Website Fixer-Upper Series

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks so much for being here to do the very first of our website fixer upper series. I’m Samantha Russell, and today, we’re gonna be doing something really fun and different.

So many of you who are signing on submitted your sites for us to review today. So I’m gonna be pulling them up live in my browser, and together, we’re gonna be walking through them, looking at what works with the website and what I would suggest changing.

This is one hundred percent blind. We just went through the list and picked some sites to look at. And I say also blind in the sense that I didn’t talk to any of the individuals who submitted them in advance. So, I’m I don’t know anything in particular about their business. I’m just looking at it as the consumer would, right, if they stumbled up across it on the Internet after a Google search or a referral.

So while we’re waiting for everyone to sign on, I would love to know if you’re joining us today, how often are you making changes to your business’s website? Is it something that pretty regularly you’re adding blog content, a podcast, or, some sort of article or even just changes, you know, to the pages? Or are you one of those people who raise your hand when I say, have you not made a change in a couple years? I’d love to know where you stand on that spectrum. Let us know in the chat, so we kinda get a sense of what the audience looks like today.

For those of you just signing on, we’re gonna get started in just a minute, and I’m just asking everybody in the chat to let us know how often they are making changes to their website. So I’m actually seeing a good amount of at least monthly, which is wonderful.

At a bare minimum, when we think about search engine optimization, we really want to see at least two times a month adding something fresh or new so that in the eyes of the search engine, it looks like your site is new and up to date. So keep that in mind. Alright. I’m gonna ask for more feedback in the chat, so stay tuned for that.

I did just want to, you know, actually introduce myself and FMG for those of you who haven’t joined us for a webinar before. If you have, nice to have you back. I’m Samantha Russell, the chief evangelist here at FMG, and, this is a sweet little picture of my family.

And the reason I chose a family photo today and not just a bio photo is actually because this is one of the things I’m gonna suggest for all of you. You know, when we think about, wealth management, financial planning, the product is you and the relationship you have with your clients. Right? And people want to see the product that they’re buying, and so I really, really encourage you to share personal photos of yourself, your family on your bio page, your team page, your sole proprietor, even throughout the website.

It really is a great conversation starter, and it really helps just build that trust and Oh, John said great family. Thank you, John. If we’re not already connected on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, I’d really love to connect with you there. Pretty much every single day, I share a marketing tip specifically for advisers and lots of great visual examples as well as invitations to webinars like these.

So please connect with me if we’re not connected already. And if you’re not familiar with FMG, we have a award winning marketing suite built specifically for financial advisers. These are just some of the few awards that we’ve won. We actually just recently, won another award, amazing vest fintech, platform.

We haven’t even we’re winning so many awards. We can’t even keep this up up to date, which we’re so proud of. But if you haven’t checked us out in a while, I’ll share some more information about FMG toward the end, but we have a new premium website offering that we have now that is just amazing, the websites that our team is creating. And we actually have uncoupled websites from marketing.

So if you’re using other marketing services, but you just would love to work with us for a website, we can do that. Or if you are, you know, you just want to do the marketing services and not the website, we can do that. So we you’re able to mix and match or, my recommendation, use both combined together for really the best, bang for your buck.

Okay.

So one other thing I wanted to make sure that I mentioned is that, everybody who’s on today, we are gonna give you our website success checklist. So you’re gonna get that along with the slides and the recording. So stay tuned for that in your, inbox. And this will just be really nice that after you leave here today, you’ll be able to go back and apply this to your own site and really go through the checklist and see how you yourself are doing.

Somebody said I sell insurance, not financial. Does that matter? No. This what we’re gonna talk about today really applies to any of these, service based businesses.

So absolutely please stick around. So before I start pulling up, websites for all all of us to look at together, there’s just a few things that I want us all to put on our caps, thinking caps, and be in the same brain space when we’re looking at these together. Right? So we’re all gonna make we’re gonna make this really interactive.

And as I’m pulling up these websites in the chat, you all are gonna help me tell me what you see that is working or not working based on some of these tenets that I’m sharing first. So the first, you know, kinda tenant that I want you to all remember is that when it comes to the messaging on your website or any marketing, honestly, no one cares what you can do. Ooch. That really hurts.

But the truth is they only care what you can do for them. Right? So it’s very natural as a business owner to wanna say something like, I’ve been in business for thirty years or, you know, the state’s number one financial adviser, if you have, you know, those kinds of awards.

Just talking about yourself and what you can do for your clients is very natural. However, we wanna spin that always into what are you able to do for the client. Right? So I always talk about the problem solution method of writing your website. What is what one. And then number two is that when it comes to the design of a website, you could have the best messaging in the world.

But if it’s written like the one on the left with a big paragraph, realistically, many people are not going to actually read it because we don’t read websites like we read a book where we’re reading every single word in order as if it’s a story. Instead, we scan. Right? And then when something catches our eye, we pay more attention to it. So we really want to avoid those big, long chunks of paragraphs, especially on, you know, the home page, the services page where people are just trying to get quick information and save that for a blog post and instead to keep it really scannable.

And then the last tenant, and then we’re gonna dive into pulling up the websites, is personality. Right? I mentioned this already, but when it comes especially to well, in any any industry, you know, if you think about whatever you’re buying, you wanna see a visual of what you’re buying. If you’re buying a pair of jeans, you wanna look at all the jeans.

If you’re gonna hire a contractor, you wanna see their work. When it comes to financial services Second of all. The relationship that we have sorry. My watch is talking to me.

The relationship that we have, with our adviser is really what we’re selling. And so including personal photos of your team, including, pictures of the type of people that you help, visuals of the services. Those are all gonna be really crucial in helping people to see your personality and to see, quote, unquote, what it is that they’re buying.

Alright. So with those things in mind, let’s pull up a couple of the websites that were, shared, and we’re gonna talk through together what we think they’re doing well and what maybe they could do better. Can everybody just somebody in the chat maybe tell me, can you see this class financial dot com?

Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you.

So we land on this website. Right? And what is maybe one of the first things that anyone is noticing about the home page? Okay. Lauren, right off the bat, says there’s no tagline. Right?

We want on the home page of our website immediately to tell us to tell the person viewing the website who we are, which they did, class financial. That’s good. And they say your best retirement in the tagline, but it should be who we are, what we do, and who we do it for. So because we have these big, gorgeous photos at the top, which are really like, there’s a cute picture of kids, but it’s not telling me anything about what does this business do, how can they help me personally. Right? So let’s scroll down a little bit.

Now we start to get some information, what we call above the fold. So this is just kinda website designer speak. Anything when you first land on the site is above the fold. This comes from the days of newspaper when the newspaper was folded in half.

You know, you had to unfold it to see what was below the fold. If we scroll down here below the fold, now we start to get some information about this firm and what they can do. And so what I would recommend right off the bat, you can see this tagline here, providing answers to design your best retirement. We help individuals, families, and employers plan and invest for retirement.

That should be right above the fold right on the main page of the website. Does that make sense to everybody? Are you starting to get right away what we’re talking about with messaging, right above the folder? Hopefully, that is clear.

So that is tip number one. You know, you wanna make sure that we your website passes what we call the five second test. So who you are, what you do, who you do it for, does your website answer those questions? Now as we scroll down a little bit more, they do have some really, really cool interactive features that I like.

Right? So they have kind of by features that I like. Right? So they have kind of by the numbers.

We talked about making the site easy to scan. Right? So they get a thumbs up on this section because it’s very easy to scan and see more information about their about their team, about kind of the basis of, what they’re doing. But nowhere on this page is it really telling more of that personal story that we talked about.

Right?

Nobody cares what you can do. They care what you can do for them. Getting really specific on how are they helping their clients. That’s what we wanna see more about.

Right? So maybe if we go under services, we’ll get a sense of what they offer. So we pull up services, and we can kinda see, okay. This is the road map for how they’re gonna help people, or what what that, the meeting and the initial kind of process is gonna look like, but it’s still not telling us much.

Now we get down here.

We act as your coach and help you implement and carry out your financial plan.

We act as your coaching quarterback to help you carry out your financial plan, and they’re showing you they kinda have this investment portfolios versus the class three sixty. So one thing immediately, I don’t know if any of you would say this, what would you know, when you kind of are looking between class investment portfolios and class three sixty? Right? That’s something if I am a consumer, never been aware of this company before, I’m gonna wonder that. So remember when you’re naming things or kind of defining things on your website that keep in mind that the people visiting it, if they’ve never heard of you before and they have no idea who you are, you need to get a lot more specific in what these things are so that they can, you know, understand specifically what it is that that you’re offering.

Let’s go to about. Oh, one quick tip here. You see how under about they have mission values, our team, our locations?

Again, thinking about the idea that you wanna always make it about them, using you language is a lot better any place you can versus our. So, you know, instead of our team saying your team or our locations, I mean, you could still have just locations there. But the more you can make it about them and the less about you, the better. And just to as we’re on this subject, I did pull up a couple really great websites I thought that had great language to help us all get in the mindset so we can juxtapose, you know, some of these lessons. So here’s a here’s a great example of a website that’s doing this well. So financial planning for business owners navigating or financial planning for owners navigating a business transition.

Optimize your personal finances and business for freedom. And as we scroll down, they say, you’ve grown and built your business over the years.

Keep going on. You’re the main point person.

You know, your you’ve your passion has kept the momentum moving since day one, so what’s next for you? Right? So they’re talking very you focused to the person on the other side of the screen, which is allowing that person to say, yes. That is me.

Right? To self qualify and say, I need to work with somebody just like this. And then they can kind of go through and give you some stats. You know?

Only four percent of business owners have a written plan for what they will do post transition.

Seventy five percent are selling their business because they didn’t, you know, plan right. So that you focused messaging is really, really important. And another thing I don’t know about you. Words really matter.

And if I see something like mission, vision, values, to me, that’s boring. You know? Like, I we’ve I looked at the analytics of thousands of adviser websites. Almost no one reads a page if it says our mission or our values.

They just don’t. Because, again, it’s all about you, number one. And number two, it’s it’s boring. So instead, if we’re looking at, you know, our vision, our our vision, our mission, values, these are important things, but how can we reframe that to be all about the person reading it?

So maybe thinking about saying something like why clients choose to work with us and then explaining specifically, those tenants. Right? So, hopefully, that’s making sense for everybody on this call today. Okay.

Let’s pull up another website. Thank you to Class Financial for submitting, your site.

Okay. So this is, oh, I’m gonna butcher this name. So I’m sorry.

You guys can see it with me.

Tomalinas Financial. I hope I’m not I know I’m saying that wrong. I’m so sorry. But let’s look through your website together. Okay. So, he has partnering with blue collar business owners to manage and protect wealth.

What would you all say? I think that is a really, really great, easy to understand value proposition right there on the home page. Right? So get a thumbs up for that.

However, when you land on the site, is there anything you notice about the layout that anybody’s kinda like, I would I would maybe wanna change something because there’s something that immediately sticks out. Right? Right. So so many people are saying too much of the header.

So this section up here in design speak is the header or the navigation. And because this logo is so large, the header is getting stretched, and it’s creating all this white space, which just looks not as polished and, you know, we all notice it. So that would be an easy fix. You can align the menu to be to the left, the logo, and then put all of these buttons there to the right.

And then you can keep going, you know, as you scroll through. So that would definitely be something that I would want to change.

And then the other thing too is just this text here is pretty big. I would probably shorten or, like, make that a little bit smaller and then maybe have a subheader underneath it. So, again, that it’s just easier on the eyes to read.

Chris, you get another thumbs up for me, though, that you have your picture right away. You can tell that it’s an individual business owner, a small business, which I love, and he specifically, you know, talks about, his background a little bit, and then you can learn more about him.

Same thing here with the services page. Right? That services probably can get a lot smaller so that it’s just a little easier on the eyes. What about these two, columns here?

With with all of you looking at it, do you feel that you would read all of that, or would you prefer to just be able to scan a few bullet points to get an a sense of what the financial planning and investment that he offers? Right? Because I would probably do bullet points. This is where if you go through and you read what it is that he put here, it’s important information and it’s well done, but I would suggest making bullet points. And if you’ve never done something list like this before, this is a great example where you can copy and paste this into, like, a chat GPT and just say, summarize this in at bullet points for me and allow it to spit out the bullet points for you. So you write it out, and if you’re having a hard time summarizing it, use a tool like that.

Or hint hint, if you work with us at FMG, we can we can work to get the copy, in beautiful shape for you as well. But so that is definitely something that I would want to change here.

Okay.

And then I do like that he has these featured blog posts, right here at the bottom. So, again, it’s you know, you can go and learn more. But is there anything that sticks out to any of you about the blog posts where you’re like, that also doesn’t look so good?

Let’s see if anybody said so somebody said the title is too small, should have more columns, picture’s too small. Okay. So, actually, what I was thinking of is if you look at the dates, all of the dates are from, like, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty one. Right?

So when you land on this, your initial thought if you start looking at it might think, oh, this hasn’t been updated in, you know, a year and a half or so, almost two years. So that if you’re gonna have dates on your blog posts, you wanna make sure you’re updating it regularly. It’s fine to not include dates, but if you remember what we said at the very top of today’s session, the search engines and consumers want to see a site that’s updated frequently. So from an SEO perspective, you really wanna be adding new content at least twice a month.

This is, again, one of the really great benefits about working with a provider like F and G. We have an entire content library, with ready to go content, or we make it really easy to just take one of our pieces and edit it to make it your own. So if you’re struggling getting that, you know, your site updated regularly, I would definitely, suggest looking at that.

Okay. I’m gonna look at the questions that are coming in if there’s anything in particular.

Somebody asked a good question. Larry said, does a blue collar business owner self identify that way? So that’s a great question, and it does bring up a good point. When you’re thinking about what words to use on your website, you really, really wanna think about what the person searching for you or your services would say. So I see so many websites, for instance, that say, holistic financial planning, And I doubt very much that most consumers search for it that way. I think they might say comprehensive.

They might say all in one.

But, you know, just looking at Google keywords for so many adviser sites on the back end, holistic is it might be getting a little bit of traction with consumer education, but, typically, that’s not gonna be as often what they use. So if you’re partnering with blue collars blue collar business owners, you might want to maybe list out what some of those professions are instead of just, you know, lumping them together. However, I also say that, you know, where it says partnering with blue collar business owners, look at the picture right behind it.

The picture is reinforcing so much what the copy says. And one of the things that the best websites do is make sure that the picture that they’re using is reinforcing the messaging because you probably all noticed the photo before you read the copy. Right? We all do that.

We look at the image first. So paying attention to what photos you use is so crucial on your own website. Alright. We’re gonna move on to another one.

Thank you so much, Chris, for submitting your site.

Oh, look at that message from Carrie. She said, Chris, I like the page with the hard caps for hard workers. That makes sense to me. Love it.

Alright. So this one is Atomic Planning, another site with a great, great, picture to reinforce, you know, what it is that they’re they’re kind of brand here. I actually love this logo. I think it’s really clean and sleek.

So what do we all think about the tagline on this one? Your retirement launchpad. Is that pretty clear to everybody, who, you know, specifically who they are working with? I think it does suit their brand.

I people are saying I like it. Who’s the target audience? So I really like, overall, the fact that they’re so focused on the word retirement. I think people landing on this site are gonna quickly figure out what it is. As you scroll down, we see a picture here of Ryan right away, a great I like that it’s a more casual photo and not just in an office or just a headshot.

And he says your retirement guide. Right? So pretty quickly, you can figure out that he’s specifically helping people with retirement.

He doesn’t necessarily say who, though. It sounds like anybody going to retirement, and that might be the case for Ryan.

So that could be something if he does have more of a specific niche that he’d want to add. If you scroll down, I also really like that pretty much right away, he says, I want you to have my retirement checklist, a comprehensive guide that walks you through thirty two planning considerations before your retirement journey.

The thing that is so cool about this is that we have both download checklist and schedule appointment. And so this is one of the things I really want you all to go back and look at your own websites.

On any website, we should have two calls to action. We should have the primary call to action, which is what we want people to do. So for all of you in financial services, you’re not trying to sell meeting with us so that we can close the business. So the schedule and appointment is always gonna be your primary call to action.

Right? Number one. However, think about it. Ninety nine percent of website visitors that land on your site are not going to book that meeting.

If you look at your own analytics and how many visitors are coming through, right, ninety nine percent of them are not taking that action. So what happens? Do we just let them all leave and we don’t have any way to to capture them and stay in touch with them? No.

We want to capture their email so we can continue to drip on them and get them to be aware of all the great, you know, services we provide. So that’s where we want a really compelling, what we call secondary call to action. And this is something that somebody’s gonna look at it and say, oh, this is so good. I need to have this.

Right? So having something like a retirement checklist, a guide to taxes in retirement, you know, what you need to know about Social Security before you start claiming it. All of those kinds of things would be really, really great giveaway to try to collect those email addresses. Now one thing that I would suggest so when you click download checklist here, he does a good job of saying who’s it for, and kind of the questions, and he also says it’s a two page checklist that guides you through thirty two of the most important things to think about.

One thing I would suggest adding here is a visual. People love to see a visual of what they’re gonna download, so you don’t wanna give it all away, but something where they can kinda see it. Sort of just like how in the very beginning, I have these little screenshots of what you’re all gonna get today. Something just like that would be really, really great, to do on your page.

Okay. Now the other thing I really wanna point out is when you look at the top of his site, you’re gonna see newsletter, podcast, blog, clients.

So there’s no page at the top to talk about services offered, who Ryan works with. Right? You have to really scroll down here, and then in this little search engine optimization standpoint, what you put in your navigation is incredibly important because it’s going to be what the search engine says are kind of the top pieces of information about your website. So using words like retirement planning or tax planning or financial planning for, that’s telling the search engine that’s what your site’s about. So putting those keywords in your page titles, which is what appears in the top navigation, is incredibly important. And I would suggest moving some of that up, to Ryan in here at Atomic Planning.

And, oh, I just noticed, Ryan, on your page here that you also list that you are a US marine veteran. So thank you for your service. And I also really suggest if you have, you know, something about yourself, whether you served in in the marines or, maybe you played college basketball or you currently are serving on the board somewhere, something that people can relate with, relate to, always include that in your bio because it’s a really nice talking point. And, again, it gives them a better picture of who you are, you know, as a person.

Okay. So atomic planning, those are some of the things that I would suggest changing. The other thing oh, one other thing. When we talked about making the site easy to scroll and scan, we sort of talked about this in the first one, but avoiding really big areas of white space like this, it it doesn’t look intentional. Right? It almost looks like, oh, we just forgot to put something there. So as you kinda go down through and click on these different sections, what I would do is have a icon or a photo that correlates with each one so that we avoid those really big areas of white space.

Okay. Let’s move on to another one. You guys are all awesome, and I see so many people putting in, their sites to be reviewed. You are all lovely.

We’re gonna get through as many as we can. Oh, Ryan, you are on. Yay. It’s so nice.

I’m glad somebody said who we’re reviewing is here. And, hopefully, that was helpful to you. Great job with the branding and look of your your site.

Okay. So this one, PBA Financial. Alright. So let’s all look at it together. Again, you guys are getting so good at this. What are some things immediately that you notice or that stick out to you, good or bad, what this site is doing.

Alright. So we got dense text, legibility, a bright logo, kind of hard to read the tagline, too wordy.

Okay. Lots of different things. So lots of white space, and I agree with a lot of this. Right? This site to me just looks more like the sites we saw, getting created, you know, ten years ago. It it just looks like it’s ready for an update. And maybe that’s why you submitted it at PVA Financial, and thank you for that so we can all learn together.

But, again, you know, it’s very obvious that they’re offering investment management and financial planning, so that’s great. But who specifically are they serving is unclear.

The the picture in the background really doesn’t say anything to reinforce the message. It’s just a picture of people meeting. And then, of course, as we just talked about, that is a lot, lot, lot of text. We need to really simplify that and make it a lot more clear, specifically. Now I did wanna show you guys an example here.

This site actually has a decent amount of text, but I actually think that in this one, it does it really, really well where it says overcome fears of divorce and make decisions based on facts and on facts, not emotions.

And then it talks about how, she offers a modern way to uncouple while preserving family relationships and resources. So, again, it’s a it’s more text, but it’s done in a way where you don’t feel overwhelmed by the text on this page. Right? And as you scroll down, again, this might be a little bit more text than we would normally see on a home page, but it’s really easy to scan this page.

And, you know, through the use of columns and buttons, our team, at FMG does a great job with sites like these that we put together to bucket things so that it’s really easy for the viewer to scan it. I love this site, and that she’s using so many of these personal photos because, really, again, she’s selling a relationship with her as you’re navigating this difficult time.

I think this does an excellent job. So even though there isn’t my watch just keeps harking. Sorry if you guys can hear that.

So even though, you know, she’s got a lot of text, it doesn’t feel overwhelming, and it feels very easy to scan.

Okay. So let’s go back to that other website.

Okay. And then one other thing, when you’re thinking about your calls to action, remember, whatever you choose to say on those buttons is your chance to get somebody to take that next step. Right? So if we have a button that says contact us and then we make them fill out a form, That is a lot of steps to ask someone to do, especially because as you all know in this business, right, what usually prompts someone to reach out to you is a pain point.

Like, there’s a nagging pain point. They are dealing like, their CPA and their adviser aren’t working well together, and they need to talk to somebody. Or, they feel like the they don’t have a plan for retirement income planning and they’re stressed out. Something’s happening.

It’s nagging at them. And then when they’re finally ready to pull the trigger and contact you, you want them to give you your name, your email, the phone number, a a long message about what you want. This is where I highly suggest just embedding a meeting scheduler. Because when someone can just click a button and schedule a time to meet with you and they know they can just explain what they wanna talk about once they get on the call, your barrier to capturing those leads is way, you know, way less friction.

And the less friction when it comes to marketing, the better. So I highly suggest adding a meeting scheduler, you know, acuity, schedule once as your main call to action as much as you can.

Okay.

Let’s see here.

You guys have so many good questions. I’m so sorry. I’m just trying to make sure that we’re looking through all of them.

And, oh, yes. As Susan said, anybody who submitted their website today, we will try to get to as many as they can. We’re gonna do a a series of these, so we will keep keep them in mind and, keep notes of them. Okay.

So let’s move on to this one. Let’s see what’s this one called. Precision Planning Financial Group. Alright. What’s everybody’s feeling on this one? We help clients enjoy their money.

Managing your assets as a full time job, Precision Planning Financial Group allows you to focus on what you do best.

Identify the blind spots, build your wealth, and help you create a legacy.

We follow a rigorous process beyond math, science, and data to create planning solutions that meet all your needs. Okay. So I actually I like the we help clients enjoy their money tagline, but I think the text on this is aligned in a way where there’s still so much space. Right?

We could really expand the design of this one to make it easier to read. And both the picture and the text, they tell us the what, the what the client this the, firm does, but they don’t tell us who they do it for. And remember, guys and girls, in today’s world, you know, people wanna work with someone where they can say, yes. This person works with people just like me.

They get it. They get what I’m going through. So the more specific you can be, the better.

Okay. Barry. Barry must be the, yeah, founder and president. So thank you, Barry, for submitting your site and letting us, critique it here today. I love that you have this, little quote and a photo. I actually wish you would make this bigger and larger, right, since you’re, the the person behind this brand.

And then if we scroll that that photo, somebody just said, it doesn’t feel very personal at the top, but I think, again, as you scroll down and you see something like that, it helps personalize it. We just need to design that in a way to bring Barry more to the forefront here. Okay. So then they have planning areas, and they say, they take into account all these areas of planning.

So when I look through this site just before we got on, I love the way they had this here, but one thing that I wanted to do was click on a section and learn more about that. And when I couldn’t, I thought, oh, okay. I’ll go back up to the top and learn more about it. But there was actually this was everything about each of those areas.

So there was nothing more said about any one of these particular areas, which feels actually too sparse for me. So if I were redesigning this site, I think it’s great to have a quick overview on the home page of what you can help the client with, but I think you still need a page that outlines those services in more details. And I’ve actually seen people do something where, you know, they could have a financial planning, section like this. And then when you go to learn more about financial planning, they have a blog post that goes into, you know, much more detail.

It’s not even just a page. So there’s different ways that you can accomplish that, but it feels a little light just to have, those blocks.

And then I love that they have why is holistic planning important.

Watch the video. However, one of the things we have found works really well if you’re gonna show a video is to actually have, the video like, a still from the video with a play button rather than, you know, having to click the text because we I think we’ve all just been sort of conditioned to get nervous about clicking things where we don’t know that where they’re gonna take us. So making it very obvious it’s a video. If you’re just scanning this quickly, you might not even see that. Right?

That would be real a really good, another thing to to change. Okay. And then down here, they do have some insights, which I like. If you click on one of these, it takes you to, a blog post. But, again, the last blog post was from May, and there’s only three total. So, again, I think adding more, content regularly would be really, really good.

And then they’re for calls to action, did anybody notice? So they have for clients, like, a client portal one, but then connect with us just takes you, again, to a form. So this site really it I think a lot of people said it. You know? It just doesn’t give you the warm fuzzies as somebody said. It it feels sort of impersonal, and and I’m sure, Barry, you and your team are not that way. And so infusing more of your story, the why behind matter?

Okay.

Oh, Michael, that’s so sweet. I wish you were redesigning my website.

That’s really kind. Okay. Let’s pull up another one. Alright. What’s everybody think about this home page? Gainer, financial, and insurance services.

I like, says Lauren. Alright.

Okay.

A lot of love the visual and messaging. Is the photo fuzzy? One thing to know about photos, a lot of times you’ll work with the designer, and our designers at FMG, taught me this.

The the picture in the background, sometimes we blur it a little bit and make it less crispy so that the text can pop.

So it actually helps you focus more on the message and, makes it not such a hard contrast on your eyes. So that’s why sometimes the photo can look a little blurry in the background. It is intentional.

Okay. So I’ve heard, we love the logo. We like the the, tagline.

In a world full of stress, this invites me to to to click. Absolutely.

Somebody said, what about removing the periods after stop stressing start simplifying? Good question. I would actually remove them as well on that one. Okay.

So then they say your prescription for a healthy retirement. Again, I love that they’re reincorporating in their logo. I don’t know if you noticed the logo here. They have the mountains and the trees, and that’s gonna sort of be a theme throughout this site.

So they’ve got some mountains and trees here.

For the prescription for a healthy retirement, examine, analyze, prescribe, implement, checkup, and then there’s a learn how button. And then they have this instant download. Are you in for a surprise at tax time?

Basically, what you’ll learn if you get this, and you can download it now.

I really love it because, right, I told you all you should have a visual of what they’re gonna get as well as how it benefits them to get it. Right? So all of these things are great. Actually, this one, they should do the same thing here. They have a free thought organizer. I would structure that section to look like this one so that both of those giveaways or downloads have the picture and what you get.

So, overall, I think the the homepage is doing a really, really great job.

One thing I wanted to point out, I looked at this site ahead of time under their resources section.

So they have this podcast, which is feeding into their website, which is great. But is there anything anyone notices about the podcast, that they maybe should do differently?

Okay. So I just heard tiny and outdated. What I’m specifically thinking is if you click on any one of these so they’re about thirty minute long episodes.

In thirty minutes, I’m sure they are giving away so much great information that has so many keywords that people would be searching for, but Google and other search engines cannot crawl this, widget. So every single thing they’re talking about on their podcast is not helping their website with SEO whatsoever.

So what they’d wanna do is for each one of these episode, just quickly put it in, you know, a a transcriber. They could use Descript.

You know, you upload it. It’ll give you the transcript. And then put that transcript of the podcast in, you know, text format on this page and list each podcast out as maybe a blog post or its own little, clickable section so that, a, somebody could just peruse it, but, b, the search engine can actually read the podcast. So a hundred percent, I would suggest doing that because they have so much great content that they could then be actually getting some search engine optimization for. The transcription platform, I just said Descript. There’s if you just search podcast transcription services, you will see a million of them, but Descript is a good one to, consider.

Okay. And then if we go back to the home page, we have that schedule a meeting right here, right, that we talked about that we can click on. But, again, it takes you to a form. So what I would do is, make this up, like, a button around schedule a meeting so that it catches your eye, and I’d make it a different color than this green.

So that’s the primary call to action. I’d make it whatever their second brand color is, maybe a bright orange, something like that. And then I would have it be a meeting scheduler link. And then for their secondary call to action, you know, right now, it’s learn how, and it takes you to, this page, which is great.

But I would think about those two great giveaways that they have at the bottom here. I would make those the secondary call to action instead and focus on those for capturing the leads. So two ideas for this website.

But well done. So many good things about this site that they’re doing well. Just a few that we could change. The only other thing is, meet the professionals who can help you peruse your goals. We have Roger and, Davie here. I think I’m hopefully, I’m saying it right.

I love a lot of the copy on this site. Because this seems like it’s a smaller, you know, family firm, I would consider writing these bios in first person. So it can be a little bit harder when you have, you know, thirty some people on your team. But if you are a smaller firm, rather than shy away from that, I think playing into that in a lot of ways, the the idea of this boutique feel can be part of your selling point, and it seems like they’re doing that in so many other ways. So writing your bio in first person, again, sort of reaching through that digital wall and forming that connection can be such a great strategy. And then maybe having some personal photos if Roger, you know, likes to hike or be outdoors of him doing those things that are through the rest of the site. Storytelling is just such a huge part of what we’re talking about here, and so that could work really, really well.

Okay. And Paul and John said, just in Microsoft Word, you can transcribe as well, which I didn’t know that we wanted to do. Okay. So great.

I wanted to show you so many of the sites that I will show people often as that are great examples are very niche specific, and so people will always say to me, well, what if I’m not that niche specific? You know, what do I do if I just really work on retirement income planning, for instance? So this is a great example from my friend, Dave Grant, at Retirement Matters. He has retirement simplified, fee only financial advice.

So he does have with a specialty in serving AbbVie executives, which is a particular company. But, you know, for the rest of you, it could say, with the emphasis helping, those about to enter into retirement, for instance. It It could be still be pretty general. But I love that right here on his home page, he has a video of him talking to those visiting his site.

Video if you look at any reports, video is always at the top of the charts for what consumers like when they’re learning about a brand because it’s really easy to watch a quick video, thirty seconds. And, again, you are the product we’re selling here. Right? So for someone to be able to see your face, hear your voice, it goes such a long way to building trust.

So this is really, really, well done in that in that way. And then when he was working with FMG, you know, I one of the things I love is we Okay.

We Okay. We are always telling clients this. If you have been featured in a publication or in the local news, especially if you’re a sole proprietor or a smaller business. Right? So you’re not, maybe you feel like, oh, our client’s gonna be a little bit more apprehensive.

This is such a great way to build trust and authenticity, to put a featured in section. And notice we’re not actually linking to these because those links can often break if the publications take them down, but just having the logos there can go such a long way to build that that trust. And then, again, he’s got this great, download with the visual and also what you’ll learn.

And then this one actually he also pulled in testimonials here, with a what’s this called? A rotating banner down at the bottom. So I know not everybody is in a place to use testimonials, but if you can, this is a great way to do it on your site as well just to really hammer in on that social proof. The other thing that I really like about this site and with a lot of the sites we looked at, I did wanna show is that notice that in the navigation, there’s not a million pages.

Some of the sites that people will send me, they could have ten, eleven main pages up here. You want no more than five to seven pages in your main navigation. And then when you scroll over one, right, you can have we call these parent pages up here, and these are child pages below them. You can have more child pages, but the idea is to not make it overwhelming for someone to know where to start and what to click on first.

So that’s why we want no more than five to seven main pages in the main nav. And then, oh, another thing. If you look at my tabs up here sorry. We have so many open.

Actually, can you guys see all the tabs too, or do you only see can you see all these tabs with, like, the little favicons? Okay. So these little images that are at the top of the page, those are called a favicon.

And all it really is is a small little version of your logo that identifies the page. So if someone does have a bunch of pages open, it shows that. And one thing I’ve noticed with some of the sites that were submitted, you see how this one doesn’t have one. Right?

It just, is blank. You again, just to prolong that or advance that professional feel, and, also, if somebody does have a lot of tabs open, you wanna have your favicon up there. So really, really easy to add, even in the FMG platform. You know, you can go into your page settings and add the favicon or we can do it for you.

But it’s a small little detail, but it can go a long way. And, also, again, from, an SEO perspective, do you see when I hover over these pages, it tells you the keywords that the page is all about. So that one says investment management, financial planning, PVA Financial Chicago, atomic planning, retirement planner, Kansas City, Gainer Financial and insurance services. Right?

You want to put the keywords that you most want to be found in the front of your page title. So, again, in FNG and our platform, you can do that right in the page settings, or, you know, our team can help you set that up. If you’re not using our platform in your page settings, hopefully, you can, edit that. But you just wanna make sure whatever you want people to, number one, be able to find you for when they’re searching, that it’s right there in your page title.

Okay.

I know I have been flying through these. I’m trying to get to as many as I can since so many of you submitted. And is the way I’ve been going through them helpful to everybody? Please let me know in the chat so that, this is working for everybody in the way that we’re doing it.

Okay. Awesome. People are saying this is great. Wonderful.

Okay.

Let’s see here with another one. Okay. Here we go. So this one is all of these names are just I’m so bad with it pronouncing them, so I’m so sorry. Hixson Zurcher Capital Management.

Alright. So they have a who we are, what we do, and then their blog, their webinars, contact, and then a start here button. Though this is the first we’ve seen on these pages. I love a good start here button if it works well. So let’s click it and see what happens.

Let’s get started. Oh, look how cute. That is a whole picture, I’m assuming, of their team jumping up and down, excited that you want to work with them. I love that. I think that’s so personal and, you know, gets you excited to want to do that.

But let’s go back to the home page. Do you know how much it takes to retire? Average people have no clue how much money they will need to retire comfortably and stay comfortably retired.

Don’t be average.

Download this guide now. And then what we do, they have some different, sections here from the blog, client tools. So I think that this up here is, you know, really well written.

But maybe instead of immediately go to download now, talking more about specifically who they serve and how is what I would do so that you’re not distracting people with the download, right away. And, again, changing this to more you language versus we language here would be good, to just sort of restructure the site.

Okay. I am gonna, pause for a second put together for you all that you’ll get, I did include some of the really well done websites that we looked at, that our team has worked on and links to them. So if you want to click over to them and check them out and see how they check all the boxes for a site that’s well designed, that has great messaging, easy to scan, two calls to action, you know, definitely look at those. And we, again, as I mentioned at the top of the hour with FMG, now have this new premium website offering, which, somebody had asked about twenty over ten in FMG. So twenty over ten, which is the company that my husband and I and two others founded years and years ago, was acquired by FMG. And one of the things that we were really excited about was the visual editing capabilities that we had at twenty over ten.

That is all now part of FMG, and these premium websites are just absolutely gorgeous that our team is building. So if you haven’t checked it out in a while and you’re interested in getting more help, certainly take a look.

One of my biggest suggestions would be if you, you know, really, really want marketing help, which I know so many do, is to combine the premium website with our do it for for me marketing program. So with that program, we, every month, you get an editorial calendar that Susan Theater, our CMO, and myself and our team create, thinking about what’s happening in the month, what are people talking about, what kind of, you know, pieces are gonna work well in email, in blog posts for your website, in social media. And then we also if timely content is needed, we put that out as well. And so what’s so great about this is, you know, you’re gonna combine that premium website, all the things we talked about today, with monthly marketing, that is done for you with a marketing, strategist.

So you have one person assigned to you that is your go to person every month executing on your behalf. So if you haven’t checked it out in a while, I certainly hope that you would. We find that advisers really do love our do it for me program, which we’re so thrilled, about.

And if you are interested in whether you’re a current FMG customer and you’re like, I need to update my website, which that happens all the time. Right? If it’s been a few years, we need to keep it updated and keep it fresh. Or if you’re on another platform and you’re realizing this is a better option for me or you just wanna explore it more, Either way, if you put your phone up to this QR code or you can go to that, web link there, you can book a time with our team, whether you’re currently an FMG customer or brand new, and we can help take a look at your site.

Our team can talk about, updates and changes that we can help make, and give you all the info that you need. Alright. So I’m gonna go back. I’ll leave that up for a second.

And, again, if you specifically want to chat with me, I I know I had put my social media, Samantha, Russell or Samantha twenty on Twitter. Certainly feel free to connect with me there as well. Okay.

Somebody’s saying if I already have a website, can I use FMG’s marketing? Yes. So we separated the our marketing, monthly marketing program, do it for me, and just our content offering from websites. So we sell them different, individually now. It used to be all bucketed together. So if you have a website with another provider and you’re happy with it, but you just wanna do maybe the do it for me program, then absolutely, you can, do that. So certainly reach out to learn more.

Okay.

Oh, thank you to everyone saying that this was worth the time. I really, really appreciate it. If you thought it was helpful, please let us know. And our plan is to do a series like this so that every month, we’ll just pull up more websites and go through them.

If you think we should keep it up, let us know. I know we didn’t get through, you know, even we only got through a sliver, but we would like to do even more. So thank you everyone who came today. I’m gonna go back and look through if there’s other questions I can answer.

If if you had a question that I didn’t answer, if you wanna re pop it into the q and a too so it’s easier to find, that might be helpful.

Okay.

Okay. So many people are saying, thank you, that this was super helpful. I love that, which I don’t see actually any other questions, so you guys are awesome. Thank you for joining today. I hope we, get to connect with you again soon, and we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody.