7 Reasons Why Most Financial Advisor Websites Are Terrible

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The goal of a financial advisor website is to turn visitors into clients. Unfortunately, most websites don’t get the job done.

Want to know why?

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are a few reasons why your financial advisor website might be terrible.  

1. You aren’t capturing leads.

This is a big one and it’s the mistake that I see most often. If a visitor comes to your website and isn’t ready to do business with you at that particular moment (which is most financial advisor leads), you need to have some form of capture. Otherwise, by the time there is a need, you will be long forgotten.

I never understood why financial advisors would put so much money and effort into marketing their site but not even try to capture leads. This is crazy to me. Plus, the best part is that the people who are interested enough to fill out a lead-capture form automatically go from cold to warm in your sales funnel.

If you want to nurture a connection to someone is interested but isn’t ready to hire you just yet, get their email address, so you have a way to communicate with them in the future.

The best advice I can give you is to have a good lead magnet and ask for as few details as possible in the beginning. A lot of financial advisor websites have these long, drawn-out capture forms that ask for name, email, phone number, and more. As a rule of thumb, each additional piece of information you ask for will decrease your conversion rates.

I could go on for days about this stuff, but here are some qualities of a good lead magnet:

• It is relevant to your target market. You can make your lead magnet about a particular group, geographic area, etc. The best part is that you can segment your email list and have a DRIP campaign that is based around the category of your list. For example, if your lead magnet is relevant to physicians, you can have a DRIP campaign geared towards physicians. This will optimize every part of your online marketing campaign, from conversion ratios to email open rates.
• It gives real value. Don’t just say, “Subscribe to my newsletter!” Instead, give people something valuable that will help your ideal client achieve a certain goal. If you can help them achieve results, they will trust you that much more. Also, the value has to be blatantly obvious in order to capture as many leads as possible.
• It naturally and logically leads to engaging with you more deeply. This is commonly done by including your phone number, a brief bio, and other contact information at the very end. If someone has found you interesting enough to read your lead magnet all the way to the end, this is the prime moment for them to get formally introduced to you.

P.S. If you are asking for a phone number, most of your website visitors will not fill out your form. They are afraid you are going to call them and pitch them.

2. Your contact information isn’t super-accessible.

When dealing with website usability, you need to assume that people are stupid. You need to make the most important parts of your site super-easy to access. If you make people look for more than two seconds, they are going to bounce.

If someone is going to look for your contact information, there are going to look in these places:

• The upper right hand corner.
• The bottom of your site (in the footer).

With that being said, I have run countless tests and heat maps that all tell me that the very top of your website is the most viewed area, which makes sense. I personally recommend that, in addition to the above two places, putting pertinent contact information above the fold (at the top) of your website on every single page. You want to make things as easy as possible for a visitor, and that eliminates the need to look for and click “contact us”.

 Think of it this way… your lead capture will get people who are slightly interested, while the more motivated people will have your contact information staring them in the face.

3. It is too cluttered.

Many of the financial advisor websites I see have a lack of focus. There’s so much information crammed on the page that it’s hard for me to figure out their goals and target market.

One of the reasons why this happens is because financial advisors will purchase website templates and just fill in the blanks. This is better than not having a website, but most templates aren’t suitable for the content advisors want to publish.

Try keeping things simple – don’t be afraid to spread your content around your website. All of it doesn’t have to be cluttered into your home page. I know you think that you need to get every last piece of information across to visitors, but if they feel overwhelmed, they will leave.

Here is a quick test to see if your website is simple and easy to understand – get someone who has never seen your website before and show it to them for ten seconds. Then close the page. Ask them, “What was the goal of my website? What would be your logical next step?” If they can’t tell you, your website lacks focus.

4. There’s no differentiation.

To the general consumer, all financial advisors are the same. Sadly, most financial advisor websites tend to have the same look and feel too.

I am such a huge proponent of differentiating yourself in the marketplace, and it is no different with your website. Once you have a target market, it becomes much easier to build your website. You will have access to keywords that impact that market, and you will find it easier to outline a visitor’s next steps. In addition to that, your lead magnet practically writes itself.

Your website needs to have a way to convince visitors that you are unique. Show them that you are worth listening to or reading about. Without a compelling reason to take your logical next steps, people will never work with you.

5. People don’t know it exists.

Let’s say that you’ve spent thousands of dollars and countless hours working on your website. You now have something that flows logically, loads fast, is fully optimized, has tons of resources, and an awesome lead magnet to boot. What good is it if you never attract any visitors in the first place?

There are so many ways that you can get your website out into the world:

• Search Engine Optimization (amazing benefits when done correctly but usually takes a long time)
• Social networking (LinkedIn is good for this, Facebook has awesome targeting options)
• Public relations (if you are doing something for the community, put it on your website and reach out to relevant publications)
• Direct advertising (put your website on all of your communications)
• Online ads (Google AdWords is good for this, but has gotten much more expensive over the years. Financial services keywords can be as much as $25 per click)
• Email campaigns (whenever you write something new, send it out to your email list)

6. It isn’t mobile friendly.

When it comes to website marketing, you want to get people on your website, and you want them to stay. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, someone using a mobile device isn’t likely to stay. The text will look too small and the site will be hard to navigate if it isn’t optimized for mobile.

By the way, if you want to implement SEO as part of your overall marketing strategy, Google will punish you if your site isn’t optimized for mobile. This means that your rankings in the search engines can be negatively impacted.

80% of all internet users use a smartphone and over half of all web traffic is now done from a mobile device. Personally, I don’t really like searching the web on a mobile device; I actually prefer using a desktop on a daily basis, but if you want to keep up with the times, you need to heed reality.

Aside from doing the technical stuff, like actually making your site responsive and friendly to mobile, you should consider adding more visual media. Mobile users tend to consume a disproportionately high amount of short videos and images.

You should be especially aware of the mobile version of your site if you are attempting to drive traffic from social media networks. After all, 91% of mobile internet access is used for social activities. An unresponsive site pretty much negates your content marketing efforts and wastes your marketing dollars. If you want to maximize your reach, you need a site designed to seamlessly catch social media click-throughs.

7. Your website is boring.

Most financial advisor websites are simply boring. They don’t have any personality, intrigue, or interest. Put another way, they’re flat.

Having superb content helps out a lot in this department. Content marketers have a distinct advantage here because by posting regular content, they can let their personality shine through – just like I’m doing right now. Helping people understand who you are and showing them what you’re like is much better than telling them what you do. Focus on what you can do to keep your audience interested.

Ask yourself, “Can my website stand out in a crowd?” If not, you might be more boring than you think. Of course, this doesn’t mean adding twelve different colorful graphics or six loud auto-play videos…. Remember how I said you want to keep your site simple? There’s a fine balance at work here.

Here are a few other hints that your website is boring:

• You have few images and/or big chunks of unbroken text. Breaking up your text and adding images keeps your site from seeming too homogeneous.
• High bounce rates. This is a tell-tale sign because it means people are coming to your site and quickly leaving. Bounce rates measure the percentage of visitors that navigate away from your site after only viewing one page. If this happens, you aren’t likely to get many conversions.

Low average time on page. The less time people spend on your site, the more likely it’s boring.

Is your website up to par? Have any questions about marketing financial services? Feel free to reach out to me. I am here to help you. 

If you’re a financial advisor who wants to get more clients, make sure you get “The Ultimate Financial Advisor’s Guide to Getting More Clients”, available at TheAdvisorCoach.com. It contains extremely valuable information on cold calling, productivity, referrals, social media, goal setting, dealing with rejection, seminar marketing, and much more. It also contains the EXACT questions I've used in private coaching to help advisors succeed. Plus, it comes with a money-back guarantee. Once you make your payment through PayPal, the download link will be sent directly to your inbox. Make the investment today.