see here, we have a lot of awards we’ve won over the last few years.

Susan and I are not gonna go through all of them today, but we do want you to know that it really means a lot to us to provide the best possible platform and service to the advisers using it. And so if you have any feedback for us, we always love to hear it. But we are always staying on top of trends when it comes to marketing and then thinking about how can we implement them to make our product and service even better for you. If you’ve, if I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you before, I’m Samantha Russell, the chief evangelist here at FMG. I love to connect with everybody offline as well. So there is my, Twitter and LinkedIn and email.

And that’s just a picture just a month or so ago, couple weeks ago, I guess, of me and my three little kids on Easter Sunday.

I have been with FMG over three years now, which is hard to believe. And, really, my job entails staying on the forefront of what is happening when it comes to marketing and actually working for advisers to grow and then working with our team here at FMG to implement those, on behalf of advisers. And with me, I’m so lucky today, I have Susan. Susan, please introduce yourself.

I’m lucky today. I am excited. We haven’t I don’t I can’t remember the last time we’ve done a webinar. I love I I I tell my husband.

I’m like, oh my gosh. I have a webinar with Sam. It’s a Sam and Susan show. I love it.

These are the ones I enjoy the most, and I am the lucky one to get to work with you. So I also would love to, connect with everybody, and thank you so much for joining.

Awesome.

And just because you came and and made time today, you all are going to get this website success checklist sent to you in a follow-up as well. So, again, if you have somebody else on your team who’s working on your website, this would be a great thing to send to them, and make sure that you’re going through all of these areas.

Alright. So if I were to ask you what do you think the most visited page of your website is, you would probably guess that number one is the home page. Right? That’s where most people visit. So that is what you really want to always start with when you’re thinking about that first impression that your website is making. And so to make this a little bit more fun today, and, actually, let us know in the chat. Did any of you or any of you that are here, were you here for the last website fixer up where we did in February?

Let us know. I’d love to know if we have any repeat viewers.

But we did this exercise. We’re gonna do it again because it’s really good. The more you do it, the better you get at it, and it’s called the five second test. Susan, I’m I’m I can’t see the chatter. People anybody repeat?

Yes, no. Yes, no. Kind of I’d say fifty fifty.

Okay. A little more on the no. So before you’re thinking about sending more traffic to your website, right, we talked about that that leaky hole. We wanna ask ourselves, does my website pass the five second test?

So what the five second test is, it is a, you know, a little test we we use in marketing user experience that helps us to determine, is our website making the first impression that we want, or are people gonna click away? Because people really, within five seconds, make a decision. Is this the right site for me? Do I keep exploring, or do I click off?

Right? So it’s crucial to make a great first impression.

So the way the five second test works is you’re gonna get out, you know, your your laptop, your phone, depending, and you’re gonna ask somebody. This could be maybe an acquaintance, somebody, that you are always working next to in a coffee shop, somebody in the same building that your office is in, but somebody who doesn’t really know what you do. They can know you work in finance, but they don’t know anything else. And you’re gonna open up your page, and you’re gonna show it to them, count to five, and then close it.

And then you say, just wanna ask you a few questions. And you’re gonna ask them, you know, what do you remember seeing? What was the name of the company? What is this page about?

Who does this service or this company, serve? Who benefits from their service? And then do you know what you should do next after visiting that page? And you wanna write down what they say.

Optimally, you wanna do this about ten times, and then you wanna look and see. If about eighty percent of people pretty much know Samantha Russell is a marketer, She works specifically with financial advisors, and she can help them with websites, social media, email, and, you know, specifically, she works with FMG. Then you did a good job. But if it’s like, well, I think Samantha’s in marketing.

Not really sure who she serves. Right? There’s a lot of question marks. We know we have a lot more work to do to get more specific.

Okay. Does that make sense for everybody? Everybody on the same page. So what I I’m gonna give you a couple other tips about making these audits.

And then together as a team, we’re all gonna do them a couple together for some of the sites that you all have been so gracious to submit. And I think it’s just a great way for us all to identify together what could change. So once you’ve done that five second test, you wanna hone in on the copy and the imagery. Because remember, if you look at this page or any website, you know, if we go back to this one, the first thing you notice typically is the image.

So in this one, you know, the construction in the background. In this one, these two gentlemen. The image is what we even subconsciously process first, and then we read the copy. So the copy and the image need to work together to convey that message of whatever it is you’re you’re trying to say, and then the UX of what do you want someone to do next.

UX stands for, by the way, user experience. Do we want someone to schedule a call or click a learn more button? What do we want them to do?

And when it comes to the copy, we really wanna be writing the way people talk. My tip is to think, could, you know, a kid in your house who’s fourteen or fifteen understand what it is that you wrote? And if they can, then you’re on the right track because, you know, people are busy. They’re coming to your website.

They’re not in the mindset of you as the financial adviser. They are the consumer that is in a completely different industry. So we wanna keep it really, really easy and focused. And I like to use you statements rather than we or I.

Another thing we’re gonna do as we look through these websites is look and see how much of the language is written as our firm has been around since nineteen seventy five, or we have a combined thirty five years of experience, or we do this, or we do that, versus you have a lot going on with your finances and you need somebody to help you understand the full picture, or you worry about putting your kids through college and helping your, you know, parents as they’re living longer. Right? Those you statements. The more you statements we can do, the better.

Yes.

Feel like that’s a really easy way to audit your website too.

And as we look at websites, I would say more often than not. So if it this is the case, it’s nothing to be, you know, like, oh my gosh. I can’t believe I did this. I’d say the vast majority, really, definitely over fifty percent of websites that we look at are are we statements because you’re talking about what you do, and that’s natural. But the ones that resonate the best with your visitors are the ones that relate to them.

So it’s And that’s why I think having it in a way, that’s question based, which I’ll just skip to forward to this one real quick.

Our services help you answer the following questions.

Right? What questions do people come to you having?

Use those right on the home page of your website website to help people self qualify because that is a really easy way to change it and make it all about them. But this is the last thing I wanna do, and then we’re gonna go in and do this five second test together, which is making sure that on your home page, somebody would be able to know within five seconds if you help someone just like them. And a lot of you might say, well, Sam, Susan, we just don’t have that specific of a niche. Right? We don’t just serve positions, or we don’t just serve women going through divorce. Like, we’ve got a lot of different people.

You can still make people feel seen by just getting more specific. So let’s compare these two statements. Right? We help businesses, families, and individuals plan, set, and achieve financial goals.

That’s everyone. Nobody feels like reading that statement, oh, Samantha and Susan work with people just like me. But let’s juxtapose that to the statement on the right with retirement planning for individuals fifty and over. That’s a lot of the population. Right? Like, that’s still actually very broad. But if you’re over fifty and you need help planning for retirement, you’re immediately gonna go, oh, that’s me.

That’s allowing someone to self qualify. And then they have and four zero one k solutions for businesses with fifty to two hundred employees. So this, again, is still very, very broad, but just by adding a couple of those tweaks, you make people feel like they’re able to say, yes. This business works with people just like me.

Ma’am, I’ve got a question. I’ve seen websites, that have a I think you call it, like, a their banner rotates, and they have a carousel so that they are speaking to different audiences. And sometimes they accomplish that in sort of the second block. You know, they have a a hero, but they you know, who we serve kind of thing.

How do you what do you think about that where, you know, people do serve multiple niches and they want to articulate that on the home page somewhere, and they’re using either a carousel or different ways to do it as opposed to just focusing on one?

I think if you you can I would still make some sort of statement that is one statement that everyone sees on the home page, and then below it, you could get more into the nitty gritty? And the reason being is, how many times, Susan, have you landed on a website and sat there and waited for the banner to scroll through and look at each one? Right? Like, that people do that.

Yeah.

So if you have maybe a button that shows them to click through, you might get more people doing it. But most of the analytics I’ve looked at is that people just start scrolling. Right? Yep. So I would instead have a statement that outlines the benefits that everybody you work with is gonna get. So maybe everyone you work with is going to get help reducing their taxes or or trying to reduce their taxes.

I know you gotta be careful about complying with the tax one.

But, you know, with tax with tax planning, they’re all going to that have, discussed with you strategies for income and retirement. And so you can kinda bucket some of the benefits, and then right below it go into the to the individual types of clients you serve.

Yeah. I was thinking, one of our associates is on. I wonder if, we can share our list of messaging options, sort of before and afters. But if you think about something that is common is how your clients feel, which is they have a level of anxiety about their finances and their goal achieving their goals.

They, you know, want somebody to assess their sort of progress against their goals, whatever it might be. Those use statements are things that can be the common denominator, and then I think we’ll get into it later. But a best practice is a a who we serve up on the nav, and that’s the way that you can kinda you know, because I think most people don’t serve one tiny niche, so they see this advice and they’re like, but I can’t do that. You can.

You can come up with the common, really pain point that you’re solving for the customer, put that in a you phrase so that you’re relating to how they feel, and then the who we serve can, you know, enable you to map out a number of different niches.

Right. Ugh. I love that. So we talked about rating how people talk, and this actually I’ll just show this to you before we get into the assessments.

If you do serve a again, kind of larger buckets. Right? So we serve retirees and pre retirees, which, again, can feel like everybody. Everybody’s hoping to retire someday.

I love this language that this site has done. Right? So they have if you’re in your late forties to early fifties, let’s establish your plan to get to the next chapter. Here are some questions you might have.

And if you’re in your fifties and sixties, here’s how we can help. So it’s still very broad, but they’ve narrowed it down, and somebody reading this is gonna say, yes. This these are the questions I have. Right?

So this is great way to, again, get more specific.

Yeah. And how do you like that? You know, another way I’ve seen people do it is more defining the niche, you know, business owners, retirees, school teachers, things like that.

Do you like segmentation by sort of labels, or do you like segmentation by age and or, you know, the problems that they’re facing?

I think both can work, honestly, which is probably a helpful answer for somebody who wonders which is better. I think the the the answer is when you think about your own audience, what’s the most natural segmentation for them, and how can you what’s gonna allow you to create the most targeted messaging?

And that’s that’s what I would choose. So for some people, they can’t do it by occupation, or some people can’t do it by, you know, stage of life. So you you have to kind of pick and choose depending on that.

Yeah. Okay. And then this is one other thing I just wanna point out. I see a lot of websites sent to me who have walls of text.

We do not read the way a website the way we read a book, and we we’re really scrolling and scanning. So when we’re looking at these sites together, I want you all to be thinking about, is it easy to scan it and find what you’re looking for? Do they use icons or columns or images to break up the text?

Okay.

So we’re gonna come back to this one. Let’s go open up a site together.

Okay.

So here is the first one. Can you see this, Susan? It should say great stone wealth.

Absolutely. Very pretty.

So, everybody, take a look at it. I’m gonna count to five, and then I want you in the chat to tell me what are some things that immediately stick out to you about this website, when you’re doing this five second test. Remember who they are, who they serve, or what they do, I’m sorry, and who they do it for, and then what’s that next step that someone should take.

Okay. They are people are noticing that they are serving women.

And are you get and you’re getting that they’re serving women because of the image, not because of any copy.

Right? That’s what people are saying.

A lot of people are saying not sure. Not allowed.

Men not allowed. I love it. They’ve served professional women. So, again, this goes to show you with images. There is no copy saying anything about women, but that’s the sense that everyone is getting from this site.

Someone said, I don’t see this as a home page for finances. That’s interesting. So we’re all getting kinda different different feedback. What about you, Susan? What’s one of the first things you notice?

I think the get started really jumps. So I would give them compliments on the CTA.

But I, you know, I think there’s room for improvement in in who we are and who we serve.

Yes.

One thing I will say that I see a lot. Do you all notice something? Nobody’s mentioned this. Right here, their logo or their name, great stone wealth.

And then down here, they say introducing great stone wealth. People do this all the time where they repeat the company name twice instead of using this is called the hero text of your website. It’s the hero, the hero of the story. This is your most important text on your whole page.

You want it to to knock it out of the park. If you’re spending time making website edits, this what I have highlighted is what you should spend the most time editing. So we don’t wanna just reiterate our company name. We wanna put there some power statement, right, that tells us what they do and who they do it for.

I’m gonna do this I’m gonna do a shameless FMG plug, which hopefully is also a benefit.

For some people, like, updating a website seems like a that’s a big undertaking. Like, what am I ugh. Like, all these changes, how am I gonna do it? And one thing that was amazing about, the joining of FMG with twenty over ten is Sam’s company had developed a visual editing tool, and we have incorporated that into the FMG website. So just like Sam just highlighted that headline, if you have a a new FMG premium site, all you do is go into our dashboard and you highlight it like like Sam just did, and you can type in whatever you want.

So we wanna make it really easy for you to be able to I think I could just implement these suggestions that we have.

And, also, of course, our team is trained to, leverage the best practices in building the sites.

Yes.

But I love that. You’re right.

You know, saying who you are when you’ve got your logo up there, it’s kinda you just wasted the opportunity to say something else.

Right. So the I’d say with that page, the home page does not pass that five second test for that reason. And then, you know, as you scroll through, this our approach. Right?

In where innovation meets tradition in the pursuit of financial excellence. We specialize in crafting bespoke financial strategies that stand the test of time. I would say this is a lot of words that doesn’t say much to the average consumer, not to be harsh. I think it’s it’s a beautiful sight, but I think, you know, again, leading with what does the end person you’re trying to serve, what questions are keeping them up at night, what pain point do they have, is going to say so much more to them.

I do like that And I always I like to I always like to check myself even when I’m just writing any kind of marketing copy and ask myself, would I say that in a conversation?

Yeah. And if I couldn’t speak it, then I shouldn’t write it. Like, we just tend to get way more formal in our marketing writing, and that’s the absolute wrong thing to do. It feels unnatural, but the more authentic and just conversational you write, the better.

One hundred percent.

So they do have this schedule button that links directly to Calendly, so I give them a thumbs up for that. If you do not have a calendar button on your website, you are missing out because most people who are visiting your website, they don’t wanna fill you know, have to write you an email to tell you why they wanna meet with you. It just makes it really easy to have a a calendar button, directly. Now this get started button that you noticed, Susan, other people said they didn’t notice it as much, which was interesting, but the get started takes them directly to the calendar.

One thing I keep going to this wrong website. Sorry. One thing that I did, want to point out to all of you, and we are gonna talk about this in a second a little bit more detail, but with your website, remember how I said ninety seven percent of website visitors do not convert. So you really want actually two calls to action.

You want a primary, like schedule a meeting, schedule a call, and then a secondary for all those ninety seven percent of people that are not yet ready to book a call with you. How are you going to capture their email so you can continue to drip on them? So that is where having some sort of download or guide or or some sort of deliverable is going to be really, really beneficial. But a lot of people will say, well, we have one, and and nobody fills it out.

And that is probably because you’re not doing enough to really show them what they’re going to get if they were to download it. So that is giving them, you know, a visual preview of what they will get if they take the time to download your guide or or fill out your form.

Okay.

I’m gonna click out of this one and go to another one. Okay. So let’s do it again, the five second test on this one. So everybody take a look and tell me who is this company, who do they serve, what are you noticing, call to action, imagery.

Anyone have any feedback?

And it looks like while we’re doing that, some people were asking about if you get a lot of calendar.

Enter the calendar. And what I have found is that, you know, you either seem to get a lot or none at all, but it is still really easy to just have an assistant or somebody, you know, daily go through and delete all the ones that are not legitimate.

And it really allows for, a much more frictionless, in the the upside is worth the downside, but I do need But, ideally, there is somebody that maybe is confirming the appointments and weeding out the ones that are not ideal.

Right. Right. Okay. So in the five second test of this, Susan, can you tell who Chartered Wealth helps?

No. But I would click on the who we help button. So at least it’s in the nav. Yep.

And they they have some different, you know, groups here. So if you click on one, they kinda kinda have that.

I’d say there’s still a lot of kind of more buzzy, jargony financial adviser words being used versus the words the consumer would use. Right? So I would go back to the drawing board when it comes to the copy on this one and really think about how can you make it more about answering the questions that the people that you serve, would have. I do love that they have these nice personable pictures of their team.

Yeah.

I’ve looked at a lot of websites where people do not have almost any photos of their team at all. And, you know, one of the things I like to say is people wanna see the product that they are buying. And in our profession, you are really the product they’re buying. Like, they’re buying a relationship with you. So the more that you can have photos, you can tell stories, you can talk about how you help people like them, maybe have a little intro video, the more you’re gonna bring somebody at ease, in in reaching out to you. And I think got some info.

What I’d love to call out here as a best practice, if you scroll up, is these are not, you know, the formal headshot pictures.

I definitely see a lot of websites where, you know, the pictures are extremely formal.

And from I I I think you agree, Sam. The more natural, authentic, casual pictures will resonate so much more with a prospect, and even, you know, for your repeat customers. It’s the the real you, not the, you know, stuffy you.

One hundred percent.

So they do have the schedule call button, you know, that you can click on. That does take you to a form, though, not a, calendar widget. And one thing I will say too is, again, people have to be really, really ready to work with you in order to fill something like this out or to schedule a time in your calendar.

So how are we gonna capture those people who, you know, might just be interested to learn more, but they’re not yet ready. Right? So, I think they have under under their resources here some things like financial guidance. This would be a great place at the end of a blog. Somebody’s reading a blog post that you wrote about aging parents and caring for them.

Instead of just have a question about this topic, you could say, get our guide on, you know, considerations to make when caring for eight financial considerations to make when caring for aging parents.

Something that they’re gonna give their email to get in return that’s related to what you’re talking about. And what do you think about you know, I think that’s a great point and one that we literally just before we jumped on this webinar, we were talking ourselves about, you know, getting somebody to ask for an appointment is that that’s that’s a big hurdle. So you wanna make it easy for them to engage with you by just giving away valuable information.

And on that site, there’s a section with the valuable information, but it’d be even better if you’re teeing up that valuable information throughout the site, taking them to that page. But even having a call to action on the first page. And I think you talked about secondary calls to action where it’s giving away some sort of valuable information, you know, from the home page.

One hundred percent. So this is an example I had ready to go to show when we’re talking about call to actions. You, again, want a primary call to action, which is book a meeting. Right?

We’re not selling widgets or clothes here, or we want people to buy things. We want them to book a meeting with us. But for all the people not yet ready to book a meeting, what can you offer them that they would give up their email address in order to get? So this is an example of a secondary call to action from, the Sheldon and Company, financial planning company, and they have, they specialize in working with people in the military.

And so they say understand civilian retirement plans, and it’s very obvious that they know their audience.

And another thing that I love is they’re only asking for email and first name. Do not ask for phone number if you want somebody just to download something if you’re trying for the highest conversions possible.

Because about net worth? I always I see that when I’m like, oh. Yeah. No. Right?

But I know advisers really about to be sold something.

That’s the whole point. We’re we just wanna get something good for free. We know we’re gonna get on their email list, and most people are okay with that, but we do not wanna give our phone number. So if you make phone number required, the number of people that convert is gonna go down. I do love on this one, though, you notice he puts military branch there, and that’s just like a subconscious cue to help the visitor recognize, wow. This person knows people who’ve been in military so well that he knows the nuances between the branches.

And that’s not required.

The But it does not require. Everybody knows if it doesn’t have the asterisk, you know, you can skip it.

Right. One hundred percent.

Then when it comes to the secondary call to actions, another thing that, you know, people just don’t think about is you have to tell somebody why they should do it. Right? If you don’t give them anything they’re gonna learn, what they’re gonna get and, you know, title it in an interesting way. Right?

Look at the difference between find out how to live an inspired retirement. What does that mean? I don’t know. Versus retiring as an Illinois teacher.

Very specific versus very broad. The more specific you can be about who should get whatever it is you’re giving and how it’s gonna benefit them, the higher your conversion rate will be. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, Susan. I see a lot of websites where somebody will say sign up for our newsletter, and you’ve just landed on the home page.

You don’t know anything about them. You’ve never written anything or read anything they’ve written. Why would you sign up for their newsletter? You gotta show them what they’re gonna get, beforehand.

And, you know, I think when we talk about having these downloadables or these value add pieces, I think everybody imagines that they’ve gotta write a book.

And I’d love to dismiss that and say, it could be a checklist. It can be something that you use with your clients as, you know, things to do before you come meet us. I mean, you probably have these assets, and you don’t realize that they could just, you know, be slightly differently designed, and they could work as a downloadable. People don’t wanna read a book, so they’ll be perfectly happy with a list of a list of questions to ask us when you come, you know, to just you know, when you come to meet us, things like that. It doesn’t have to be, a thesis.

One hundred percent. If you have a great guide or checklist or something, tell us in the chat what is it, and is is it working for you? You know, I’ve seen a lot of people get really good success on anything around taxes, of course, Medicare, Social Security, you know, what to know before you take Social Security for the first time, those kinds of things.

Mistakes are always, very those seem to get the greatest sort of in in email and downloads mistakes to avoid. I did see a question which is great on, video and if that’s something that we’re gonna cover.

Sure. We sure we absolutely can talk about video.

I don’t have a lot of websites that were submitted that include video.

I actually do have this one pulled up that does have an intro video on it, a big, huge intro video. So why don’t we do the five second intro video.

Can everybody see that?

Oak four?

Yes. Okay.

So this is Oak four, and let’s all take a look at this together.

This is a company in the UK, by the way.

It’s not the same. Look at the s personalized with the s.

So there might be some differences in spelling and or compliance rules that could be a little bit different. So just keep that in mind.

I love somebody just said, like, the hero line. I love that.

Oh, the imagine having more than enough retirement or this other school? I like both. Yeah.

I mean, who doesn’t want that is I mean, that resonates big time for me.

Yes. So I haven’t clicked on this to watch this video yet, but they do have an intro video right away. And, typically, you know, with these videos, a tip is you really want them to be, you know, about thirty seconds, maybe at the most forty five, fifty seconds. Not very long for these intro videos. You one hundred percent don’t want them on autoplay. You don’t want somebody to land and it the music starts going and it’s loud.

And if you’re saying something in the video that you think, like, it’s crucial for people visiting your site to know, then you also wanna make sure you put it in text because not everybody might hit play.

What about using captions? Yes or no?

Absolutely. Every time that you have a video, you wanna have captions because a lot of people watch it with the sound off.

So one thing I did notice when I came through the site let’s see if anybody spots it. What do you notice about the copy that maybe we could improve, like, in some of these sections?

It’s teeny.

It is teeny in the the paragraphs. And it’s, you know, a lot of text.

A lot of people saying too small.

Has anybody else picked up on the are are us? Lots of all about them versus they started off so strong with that tagline that’s really focused on the the end user, but then they revert back to talking more about them.

I do like that their goal is it says our goal, but the next sentence is all used. So they’re they’re Exactly. You know, teetering on perfect.

So they also have these great icons down here that break up the text, so that’s really good.

And they make their contact information really easy to find. I cannot tell you how many sites have been submitted to me that I could not get in touch with this person if I wanted to. So don’t definitely don’t wanna do that. Don’t make it hard, for somebody to get in touch with you.

Okay. Let’s take a look. I I do see on some websites where they have their phone number up in the nav. What’s your thought on that?

I think it can be fine if you know, I think a lot of times if somebody is googling, they have on their Google My Business page, it’s gonna or their profile, the phone number comes right up anyway. So if it’s like you want to make it easy for people to call. I usually prefer to put it in the footer because I think people expect it to be in the footer.

But I do too.

It do the number one thing is you don’t want it to get too cluttered at the top.

Yep. Exactly.

So I think the the main takeaway that I see, you know, for this is just there’s a lot. There’s sections that have a lot of text that we could really, really, streamline down on and make it, you know, easier. We talked about that scroll and scan.

Same thing with their calls to action. All their calls to action are, you know, they’re not easily seen buttons that just entice you to wanna click on them, and they’re sort of buried. And then you don’t like, again, sign up for our newsletter. We don’t know what we’re gonna get for that. How does it benefit me in any way? That really could use I I would guess they’re not getting many newsletter sign ups.

Yes. And I think, you know, three calls to action in a row without any buttons or sort of what’s in it for you especially in the footer.

Those could all three be broken out and be their own copy block with more imagery and sort of the the what’s in it. I think white and this is definitely a comment coming from people. White text on, small font on the purple is a little hard to read, especially in those calls to action. We’re purple on purple.

And one other thing I wanna point out, when it comes to the navigation of your site, you really you can be more creative. You don’t have to just use about, our process, our values, our mission. Right? You can get more creative, like, who we work with, how we help x, why you should work with us.

Like, make it, again, really clear instead of just, kind of resting on resting on how everybody normally does it. One thing also to keep in mind is you really should not have more than five to seven main pages. I have seen sites that have ten, eleven pages up here. That’s a terrible user experience because people don’t really know what’s the most important information.

We wanna guide them through the site. So you wanna keep it less, options at the top, and then you can always bucket pages under me.

Do you it’s this is a question I’m guessing you’ll say there’s really no perfect formula, but if I were sitting in the seats listening, what are your what comes to mind in if I asked you, what are the most what do you think are the best five navigation titles?

Oh, that’s tricky, Susan. I know. Sorry. Really depends. I hate to say that. But, you know, I think having something, obviously, about your team.

So I was thinking that just because I looked at it, and they’ve got services and values.

And to me, like, some of that you know, remember, you can have subnavs. Right? So about, I think, is definitely one that I I like because I wanna know about you.

Yes. A hundred percent. And, actually, the first most visited page on any website is the home page. The second most visited page is the about.

The about should be the first. There’s a lot What is the product everybody’s buying? It’s the relationship with you. So you really, really want to, you know, pay attention to that page. Blair just shared in the chat, and I’m actually gonna click on it and pull it up here. We have this blog post, how to write your financial advisor bio, and there’s five examples in here.

Take a look at this. Be inspired by it. You know, get ideas. But there’s so many different ways that you can spruce up your team or bio page and make it really fun and engaging and tell a story. But this is the second most visited page on adviser websites.

So Oh, and this is one where we want you to use I and we because we don’t want it to be in the third person where Tom has had a wonderful career of it it should be I.

One hundred percent.

And I love too, you know, with social proof, a lot of you have will tell us, oh, we can’t use testimonials yet or or it’s hard to do, or maybe we don’t have client testimonials yet. How can we kinda add social proof? Having, logos of either places you’re associated with or credentialed from or, I’ve you know? And we’ll I’ll show another example. But, on your bio page, maybe, you know, you’ve been featured in USA Today featured in. Forbes and Wall Street Journal. That’s also another way you can add social proof without needing to add testimonials.

And I will say, Sam, in the last week, I have had three different advisers reach out who are starting to do testimonials. So I will take that as a a Nine of seven shift where it’s it’s starting. Yeah. They’re getting starting to get more comfortable. Compliance teams are starting to get more comfortable.

Alright. So let’s open up this site, and I’ll look at it together. This is Uplevel Wealth.

You’re partnering growth. We build financial plans to help you live well.

Again, I think this is beautiful that these these are actually the advisers, these two women, which I love. They throughout their entire website have gorgeous photos. They obviously hired a photographer to come and take photos of them in house, which is wonderful. But on this home page here, it still doesn’t say who that you is.

We help we build financial plans to help you live well. Who’s you? Who specifically do they serve? But they do have this great as seen in section here.

Again, if you have been featured in any publications, you want to put that on your website and, be able to have that, you know, expertise shown and and Social proof. Yeah. The social proof. Thank you. So if you scroll through this site, again, there’s lots of great photos of them. They have stats and figures, about kind of, like, who they serve.

I I think I like their, headlines are action statements that a lot better.

Feels powerful. Yeah.

Big. Yep.

And if you click this get started button, it takes you to this page where they kind of talk about how they work, how they communicate, the process.

And then at the very bottom, they have this let’s get, like, you know, get started button.

And then they have the sign up for their newsletter. So this is another one where it’s missing that secondary call to action. And I really feel like of the sites we look at, we’ve hammered it home enough that people have started out adding the calendar widget. We’re still not seeing most people figure out how to nail that secondary call to action, which is why a lot of people have a hard time actually generating leads if it’s not out of calendar meeting.

Yep.

And I think that might be a a point worth emphasizing because lead gen was one of the main things that people want help with. You expecting people to visit your website and schedule a meeting or click the get started button, that’s that’s a pretty big jump. So you really have to have that what we call, you know, top of top and middle of the funnel content, which are those checklists or how to or the biggest mistakes. Those downloadables where you’re asking for a name and an email and not asking for their life story so that and they get a piece of value out of content in exchange.

That’s how you capture their email. That’s how you nurture them. And then it’s about really content marketing, which we spend a lot of time talking about From the time they download something to the time they will schedule a meeting could be months. It could even be we hear from people that it’s a year or years.

And the way that you capitalize and convert them is by dripping on them with valuable email content. So it kinda all has to go together, and, unfortunately, it’s not a I put my beautiful website up, and I suddenly am getting leads.

One hundred percent. So here’s let’s do this other one, and then I see a lot of things coming in the chat. I can’t tell what they are.

But What they are is, somebody asked if we would review their website live.

And so I suggested if if people could share their websites with us, we’ll add them to our list because we’re doing this is a series that we’re gonna do every other every other month. So everybody’s adding not everybody, but a lot of people are adding their websites so that we can review with our in our upcoming, in our upcoming website Okay. Fixer corporate series.

Well, we’ll keep getting through as many more as we can. I’m gonna run a tight ship here. Okay. So this is Fiduciary, Financial Partners, and this site, I actually saw this one, and I I think I featured this in one of my other ones earlier.

But the retirement planning for individuals age fifty and up and four zero one k solutions for businesses with fifty to two hundred employees. I love that statement. I feel like it is so on point, clear, and, you know, easy to self identify. And then I love their secondary call to action.

Right? Get your free assessment.

So you can click on this, and it takes you to this page where it basically says, you know, shows you a visual. It’s gonna give you a tax return analysis, an investment analysis, retirement answers. And then it says the next step is a twenty minute call that will give us both of a chance both of us a chance to make sure that we are the right fit.

Finding the right adviser is just important as finding the right doctor. You wouldn’t see a cardiologist for a broken foot, which I thought was cute.

So, you know, this site did a really nice job of being super specific. They don’t have too much text. They’re using a lot of icons.

And then one of my other favorite things is case studies.

So if you really wanna help people visualize how you are going to help someone just like them, a case study is a fantastic way to do it. And you’re nodding your head, Susan.

Yeah. No. I love this, and it hasn’t come up, and I don’t see it that often. But this is exactly when you’re talking about you, this is featuring you.

Yes. And so with each of these, you can kinda click on it, and it will show, you know, what they did, what the results were, what the challenge was, a really great way to help people sort of visualize that. And then, again, you can get your free retirement assessment right underneath. I also love this.

Oh, Oh, that’s good too. This is I can I recognize this? This is actually an FMG site. It must be an FMG site.

Yes. This is definitely an FMG site.

So this is actually one of the the lead gens that we have, which I love. Fifty nine and a half. Why is this age so important? What a great tagline to try to get people to sign up for something. Because anybody that’s getting close to that age and they’re thinking about finances is going to be interested in that, and then, you know, filling out the get your free guide. So this site is doing a fantastic job. Kudos to whoever at our team at FMG worked on it and to fiduciary financial partners for putting it together.

But this is the kind of website you can expect if you come work with FMG. Look at how gorgeous it is, and it checks all the boxes of helping people self identify, telling a good story, and having great calls to action.

And then Other nice we have all the guides that people can use for the downloadables, which it definitely is a plus.

Oh, yes. We offer many to help you. So if you’re lacking the secondary action sorry?

How many how many lead gen placements would you have on a website at any one time? Is there a number?

So if you have a couple different people you serve. Right? So if they’re serving individuals fifty and over, that would be they’d need one lead gen for that versus another one for businesses that they’re providing four zero one k solutions for. So it’s really gonna depend on how many niches you have.

You don’t wanna put them all on the home page, though. Right? You want to add them kinda as people navigate through your site. If they’re on the section of your page where you’re talking about, you know, how you serve businesses, then you would put that four zero one k guide on this this page.

So that’s how you would do it. Perfect.

Good question. Keep the questions coming.

So I know we’re getting about ten ten minutes from the end here. I want I’d be remiss if we didn’t take a minute to just talk about our website services and and how we can help you. These are just some examples. I’ve included them all in the doc of great website examples that our team has worked on here at FMG.

They’re all linked, so you can click on them and check them all out. Not gonna go through all of them, but some really great examples.

But we now We have we keep a gallery.

We could just mention on our public website. So f m g suite dot com, there’s a website gallery, and we try to update it all the time. There are tons of website examples.

There you go. Yep. So if you go to f and g dot com, under resources, the website gallery, there it is.

And we we offer now, as Susan mentioned before, you know, we have a sort of a new process that’s been rolled out over the last couple year year or so, I guess, it’s been, Susan, the premium website offering. And if you’re interested in learning more, we would love to connect with you and talk with you about it.

And we’ll put a let’s see here. We’ll put I’m just gonna show this real fast, and we’ll go back to the other one. But this is the QR code. You can take a picture of it, and it will, directly link you to schedule a time with our team. And they can walk through your current website with you just like I was doing today with Susan, point out things that we would fix, things we would edit, how we can add those calls to action to make your site really capture those ninety seven percent of people that aren’t staying, the resources and, other content we could add to the website, how our copywriting team works to help you with messaging.

So We just gotta thank you, Neil.

There’s the last comment in there is diff them can be very valuable. What’s diff them?

Thank you for the shout out for that.

Oh, why don’t you talk about this for a second so that we can get a little water?

Well, Sam and I, a couple years I think it’s been a year and a half or two years ago, we were like, alright.

When we present to advisers and talk about best practices, we get off the phone or whatever, and we have, you know, we’ll hear from advisers when we get off stage. And it’s just like, that was really, really great, but can you just do it for me? And so we decided to come up with a program called do it for me. And, Sam and I brainstorm with our we have, you know, a wonderful team of content writers, and we brainstorm every month what would be the ideal topics across blogs and emails and social posts.

And then we write them, and, literally, you’re getting Sam and I writing them as well as our team helping us and come up with the right images, and then we send it out to our do it for me customers in a calendar format as well as in a list format. They have two weeks to look at everything, decide if they wanna make edits. I’ll even suggest, like, these social posts would be great if you put your own photos in. They make edits.

They say, you know, it skipped national siblings day, but I do like the blankety blank optional post. And then our team does it for you. So back to that, you’ve gotta have a great website, and you need to have those calls to actions to collect the emails. But once you collect the emails, you’ve gotta keep your, a, you’ve gotta keep your site up to date and adding content and adding valuable, you know, value ads, and then you’ve gotta drip on them.

Because just because they visited does not mean they are ready to make a to to make a move. This is the second essential part of converting leads from your website.

Yeah. And can f email address is just one part of the battle. You’re definitely not winning the war just because you got the email.

I think the thing that I love the most about the do it for me program is that we, you know, are enabling you to be so consistent with your communication so people know every time they see your email in their inbox, they’re gonna get something valuable. They’re gonna learn something. They’re gonna get an update on breaking news or legislation. And then if something does happen, right, that you wanna call or talk to clients about, we’re gonna write the piece timely so that in a very short period of time, sometimes just, you know, twenty four hours, you have an email that you can send out addressing whatever it is that they’re reading about in the news so they’re not having to say, hey. I read on CNBC this. What what tell me what’s going on. You’re proactively getting in front of it.

And, does Deepgram get preapproval with compliance? Yes. And everything on the, FMG platform is routed through your compliance. So if you, you know, use something but you make edits to it, that’s routing through compliance. But we are sending all of this to compliance teams two weeks before the beginning of the month so that it’s approved as is, and then you make edits to it. That’s great. And it’s just gonna route through compliance and, go out.

So that Yeah.

Is pretty cool.

I’m wondering who are who use different you know, they meet with their marketing concierge every month, and they are really, really hands on. Like, I wanna make this change. I wanna add this picture for, you know, Thanksgiving of my team, and then we have other people who say everything’s good. Just send it as is. So it really depending on kinda where you’re at in your business or if you have somebody on your team that’s devoted to marketing, there’s some people that really, really edit a lot and others that use it right as it as is.

I’m wondering just to give people some hope that we will get to their websites. Why don’t you scroll in the webinar chat and pick one, and we’ll just finish on, you know, giving some quick tips.

Okay. What’s this one? Johnson Bixby. Is that how you’d say it?

Oh, cool. I like this.

Serving individuals, couples, and families. You have possibilities in life. We help you realize them with financial planning.

And I’m Let’s ask everybody what they think.

Yes.

So what do you guys like about the five time to do the five second test.

I’m gonna scroll up just a little. I’m missing the headline there. No. Scroll down, I mean.

Sorry. Sorry. Here we go. Oh, serving individuals, couples, and families. You have possibilities in life.

Did this person just take all of our best pract like, you literally just randomly chose this?

Meet us. Good call to action.

I like Anne’s comment. I like this. They look like people like me. They do. They don’t look like a stock photo. It looks like just a normal couple sitting on the couch.

Neil is happy that they’re not walking on the beach or on a boat.

We hope you realize them. You know what? This is a really nice combination of the headline is you have possibilities, but the subhead is we help you realize them. So now you really I just got chills. That’s really nice.

Okay.

Money doesn’t plan for retirement, dream of travel, or map out a new chapter, but Oh, what do you need help with?

Well done. Schedule an intro. Another good one.

Yeah. I like the icons that they have right here.

This is excellent.

Meet some of our team.

So let’s just see if we click on oh, an intro meeting. My gosh.

Love that.

Okay. That is awesome.

You know what? Why don’t can you reshare this link to everyone? Just I think this has some great inspiration.

Yeah. I’ll put it right.

So far, we haven’t given John any good tips, calculators and stuff.

I like this down at the bottom, by the way, this what’s it like working with us. That would be a great statement before you do case studies. So you have some case studies of, you know, the experience people have of working with you, but that’s sort of, like, the headline of what you call it. You know?

That You know what?

I don’t know if it’s just me. I I missed the nav.

Like, I don’t know if it’s the size of the font or the fact that something I was so focused on the headline that I was actually gonna say, like, where’s the nap? But there it is. And, actually, the first thing is about us, which is something that we totally recommend. There’s a blog.

This is really great. I like this, infographic there.

It seems very calming too, which I don’t know if that was the intent, but, you know, I think sometimes people can be really it can be nerve wracking to meet with an adviser for the first time. I mean, money is emotional. It can be stressful. People put it off.

So I like the idea that it it’s just a very calming calming environment.

Down one more time. I’ve seen we’ve seen this a couple times. No. To the hero part. Sorry. I don’t know if I’m saying scroll down or up, but the word imagine is very, I think it’s a really great word to use in copy because it just immediately creates a story, and it it puts the person in a position of thinking about a what if. I so I think that’s a great word to think about in your messaging.

Yes. The one thing that I would say, so, you know, they do have different calls to action in different areas.

Like, so they have meet us.

Any yeah, any downloadables?

About that. I was gonna say I don’t see a secondary call to action anywhere. So, again, it’s so they have a pretty large team here, lots of in information.

But it seems like, really, they just have that main call to action, not a secondary. So that is one thing that I would definitely add if those of you from this firm listening in, if you’re like, we, you know, we love our site. We we think it’s great, but we’re not really getting leads. It’s probably because if somebody isn’t ready to book a meeting with you, they read all the information and they have nowhere to go.

So adding something where you could capture them, some sort of great checklist or guide would be really great. And, again, it might be a little harder because it seems like your who you’re serving is broad, individuals, couples, and families. It’s not very specific. So you might need to create a couple different ones for different subsets.

I think you’ve scrolled down on this one. I think one of the next things was, you know, do you need help with?

That could be a place where you have a call to action under each, that, you know, has some downloadable about it. I’m not sure where that section was, but there was one where it was like, do you need help with? And each of them could have a, you know, biggest mistakes people make as it relates to the what you know, that topic.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Well, I can’t believe we’re already at the top of the hour. That went by way too fast.

I know we always wish we could get to more sites than we can, but for anybody who submitted one and who was on the call today, thank you so much for being brave.

It’s always hard to have your site audited live. If you found this was helpful, please let us know in the chat. If you like the structure, if it was helpful to learn this way, it’s not as formalized as a slide deck, but, hopefully, you know, just kinda doing it together helps you learn more about Wednesday to find this way. And we would love to help you. That’s what we’re here for, me and Susan both.

And, again, you can contact us, and we would love at FMG to talk with you about your website and marketing.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining. And, Sam, your wallpaper’s beautiful.

Thank you, Susan. Alright, everybody. Take care.

Bye, everybody.