Website Makeovers: Before-and-After Look at Website Makeovers and Best Practices

Ladies and gentlemen, the webcast will now begin. Over to you, Scott.

And thank you very much, Raven, and hello, everyone. My name is Scott Ferguson, and welcome today’s webcast and panel discussion entitled website makeovers, real examples of top advisers’ websites.

This event is brought to you by ThinkAdvisor, and it’s sponsored by FMG.

Before I begin, I’d like to go over some basic housekeeping items about the webcast console. This event is completely interactive and features many customizable functions. Every window that you currently see from the slide window to the q and a panel can either be enlarged or collapsed. So if you’d like to change the look and feel of your console, please go ahead.

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If we do not get to your question, you may receive an email response after today’s event. And now for today’s topic and the reason why everyone is here today, website makeovers, real examples of top advisers’ websites.

In an e money survey of more than two thousand, consumers, a staggering ninety eight percent of the respondents reported that the financial adviser’s website is important or very important when choosing an adviser. Your website is the most important marketing asset that you have, and you could be a make or break prospect’s decision to give you their business. It’s their first impression, and the website determines whether you get that first meeting and sets the tone for the rest of your brand. Now leading our panel discussion today to discuss this important issue is Susan Theater. She is the chief marketing and experience officer at FMG.

And with that, Susan, I’ll turn it over to you to start.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And hi, everybody. I so wish I could see you all and, interact with you, but this is the world we live in. And, we’re super excited to be here. And I this is the first time we have ever done a website webinar like this, and I think it’s gonna be really cool. We are going to do a live makeover.

So I will tell you more as we get to the introduction of one of our advisers, Amy.

And just to tee it up, so we are doing before and afters, and I am joined by Brad Davis. So I’m the as was mentioned, I’m the chief marketing experience officer at FMG, and, my passion in life is helping advisers with their marketing. And, Brad, do you wanna give yourself just a quick introduction?

Hi, everyone. My name is Brad Davis. I’m the director of web design at FMG and tasked to provide beautiful looking websites for all of our advisers. And, my goal going into twenty twenty four is really to enhance and change how financial adviser websites work in the market.

Awesome. And I love working with Brad. It’s been just a pleasure, collaborating on just continuing to improve what we do for advisers and making you guys all look great. Like, one of our my favorite little taglines we have is our expertise is showing off yours. So with that, I wanna start with a poll so we can get everybody engaged. Okay. When was the last time you had a professional update your website?

And by that, I mean, make, you know, significant changes to either modernize design, better convey your value proposition with different copy, anything you did to maybe help increase conversion. So not just you went in and updated, you know, a particular page, but working with a professional to update your website. So, I would love it if you guys could all give me your answers. Was it within the last year, within one to three, within three to five, or over five years?

And I will wait and see the results come in. Hopefully, everybody is taking the poll.

Let’s see. ThinkAdvisor, are you seeing any come in? I’m not sure if I’m not seeing that little bar you mentioned. So I just wanna make sure I don’t wait too long to show the results.

We have any alright. Well, I’m just gonna oh, there we go. Okay. So I can refresh the results, and let’s see. Perfect. Okay.

So we have twenty percent. So one in one in five of you updated within last year. Congratulations. That’s amazing.

And thirty five percent in the last one to three. So that is actually better than if I would have guessed, I actually would have thought that that might have been a lower percentage. So we’re at, just almost fifty fifty, but with a majority that have done something in the last three years. But those that are in the three to five or five plus years, I think in particular, you’ll see some great ideas on this presentation.

And even those that did it more recently because, Amy actually, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna show Amy’s website. And Amy’s it has been built pretty recently, but we’re going to go in and just say, okay. If we’re coming in with a fresh perspective, what could we do differently? So with that, I would love to introduce Amy Million, and I do love your name, which I’m sure you get lots of comments about being in this business.

But, Amy, give us a little bit of an overview of you, your business, and, anything you’d like to share with the audience that you think would be relevant before we start sharing and complementing as well as providing suggestions about your website.

Thank you, for having me. I’m anxious to see what you what you guys see and do.

My name is Amy Million, and I’m a wealth advisor, based out of Norman, Oklahoma.

I work virtually. So one thing that I’ve been trying to do is make my website into, well, an online office.

I’ve used the FMG tools, I think, as much as I can, and I’ve used the design services. But one of the things I was struggling with was, the copy and making the website different, not like every other financial adviser around, especially as more people are using FMG because you can see it in the disclosures. I don’t want a cookie cutter website. So I’m anxious to see what you guys see and how you can make it better.

Oh, I love that. Brad, do you like that tee up?

Oh, I love it.

That was a good one.

Alright. Go for it.

So the last thing let’s see. I think do I have a oh, nope. Go back. So with that, I think I’m gonna hand over the reins to Brad who is going to pull up Amy’s website. And the last thing we want any adviser to have is a cookie cutter website.

So our passion has been in enhancing the FMG website process. And this this webinar is applicable to anybody regardless of what platform you use. But just as background, we have been focused on how to iterate and evolve our website, building process to ensure that we are not building cookie cutter sites, that we are creating that customization, that we are weaving in the copywriting that really differentiates you as well as the design skills and bringing best practices. So we’re just gonna share some of those best practices so that everybody here hopefully can look at their website and find ways that they might be able to make little or or big tweaks that’ll make a big difference. So let’s start. We, hopefully, everybody can see this is Amy’s home page, which I think looks beautiful. Like, the first impression, I’m like, this definitely looks different.

But, Brad, let’s let’s obviously, we love lots of things, but if we were to make some changes, let’s let’s start dissecting where we could make improvements, little tweaks that could make a big difference. And I’m gonna ask you to start with the navigation, which, is sort of the first thing that I look at when I’m evaluating a site. What do you what do you see here?

When I first see it, I think, I wanna make sure that we’re doing a couple of things. One, we have a number of primary menus items at the top. We wanna stick within about five to six of those. We don’t really wanna go beyond that specifically.

But more importantly, we want to clearly communicate which each item is supposed to do. And I think one of the things I noticed right when I got in here is two things. One, our clients. When you actually click into our clients, it actually talks about who Amy serves.

And we wanna make sure that that is clearly communicated to the end customer, making sure and saying, okay. Who do you actually serve?

And so that they can self select or self resonate directly with who who they are and making sure that Amy can serve them. So that’s probably one that I see right off the top.

The other Why don’t you just, like, just as as we’re going or do you wanna go through all of them and then show how we could make the changes?

Absolutely. I was gonna go through one more, and then we can dive in and show how we can, edit the menu.

So No.

The thing is summarize, I think that all that you’re saying is and I I totally agree, our clients is from a me perspective.

That’s, you know, Amy talking about our clients. We wanna make it all about your prospective clients and your and, you know, the people that are visiting. We wanna speak to them. So who we serve, just it’s a slight tweak, but we we like that better than saying our clients. So who we serve feels, just more of a connective tissue to the visitor and and ensuring that they they see themselves in that language and in those, various descriptions. Okay. What else would you modify?

The other thing that you want to always have on your website as you navigate. So if I scroll down a little bit, you’ll see that the menu always stays with you. That’s something that at F and G, we want to have them the customers’ ability to be able to navigate the website very easily and effectively.

But we also want the advisers to be able to, convert. We want them to take the first step in the journey. And the other thing that I didn’t see here on the website was a call to action. We wanna make sure that the end customer has a clear step, clear next step whenever they’re on any page of the website and navigating specifically. So while login is prominent for feat for frequent users, returning users, we wanna build websites for new users that are coming to the website. So that’s gonna be critical to make sure we have a call to action up at the top.

So let’s go back so that we’re hovering on the home page.

And I think one of the other things we were thinking about is a a great, thing to add or at least think about adding on your website is an FAQ.

And, strangely, we don’t see a ton of those, but yet they are just such a great place. A, it enables you to use the words that your clients under prospective clients are using. What are the questions they’re asking? Because those are also the things that they are googling, so that helps with your SEO. But in addition, you know, when advisers debate whether to include their pricing, I think it’s their pros, their cons, where do we net out. An FAQ section is just a great place to put that without having to have a, you know, a screaming nav bar that says pricing.

So think thinking about adding an FAQ was something that we were gonna recommend to Amy, but that would put too many bars. You know, that would that would put too many things in the nav. So, Brad, you and I had talked about maybe taking resources and putting blog and FAQ under resources, which would collapse, you know, have a cleaner nav, but also, logically, I think both blog and FAQ fit in resources. So maybe let’s let’s show how easy we’ve made our platform to edit and just show what what a difference it looks like when, any adviser on this call might make changes to their nav.

Absolutely. So this is the FMG dashboard. As over here on the left hand side, we give you a bunch of tools to be able to make edits in real time directly on your website. So right here, I’m under the navigation menu. So as we talked a little bit about, we want to change some of the labels on some of the navigations, and we make it very easy to do that. All you have to simply do is click right here, and it’ll allow us to change our clients to who we serve.

Making it very even do that, I think.

For very first person.

Then we talked about also, kind of collapsing it a little bit. We have a little bit too many items here. So blog, blog, you can put under resources as it is content that we want to be able to feed the customer, and it’s a great way to be nesting it directly underneath that. So easily drag and drop in that section right down there. Makes it very easy.

And if we wanted to add an FAQ section, how easy is that under resources?

So what we’ll simply do here is we’ll just do an FAQ section right here. We can add it as a parent item or we can drop it down under resources as well. So we’re simply going to just add it right under resources.

I’m just gonna choose the app page for now, because we don’t have that page quite in here yet. And then we’ll drop it right there, and it’ll be the first navigation right above it.

Very cool. And then how do you how are you gonna add a call to action and maybe tell us what you might do with the login?

Absolutely. So what I’m gonna do here, since login is an external link, so most of the time that has become a what we call a utility link for frequent users. What I’m gonna do here, since I can’t edit the external link, I’m just gonna delete it really quick, and then I’m gonna add my call to action. So I’m gonna do schedule a call, and I’m gonna link that directly to as a primary, and then I’m going to link it to our contact page.

And I am just gonna add, do you know that ninety seven percent of website visit visitors do not convert on the first visit?

So it is so important to make sure that the nav is clean, giving them a reason to give you information, but also having multiple CTAs. So that’s what we’re we’re trying to do here with Amy, and I think all of you should audit your site. Amy has this one CTA called let’s get started, but we’re adding a secondary one. And, Brad, you’ll you’ll show us how that looks, as you publish this the changes you made.

Absolutely. Let me go ahead and just publish. And now you see that we have client login has jumped up into the top bar to become a utility link. That’s for links that you have that are secondary to the primary navigation.

We’ve now updated who we serve.

We’ve nested blog under resources. We’ve got us down into five titles and one button, and that’ll now become our primary call to action.

Amy, what do you think?

That looks great.

Isn’t that good?

It sounds more ways that well, there’s more I I just learned more things.

Yeah. And I just think the nav looks so much cleaner, and then the schedule call really pops. I’m gonna just ask Brad being a design expert.

What do you think about the color of the call to action and, the alignment? Maybe we’ll just talk about color.

Well, there’s there’s a couple things. Color is very psychological. You different colors attract different, attentions. Right? Yeah. Hunger and excitement.

Mhmm. In this case, she’s using green, which is a brand color and something that Amy really loves, and that’s part of the logo. So we definitely don’t want to change that. But oftentimes, when we get a lot of logos from advisers or we get brand assets, there is no, accent color.

A color that stands out, that creates a little disruption, and makes that brain start to, trigger and says, that’s important. That’s different from a brand color. I need to draw some attention to that. So that’s one of the things when I first landed on the website, or even now you can tell, we added that button, but it really doesn’t come out and say, hey.

I’m important. I need to get this attention. And that’s where I would probably introduce an accent color.

So show us the difference if if you picked a different color. Amy, you’ve said you like purple, I think. Or what are some of your favorite colors, Amy?

Well, we can’t do red here.

That’s good for the front doors, Yeah.

Not websites.

I like purple go with this to go with this. My thinking just in everything with my business was really forest tones.

Mhmm. Purples and greens and you know, I don’t want any brown on here, but just more natural. And I think it just feels good.

Yeah. So let’s try that, Brad. Show us how we could and I think, you know, for everybody that’s listening, the color of your call to action buttons really does matter.

We all there are colors that will pop more and draw the eye more than others. So experimenting even, and having others take a look at your site and tell them what and tell you what they think is is a great way to do that. But let’s just show what a difference, purple, for example, might make instead of this accent green.

Absolutely. So I’m gonna go to the home page because one of the other items here that we will jump into in a second is we wanna make sure if this were to we would change this into the primary product. We want that to stand out too. So I’m gonna go to the home page, and we’re gonna be changing that button specifically.

K. So what I’m gonna do is go right in here. Our tool site gives you the ability to be able to change the button at a global level, but also an ability to be able to change it specifically at a individual level. So they gave me said one of her favorite colors is purple, which is a power color.

We definitely want to introduce that and it’s an accent color to the green. It’s going to stand out. So what I’m gonna simply do here is I’m gonna just go ahead and add the background color, pre established purple that I wanna use. And then I’m just gonna sharpen it up with a little bit of white, and text.

And then I’m gonna go ahead and click done. Cool. And I’m gonna save it as draft.

Give it one second to load, and then I’m gonna go back onto the front end. I’m just gonna refresh my screen, and there you see we have introduced purple.

Wow. Honestly, the white too. You know, instead you can see the difference between the schedule a call and let’s get started just by using the white font, to pop against that purple. But I will definitely say and you can still see the client login, the difference between the purple and the green. And I can’t see everybody in the audience, but, Amy, do you think this pops more?

It really does.

Yeah. And you’ve got your two two calls to action, and we’ve got the cleaner nav. So let’s move to the hero.

I’m curious. So this is a beautiful picture, and I love everybody that knows me. I do love the blacks and gray. I think it’s super sophisticated. But I wonder, Brad, if you have any thoughts about the hero image and and what you look for and advice you give and anything you might suggest to Amy.

I think the big thing and I don’t know if you mentioned this, Susan, but you wanna definitely pass the sniff test, the three to five second test. I think once you land on Amy’s site today, you definitely get captivated. Amy’s got a great personal headshot of herself. It resonates with people immediately.

She has a clear call to action right there. But I think there are some ways that we can enhance this a little bit. I think the sniff test also plays into who’s coming to your website, and we wanna make sure that the her end customers, the people that she’s targeting, when they get there, they can see themselves in immediately in in the website. And that’s gonna be very, very critical.

So I have an image that I preselected, that I can absolutely upload here. I think this image is still very relevant. I think maybe something like this could be shifted over to the about page because Amy does have a great personal feel. She’s got a great presentation of herself, and she just has a great headshot here to be able to use.

That’s exact Amy, that’s what I was thinking too is I am thinking this is the hero on your about us page or about page. And I love what Brad said. I’m just gonna repeat it for everybody.

The hero image should when your visitors, you know, hit your page, they want you want them to have a visceral connection to that image, you know, positively. And whether it’s seeing themselves in it or having it, you know, resonate with them is very important. So let’s see what Brad’s picked for that. Just to flip the photo of Amy, we love it, but thinking maybe we put that on the about and we try a different image on the home page.

Absolutely. So I’m gonna go and take this.

As I did to change the color of the button, we have the ability to be able to simply update the background image. So it gives us that flexibility, which I love about our system. And then I’m gonna go in here, and like I said, I have preselected a new photo.

Now the one thing I always loved about Amy’s website is she has a lot of personal photography, and that’s that’s great. I’d say if you have personal photography, professional photography that you have shot, definitely, definitely use it, especially of clients and engaging and things like that. But it’s okay to incorporate stock images as long as you want to resonate. So a lot of, customers that I’m able to work with are with women. So I wanted to definitely incorporate that in here as well and make sure that we showed, happy and successful and somebody who is is actually, presenting the picture of success. And that’s ultimately what we want our design to be able to do. So, again, still using some of the assets that Amy has built in the default template, but simply creating a nice eye catching image, to be able to do so.

Yeah. And I I mean, photography is extremely subjective.

I do love purse I love, you know, real photography that brings your own personality of your team and others to light, but also, you know, even just seeing a potential client in you know, for somebody that’s visiting the site, I do think this really resonates.

And we will talk about how your copy also needs to connect with the image and with your value proposition. And, maybe we we move to that. So we have been talking about focus on what matters most and the subhead with advanced technology.

And Brad and I were were batting around. We we asked Amy several questions, which is part of our website building process now. We ask questions to get really at the heart of your story, the heart of and this is what you can do yourself. Really getting at your why, getting at how I’ll I’ll run through the questions really quickly. Like, how would your clients how would your best clients describe what you do for them to a friend?

How would you describe your ideal clients? Why’d you get into the business? What’s your story?

If a prospect said they were choosing between you and another adviser, why you? What would you say? So we have a series of, I think, ten questions we ask like that. And I had Amy go through this exercise, and we came up with a couple headlines and subheads that we think might work better than focus on what matters most.

And I’m gonna do a poll and would love if everybody will take just about, hopefully, you know, thirty seconds to read these different headlines and subheads, and we’d love you to vote. Amy is okay with this. We’d love you to give us your input on which ones you guys like the most. So I’m gonna push this to the audience.

Hopefully, everybody sees these, poll questions. I’m gonna read them, and if you could just vote on your favorite.

One and this is this is again to go on the hero page to replace the focus on what matters and that subhead under it.

Feel empowered.

Take control.

With expertise and compassion, we help make informed decisions. We help you make informed decisions.

Inform. We help you make informed financial choices during life’s transitions, including divorce, loss, retirement.

Number two, find control in life’s transitions.

Guiding your finances with care and expertise through divorce, loss, retirement, and more.

You’re confidant for financial well-being through life’s transitions.

With empathy and clarity, we guide your financial decisions through divorce, loss, retirement, and other transitions.

So what this follows is we want everybody when they lot when they land on your site, we want them to understand who you serve and what emotional and outcome benefits that you provide. So I’m gonna show I’m gonna view results. Hopefully, everybody’s voted.

Oh, let’s see. I have zero. Do we have no votes?

Oh, here we go. Awesome. Okay.

Alright. And it’s still coming in. So, Amy, we may take this, and everybody, we’re gonna send out in a couple weeks, we’re gonna send out Amy’s updated site. We’re gonna go through and completely audit it.

We’re just showing a portion today. But, potentially, you will all have had an impact on Amy’s homepage hero, headline. So fifty percent, Amy, are saying feel empowered, take control, which I really like. That really speaks to me.

I think it speaks to everybody who seeks advice from a financial adviser. That’s what they want. So, I really like that. I’m gonna why don’t I send it back to Brad, and let’s make that update.

Let’s change the header. Is that all and all you have to do is just click on the live site and just what we call visual editing. And this is a a tool that we, capitalized by this was something that twenty over ten had built, and we’ve embedded into the FMG website tool. So pretty cool.

Alright. Let’s see the difference when we change that out.

So go ahead and add those in. Update. Give a refresh. There we go.

Awesome. Amy, reaction?

That looks so good. That was the one I like too.

I really love that. So and I think, you know, the I will just say from a photography perspective, I also really like motion. We’ve been using a lot of b roll, and I we do have a an after that we will be introducing after we’re done with Amy’s site, and you’ll see that. I think b roll is really, really fun, and that’s something else that we’ve been playing a lot with. So I think we’ll continue to work on the hero image, but you can see, I think, the difference between having Amy versus seeing the client in themselves.

Let’s go with the flow. So if you scroll down, what happens next?

Holistic wealth management.

And everybody that knows me knows that we’re we’re trying to do away with buzzwords, and I think there was actually a Persian study that spoke to the fact that clients generally don’t like to or they don’t respond to the word holistic. So we’re probably gonna change that. But going from the hero to the wealth management services that you provide, a, I’m wondering if you see any opportunities from a color and layout perspective, Brad, and also what you think should follow the hero from a flow perspective.

Well, I’m gonna address the color first. I think, like I said, color creates, psychological impact on the eyes and the brain. So when you look at the site, if I’m gonna just continue to scroll down, it’s it’s very warm, very dark in terms of using that black and then kinda going into a gradient. And it does kinda lighten up a little bit.

But what I would love to do and and what’s a great way to present a high end or great flow of assign, create some focal point is just using that neutral colors, like using white, using light gray. So what I would what I would recommend here is transitioning from the header section into the first section. I definitely say maybe transition into white. It’s gonna soften it up a little bit.

It’s gonna make it easier to read.

But going into really just blends right now. There’s it there’s no, I guess, visual break to call your attention more to the next section, I think.

Correct. And we also want to make sure from a information perspective, we want to communicate what is the next thing that we want our customers to be able to see. And that goes back into a little bit of who we serve. We talked about this.

We want our customers to understand that, okay, when they land on this website, we’ve already updated the imagery. We’ve created an empowerful headline, a great sub headline. We presented a call to action. We’ve created a flow with the navigation.

But we want our customers as they continue to flow down and they pass that sniff test to self select. We want them to know that we service specific types of the industry. So leaning back into the who we serve section, what I would do is bring some of this to the forefront of the the website. Bring it to the homepage so we know that we focus on women.

We target educators and continue down to that piece to be able to make the website really pop.

Yeah. Cool. Why don’t you show that? I’m reading through some questions. We have, thirty questions. So while you do that, I’m going to see if we can if I can summarize as many as possible.

So you’re gonna switch this.

So very cool. Okay.

Yep. So what I’m gonna do here is I’m gonna simply, bring some of the images. So I’ve already saved some of these images that come from the who we serve page. And we have this cool flip box that’s on the homepage right now that will allow us to be able to not only showcase their imagery and who it is, but also bring some of that content to the forefront.

And that’ll allow us to be able, like I said, communicate who they are, and allow customers to be able to self select. So what I’m gonna do now is just bring some of these over. I’m not gonna bring them all, just bring a couple over so we can show how easy it is to be able to communicate this. So this is for women here.

And then right down here, we have some of the text. So actually, that makes a great segue for me as I need to make sure that I do change the background color on this. So I’m gonna start with the head here. I’m gonna switch everything to the white background, and then I’m gonna switch all the text because the text won’t necessarily change over.

Like I said, you can do this on a section by section basis. And if you don’t know the hex codes, you can use this, WYSIWYG right here.

It’s a little toolbar that allows you to be able to select colors.

Even being in marketing, I’m like, oh, the hex number. I don’t know what that is. Yeah. Actually, one of the common themes I’m getting in questions is if somebody had an FMG website, do they have to make all of the changes that you’re showing themselves?

Or, you know, it looks it’s relatively easy. For me, I think, you know, updating the text is super easy. You just click on the box and type. But for some of these others, do you know, what if somebody wanted to make some changes like this to their website? What is the best way to do it? Can we support them in any way?

Absolutely. They can contact our support team, with making updates. We wanna go through that step. So our support team, if you go into your dashboard, at the very bottom, I’m just gonna hit and click exit. There’s some phone number and information, when you’re on your dashboard that you can call and bring some of these changes there. So if you wanna change backgrounds, you wanna change colors, you can do that as well.

Awesome. So I love the break in the white and then bringing over the who we serve, and that matches. Again, it flows so nicely because it’s also tying into your headline and subhead, which we always say it’s so important to talk to make sure that in that five second test, which is what you really have to grab somebody’s attention, maybe three seconds on your home page, that you are very quickly getting to who you serve and what it is, what problems you solve. And I love that she’s got these segments here, that I think are really specific and and, obviously, those that fit those segments, it speaks to them.

Some questions about, are we on WordPress? And I believe I I know the answer, so I’m gonna just say it. But if you have anything to add, Brad, FMG is not on WordPress. It is a proprietary platform. So, if you were on WordPress and wanted, to work with us, it is a new site. Anything to add, Brad?

No. I think what makes FMG very powerful and what I’ve loved about the company is the fact that the marketing tools are within the system, but it’s also connected to one quick compliance.

So maybe it’s connected to Perfect.

Yeah.

I’m just gonna take you through this. So you’ve made a bunch of changes here today.

Yeah.

For Amy’s sake, we are not making these go live, Amy. We’re just we’re just changing them within the system. But if Amy wanted to make them live, talk talk through the button she pushes and what happens on the back end with compliance.

Absolutely. So you’ve been seeing some of the some of the updates I’ve been making. You’re gonna be presented with a couple options right here in the top right. Preview, which is gonna allow you to see the front end, publish, which allows you to submit directly to compliance and save draft.

I’ve been saving everything to draft one because Amy does have a live website. But two, I want to save them. I wanna make sure that the changes are perfect. So if you notice, I’ve been kind of flipping back and forth throughout while Susan was talking to make sure I’m making edits to the live site and kind of flipping back and forth.

So you’ll save that to draft.

But what makes it so powerful and makes our system so great is the fact that everything here is saved into your draft. You have an archive of all the updates you make. And all you simply have to do here to publish them to compliance is select this button right here. Now I’m gonna hit publish.

Don’t worry, Amy. They won’t go live. But I’m gonna hit publish and it’s gonna give you this option to submit it directly to compliance. By me clicking yes, all of these updates will be submitted to compliance.

Now they won’t go live on the website until they’re approved, but this gets you in this gets edits completed, save to draft.

You can add them altogether, and then one click, you can submit them all And that that really is, for those that are, you know, affiliated with firms that or, you know, in their own, firm want to have that compliance workflow, it’s huge because you don’t have to like, if you’re on WordPress and you’re with a broker dealer, you likely have to, you know, take a screenshot and upload it into an ad review system.

With this, it’s all you know, you push that unless compliance has any issues and has comments or wants changes. It just goes live. So from the time you make the change, you push the button, and there you go. I’ve had some questions.

It’s important I think everybody understands it’s important to have your site work for mobile as well. And just a a quick because we are getting tight on a little tight on time. I wanna make sure we get to Clay. Does, everything we’re doing translate well to mobile?

Absolutely. Our all of our sites are mobile responsive. So I’m gonna do a little trick.

What I can do is simply click right here and just show you, if the site Cool. If I do wanna get it down into a mobile width, I can absolutely do that and everything else.

Wow. That is cool.

And I’m just gonna answer some other questions while you’re going fast.

Yes. Everybody will get a recording of this website as well as the slides that we’re going to share.

And this is for those that are, familiar with FMG. This is the pre this is the we are showing the new enhanced premium website offering. Alright. Keep going. So I just scroll from the top to the bottom there. I just love that we’ve changed that. Amy, what do you think about making that next section white?

This looks so much better.

Yeah. It’s really I mean, just small tweaks. We’ve it’s been twenty minutes. So, and ADA compliant is another question.

That is something yes. I’ll let you go, Brad.

Absolutely. So one of the things that I and I actually did this slightly on purpose.

You mentioned in terms of using white on the purple logo. Yeah. Now that’s an eighty that’s one of the most biggest things, buttons in terms of text on that buttons or, white text on black backgrounds. Yes.

We do keep a d I eighty eight a compliance in mind, especially when it comes to colors. So, like, this button, the white text on that purple may run into some some eighty eight compliance issues. It may not be the quality that we need it to be. So we may switch that back to black.

We would run that test and to confirm that it is ADA compliance.

All of our structures in terms of our headlines, text, and images come with, the necessary coding that if you do have, assess accessibility lock or you do have ADA compliance to review the website, they will all pass those tests.

That is cool. Okay. Last question, and we’re gonna move on. We’ll get Amy’s final thoughts, and then we are gonna move on to Clay to show you an after.

The question was, if you are building a new website, let’s say your current website is with WordPress or something, and you you have you’re like, I I need a new website, and I love the compliance workflow and all the, you know, everything you’re showing me here.

Do I lose all my SEO?

How does that work?

No. So what we do is we’re able to review the existing site app on your current website today, and be able to transition those page structures over. Now we do have couple transitions. So, like, our system on, our website uses blog inside of the blog URL.

What we would do is we would create a through and redirect to be able to support that. So there’s a little bit of an impact when you do transition the systems from one system to the next. That’s just the natural cause of moving the system. But we do everything in terms of, a transition nature to make sure that you have the appropriate three zero one redirects in place.

You have your title and description tags on the appropriate pages, as well as your copy come over into the FMG website. So we do everything we can to be able to present that.

That is awesome. Okay. I wanna give Clay enough time and, I’m gonna push to the audience our we’re going back to our slides very quickly.

We have now reached the part of our webinar where we’re gonna move to the after. So I’m gonna introduce, Clay Franklin, and he was nice enough to be part of our pilot when we were testing and really, you know, refining this enhanced premium website offering. And his website is an example of this, process. So, Clay, I would love it if you’d introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about, what you were hoping to accomplish with the website, a little bit about your story, and, how you’re feeling and and whether, you know, whether this process met your expectations and any advice you might have to the audience.

Clay, are you on mute maybe?

Anybody else hear Clay, or is it just me?

No. He the audio is off.

He’s oh, I see Clay.

He’s smiling.

Is your mute no.

Uh-oh. It’s not working. Alright. Well, you know what? If it starts working, we’re gonna come back to you.

But we can show the website, and you can cheer on the pages that you like and give us, like, hand signals. So, Brad, back to you. Why don’t we bring up Clay’s website?

Awesome. Let me pull it up real quick. Share my screen again.

Oh, somebody while we’re going, somebody asked that I I mentioned I don’t love holistic. And are there words that I like better? I have a whole web. We have a actually, we have, we have a handout on this.

I know my team is listening. We should send out the handout that we have on this. I have a whole bunch of before and after, messaging that I really like. So I see and I I took a lot of headlines from different websites that I randomly found on the web on the Internet.

So one thing I saw a lot was, we help clients save for, you know, a successful retirement or something like that. Or and so an alternative is you help clients live we help clients live a retirement where their choices aren’t dictated by money, or, we create comprehensive financial plans. Instead of that, we create road maps to help clients rest easy knowing they’re on track. Super high EQ.

So we will send, a copy of I think I have, like, twenty before and after phrases, that I like. So back to you, Brad. Gosh. I just love this site.

Yeah. So so we Clay came into FMG, and we, immediately asked him, would he be one of our pilot candidates for our new premium process? And, basically, what the the upgrade that we’ve made to the system is we’ve created a tape of website specifically for Clay’s business.

And what we wanted to do is make sure that his site was a little bit dated.

They had a lot of copy that was very, very old and needed to have some significant updates. But what we wanted to do, and we’ve done some of this with Amy’s website, is clearly communicate what they do and create a visually stunning website. And I think we’ve done that. I think one of the things you mentioned, Susan, which I think is something that’s gonna really be very effective in a lot of our new builds is is using this background video. It’s eye catching. It passes that sniff test.

We’ve checked all of them.

Be in the convertible driving down this beautiful road.

I’ve And you Pretty cool.

Where where that you wanna know where that came from? One, I think Clay is this is their business is a little bit unique because they have multiple locations, one in Michigan and one here. But he’s like, you know, we have that history. We have that equity of being, you know, from Detroit and having a car factory, and and that was what a springboard for us.

Like, we’re gonna find Oh. This amazing couple that are driving this video. And we provided some some examples to Clay and his team, and this is what we landed on. And it really worked really well with the overall design of the website.

So talk about some of the so some of the decisions you made, obviously, you’ve got this, you’ve got the multiple calls to action, and you’ve used the goldish color, which I think is great. Why did you choose black font instead of white and then white for the obviously, that you needed the white for the headline, but curious about, any thought process around that and what you recommend in terms of the font color on those, buttons. I guess the color is light enough for the button that you need the black. That’s probably easy.

It was. It was an ADA. We what the white on the gold wasn’t necessarily passing it. We could either darken the button a little bit, which would take us a little bit kind of out of the theme that we wanted to create for the style here. So that’s why we went in with a little bit of the black. As you mentioned, the secondary call to action here, which is a knockout button, we wanted to make sure that that was secondary. We didn’t wanna take away from the original primary call to action, which is build a call.

And can you why don’t you show us, as you scroll down, I think, just showing just talk us through your strategy here, and I think everybody, hopefully, will have the same reaction I did. It’s so clean. It the each of what I what we call the blocks is you’re building a website. It’s all about blocks. It’s the hero block and then the next block and then the next block. And I just as you scroll up, there’s variety in the layout of each block. There’s a variety in the background from white to a light light gray to using iconography.

We’ve got a a call to action lead lead magnet button that is timed to come in. You have the persistent call to action button that is now at the top, book discovery call. It’s, it just it just is easy on the eyes. It just flows really nicely, and it ends with a ready to get started.

The other thing it’s nice that, we’re definitely gonna look to do for Amy, and I think everybody should, think about this as if you go to the bottom, Brad, where we’ve got the what clients say. Yeah. You know, every firm has different policies and procedures as it relates to the testimonial rule within the mark you know, the SEC marketing rule. But, I I don’t think I know any firm that doesn’t allow advisers to show, like, as seen in.

You know? So let’s say you’ve you’ve had an article in wealth management, even an industry publication, or any, you know, awards like being barons or any of the other ones, you can, as you see here, Forbes best in state. This is the Shook one.

Showing that social proof is so powerful, and we definitely like to incorporate that in the website. If if not down here, actually, sometimes we’re putting that as the second thing depending on how many, sort of accolades you have. But for those that have policies that permit testimonials, follow the policies. But if you can add those to your website, it’s really powerful.

Yeah.

What else would you wanna point out on this home page?

I think the big things is, as I mentioned earlier, is we wanna make sure throughout the website, and you will see this if I were to click some of the interim pages, we want to be able to continue the flow. So you start with the communication in terms of what you do and how you do it. And once you get to the bottom, right, before they get to the footer, we sign it off with another call to action.

And that’s where I connect the dots with the button color at the top as well as the Oh, yeah.

That was so nice.

Bottom. So, again, I’m triggering that psychological piece of, okay, that gold color is important. I get to the end, kind of signifies, oh, this is another important section. And we carry this across on every page of the website as we do have the button up there to communicate what the next step of that journey is.

Well, I think, Clay, are you live?

Yep. Can you hear me now?

Yes. Totally. Alright.

So we just fan. Fantastic.

Your your website.

Thank you for letting us do that.

Tell us now. Give us a little bit of your background. And, as I said, you know, tell us about your website and what you like about it and anything that you’d like to share for those that are thinking about updating their websites, lessons learned, or just advice you might have to the audience.

Yes. Absolutely. So a little bit about me and about our firm. I’m a financial adviser at the Investment Consulting Group.

We have about six hundred million under management across five advisers headquartered in, the Detroit Metropolitan area, but we actually recently expanded to Nashville, Tennessee, and I head up that that office. So Awesome. Essentially, a little and then a background about our firm. After fifteen years at, Wells Fargo, Fine Net, we transitioned to Ozayic, which prompted this relationship with, with FMG. And right in the midst of that transition is when we, began this website process.

What advice do you have to those that are on this call?

Yeah. So thinking about advice, I think something you’ve hit on, but understanding your your message and what you wanna convey, before you go into the process. So, you know, obviously, FMG and especially in this premium website, offering, you’re very hands on, but you’re serving more as a a guide rather than, you know, making demands or strong suggestions. So, you know, I think within wealth management, you know, you talked about holistic, wealth management or holistic financial planning and how that, you know, can be kind of a a buzzword.

And I think, you know, in financial services, more so than most industries, they can be hard to to differentiate. So I think looking at our home page, being able to hone in on on some of those items that you hit on within, Amy’s website as well, thinking about the the who we serve and then those services. So breaking it down, not just saying, hey. We’re a holistic financial planning firm, but, hey.

Here are our core competencies, you know, looking at who we serve. You know, our firm, we really cut our teeth in, with Ford and GM employees. So, you know, being able to to convey those kind of, kind of our unique value proposition.

Couldn’t agree more. And I think the handout that we will send out to everybody on this call that has all the before and afters with very common types of messaging that advisers use that I think is less differentiated and and ways that you can just make little tweaks that I think make it much more differentiated. And, hopefully, you’ve been inspired or gotten some ideas as you’ve watched, us take you through these websites.

I’m gonna go through a checklist so that, and this is something else that we will send out.

We put together a this is actually something that our team uses as they’re building sites to ensure that they are following all the best practices that Brad and I and other thought leaders in our, organization have put together. But these are things that you can use on your own. So, I’m not gonna go through all of them. There are, like, ten. Oh, oh, there are thirteen. There are thirteen of them. I hope that’s not a bad luck number for anybody.

But it you know, there’s the five second test. I will start I’ll just spend two seconds on that. So everybody on the call today, when we get off or sometime in the next couple days, I would encourage you to have somebody could even be somebody in your family, a friend. Have them take a look at your website and have them time themselves just look for five seconds. No more. And then ask them, what was the page about?

What do you remember about the page?

Who do you think would benefit from my services?

And what actions could you take? So we’ll include this in the takeaway, but that little audit is super helpful to identify things that you might wanna update on that very important home page hero image.

But we’ve, consolidated all of our tips and checklist questions to ask as you look at your website to make sure it’s performing optimally, and, we will send that to you. Oh, I didn’t push it to the audience. Sorry. I, we will send that to you in the follow-up.

Here’s the rest of it. As I just mentioned on, Clay’s site, I love that he has the Shook research, but, if you don’t have any any, you know, humble brags on your website, it’s definitely something great to add. This next one is, I don’t know if everybody can see this slide. Hopefully, they can.

But this is some additional inspiration for copy. So the word feel is really important as you think about the copy. You want people to feel. You you don’t wanna describe literally what you do. You wanna think about and this is what the messaging doc we have. You want to think about what feeling do they want to have as a result of the outcomes you deliver. And what’s really interesting here is these are ideas that I think you can use because as you see let’s start with I feel financially secure.

Fifty two percent. So only half of those that are advised feel financially secure. And, of course, eighty two percent say it’s really important. I would say that that would be, like, a hundred percent.

But the difference in terms of what they perceive or want versus what they are feeling is is thirty percent, if not greater. So if you think about using some of these sentences in your copy, we help clients feel financially secure. We help clients feel in control of what when it comes to reaching their goals. This is also a great little template for some messaging that relates to what clients are worried about, the pain, you know, the pain points, the insecurities that they are having.

So since we’re almost at the hour, I think I’m going to just skip through this. I was gonna give you another quiz and do a five second test on that website, but we’ll just send it out, and, let’s keep going.

Alright. So skipping through those. Our premium website process, as we mentioned, you know, we’ve got a team of experts. We take you through a brand assessment. We do the questions to ask to get at your messaging. We have a website checklist so that we’re helping with the design. We’ve got the SEO tools and the one click compliance and lead generation, lead gen magnets and copywriting.

It is it’s a, you know, a fantastic offering.

We’re passionate about it, but I’m more passionate that all of you are just looking at your websites, taking any of the tips that we’ve had or anything that you’ve learned today and applying it because it’s so important to have a great website regardless of who you’re using to help you build it or manage it.

So for those that are interested, we also have a do it for me program that we complement with our websites, and I think both Amy and Clay are taking advantage of that where we’re writing custom content. I I say custom. We’re right. I’m writing content, for our do it for me customers who are then able to edit it and tweak it, but it’s we’ve got two to three blogs and emails and social posts and optional posts and you name it.

But content and keeping content updated on your website is as critical as updating it in the first place. So you can’t just do, you know, wow, Clay. You’ve just launched this great new website. Well, he can’t forget about it for five years.

Like, he’s gotta add content to it constantly.

A for SEO, b for repeat visitors. As we said, only ninety, you know, ninety seven percent of people don’t convert on the first visit. Need to keep that fresh. So content is a key to the strategy.

And I will just leave us with if anybody has any questions that I didn’t get to, please email us at marketing at f m g suite dot com. That will get to our team, and I will personally answer all of them. I promise. And if you’re interested in booking a demo, just click on the QR code.

I always like to try to end our webinars a little early. We did get, like, almost a hundred questions. I did not get to all of them, but thank you so much for your engagement. And most of all, thank you, Amy, for letting us go through your website and give you suggestions.

And, Clay, thank you for going through our pilot, being a guinea pig, and letting us show off what we think is one of the most beautiful sites, we’ve done this year. And Brad Brad is the engineer behind this whole thing, and I personally just, love working with him. It’s one of the great pleasures of my job. So as he is talking to, audiences like you, as I said, I just so wish I could see you all and see your questions and answer everything, but I will let you go back to work.

And, thank you so much for your time, for everybody that hung hung in here, and we will be sending out all of the materials that I talked about. So no worries if you didn’t catch anything, and I wish you the best. I hope your five second test that you’re gonna conduct over the next couple days goes well. And if there’s anything we can do to help, please let us know.

Thanks.