5 Reasons Your Website Isn’t Performing

You’ve invested lots of time and money into building your firm’s dream website, but you’re still not getting the traffic and conversions you were hoping for.

This feeling can be super frustrating, but don’t get too down in the dumps. Lots of pieces go into a perfect site and each of them has to be tweaked from time to time. If you still aren’t seeing great ROI from your website, you might be making one of these five mistakes!

5 Reasons Your Website Isn’t Performing

1. Bad SEO Strategy (Or No SEO Strategy)

Even if your website looks perfect, there’s no way it’s generating leads if search engines can’t find it. To drive traffic to your site and show up in online searches, your site needs to be properly optimized through SEO. This will make it easy for Google to crawl and index your site, which increases your chances of showing up in potential clients’ searches.

Search Engine Optimization involves a range of activities that help make your site more visible to search engines and potential clients. A lot goes into a sufficient SEO strategy, but you should get into the habit of these tactics:

• Determine your keywords and use them wisely. Keywords can be used on your website pages, blog posts, titles for videos, and pretty much any other piece of content you’re creating. Using Google Keyword Planner or Google Analytics can give you a good idea of some of the better keywords to incorporate for your firm and niche. 
• Add some links to your own content. Internal links lead to another page on the same website, performing a navigation function. This can help bring attention to the other content you’ve created.
• Add some external links, too. External links are when you link out to a different domain. You want to ensure that any links are from trustworthy and informative sources for your visitors.
• Don’t forget tags. Adding heading tags for your headers and alt tags for images can help search engines crawl that information, which can boost your rankings for a particular topic.

Even with good use of SEO, your website might slip up every once in a while. Google Webmaster Tools is a great way to monitor any crawl errors on your site that might prevent leads from finding certain parts of your site. No one likes 404 errors, so you’ll want to fix these as soon as possible.

2. Promoting to the Wrong Audience

If your site is seeing a good amount of traffic but low conversions, you might be attracting the wrong visitors. You don’t want just any visitors coming to your site – you want people in your niche that would be interested in your services. Take a step back and ask if you’re promoting your site in the right place for your desired client. Try checking Google Analytics to find the demographics of your site’s audience. If you’re seeing high bounce rates and low conversion rates from a particular source (Google PPC, Facebook Ads, etc.), you might need to reconsider your promotion strategy.

By taking a look at your top keyword queries on Google Search Console, you can also see what keywords are associated with your site. The keywords in this report should reflect the theme and purpose of your advisor business. If you gave this report to a random person, they should be able to guess your role in the financial services industry and your niche. If this isn’t the case, you’re probably attracting the wrong kind of visitor.

It’s also a good idea to perform a social media audit every few weeks. Are you seeing increased engagement? New followers? Who is liking your posts? If you aren’t seeing any engagement, you might need to rethink your social strategy as well. Since you’re likely serving very specific demographics, you might even want to try a paid advertising tool on social networks that can target demographics, job information, and keyword selection.

3. Poor User Experience

In today’s digital age, consumers have no time for poorly designed sites. This makes it important to prioritize your site’s user experience (UX). UX design includes a variety of work on your business website including ease of use, accessibility, and convenience. More specifically within UX, poor mobile-friendliness and navigation can become roadblocks for conversion.

MOBILE FRIENDLINESS

Mobile-friendly sites receive lower bounce rates and higher conversion numbers compared to those that aren’t. According to a study by Econsultancy, the launch of mobile-friendly sites increased conversion rates in a variety of industries. For example, State Farm’s conversion rate increased by 51%. Since so many potential clients are now searching for services on their phones, it’s absolutely crucial that your site is mobile-friendly.

At Twenty Over Ten, we understand the importance of mobile-friendliness so our websites are always mobile-friendly. In the example below, Twenty Over Ten client’s Olympus Wealth Management’s website transfers seamlessly from desktop to laptop to mobile screens.

NAVIGATION

The navigation on your site helps visitors access different pages and information. Your site’s navigation should include a small selection of clearly-labeled pages that match your leads’ needs. It should give enough information to direct visitors, but shouldn’t feel cluttered. By using Google’s Page Analytics plug-in, you can see how visitors are engaging with the different parts of your navigation and where they might be getting stuck. Broken links can also hinder proper navigation, so keep an eye on any changes on Google Search Console.

4. Failing Landing Pages and Forms

When used properly, landing pages are a great way to leverage your site to generate leads for future campaigns. By including a convincing form where visitors fill out the information, you can create individualized messages for different, targeted niches. However, just like your website, designing a landing page is a detailed process.

There are many pieces that go into creating a landing page, including the headline and copy, graphics and images, the CTA and offer, and the entire layout. By using A/B testing, you can find which elements of your landing page are under-performing. 

The most important part of your landing page is the call-to-action (CTA). What is the purpose of your landing page? Why are you interrupting your visitor’s experience? Why should they be giving you their information? Make the offer worth taking action for.

Another important part of your landing page is the form, where visitors fill out their information. To convince leads to give you their information, you should keep the number of fields on your form to a minimum. At the absolute maximum, your form should include 5 fields. But often, just asking for the visitor’s name and email is sufficient.

If you’re asking for more than this, your landing page won’t generate as much contact information as it could be. Twenty Over Ten client, C.L. Sheldon & Company has a pop-up on their homepage directly to sign up for a recorded webinar if your ETAP was canceled by COVID-19. 

5. Your Blog Content Isn’t Connecting

Quality content is the difference between converting clients and or having them simply click away. According to Social Media Today, blogs are rated as the fifth most trusted source of accurate online information. If you’re writing blogs that connect, you can make a trustworthy name for your firm and become a thought leader in your industry and niche. But, you have to hit the nail on the head for this to happen. 

To write content that connects, you need to get into the minds of your niche. What would they be searching for? What do they hope to get from your firm? How can your knowledge help their financial future? Find their pain point and the questions they want to be answered. There’s no point in writing a blog that your audience won’t benefit from.

Twenty Over Ten client, Rx Wealth Advisors, LLC caters to physicians and offers financial planning that serves their unique needs and financial challenges, and that is evident in the blog section.

I get that creating content can be difficult as a busy financial advisor, which is why we have created Content Assist and Lead Pilot to help with this.

LEAD PILOT

Lead Pilot is the industry’s first-ever AI-powered all-in-one solution for content creation and distribution. By using this tool, advisors are able to launch robust content campaigns from a streamlined, easy-to-use dashboard. Team members can collaborate and share content pieces, upload original content, and customize content from the media library. It not only includes blogs but also video and infographic content. Once it is added, the content can be easily scheduled to be sent out via email or social media with branded landing pages.

CONTENT ASSIST

We offer useful tools, such as Content Assist to all Twenty Over Ten users so that if you are struggling to come up with content ideas for your blog, you can use our pre-made content and edit it to make it your own. With Content Assist, you can choose from different categories, such as retirement, home-buying, young adults, business and much more. Once you have chosen which blog that you want to use, advisors can easily customize and edit the content to add your unique voice, keywords to fit your niche or you can use it as-is.

Is Your Website Up to Par?

Having a website that doesn’t convert in 2021 just isn’t an option. Maintaining a strong online presence was already crucial in order to generate leads and get more client conversions. If your website isn’t up to par, then start optimizing your website with the five elements above and make this year your most productive year yet.