How to get more wealth advisory clients from your leaky website
Websites have been around for a long time. But what used to be a simple collection of screens that delivered text-based information, with some visuals, on a desktop computer has morphed into something altogether different, A “website” is now a portal for delivering a brand experience, customer services and business development across all sizes of screens and all kinds of devices.
Today, a website is a universal requirement of doing business in many industries, especially wealth management. It’s often the beginning of the customer journey and their first experience with your brand, even if they are coming to your website because of a marketing campaign, a recommendation or a referral.
So, if websites are so important, why are wealth management industry websites so bad? I’m not being critical of the design of your website – many industry websites are beautifully crafted brand statements, offering helpful information about your values and virtues as a firm. My question is: why are wealth industry websites so leaky when it comes to converting visitors into clients?
How bad are wealth industry websites at conversion?
For the past several years, we’ve operated GuideVine.com, a platform that matches retail investors to financial advisors who are best suited to their needs and requirements. Our business depends on converting visitors to the GuideVine.com website into meetings with real, live financial advisors. So, we’ve focused a lot of effort and resources optimizing the conversion of GuideVine.com visitors into business opportunities.
As part of this, we wanted to get an understanding of how our website conversion rates compared to others in the industry, so we did a joint analysis with a top-10 RIA firm.
The RIA had a two-stage contact form on their website. This form collected basic information and then thanked the prospect, while in the background their information was submitted to a financial advisor or an outreach group that followed up with the prospect.
Based on 190,000 unique visits per month on the RIA’s website, 785 people clicked the “Meet Advisor” button. Of those, only 506 prospects completed the form and then only 136 of those people actually followed through and met an advisor, in person. That’s a conversion rate of only 0.07% – or only about 7 meetings for each 10,000 people that visited the firm’s website. Obviously, only some of the 136 meetings resulted in new clients for the firm.
The conversion process that we use at GuideVine.com relies on a more engaging, user-driven matching process. Website visitors seeking an advisor that is matched to their needs will answer a series of questions about their investment needs and preferences. This is coupled with a consultative concierge service that prospects can call for immediate assistance if they prefer to deal with a person, rather than a web form.
Applying the conversion rates conservatively that we see on GuideVine.com to the top-10 RIA’s website traffic of 190,000 unique visits per month, we could generate 919, or more, prospect meetings with advisors, compared to the RIA’s 136. That’s 783 more in-person meetings – almost 7 times more – with the same amount of website traffic!
Even if a small number of these additional in-person meetings turned into new clients, the impact to this firm’s bottom line would be significant, while actually decreasing the cost of acquisition – especially since these prospects were already visiting the firm’s website.
See: How better lead conversion solves the growth problem for advice providers.
How to get more prospect meetings from your wealth management website
Most wealth management websites suffer from poor conversion rates because the process is often designed with the firm’s interest in mind, not the visitor’s experience. Text-heavy advisor bios without images or video – or no advisor bios, at all – often don’t communicate an advisor’s unique value proposition. And generic calls to action, such as ‘Contact Us’ forms or toll-free phone numbers, offer utility, but do not motivate website visitors or compel prospects to discover anything that would make them want to meet with an advisor or learn more about your firm, much less invest their time and wealth.
New prospects visit your website seeking answers to questions, such as: Why should I work with your firm – what makes you different, better than others? And, perhaps most importantly, how do I find the right advisor who can understand my specific situation, who can help me and who I will trust and enjoy working with? Most wealth industry websites focus on answering questions about the firm and don’t provide a compelling experience to help prospects find the advisor that matches their needs.
To solve this problem, we developed and refined an intelligent digital matching algorithm that helps website visitors find the right advisor(s) to talk to at your firm. Our experience at GuideVine.com has taught us that when prospects are empowered to take control of their own advisor search process, it leads to more highly motivated and better-educated prospects that follow through. And this is one reason why we get higher conversion rates than many advisory firms are getting from their existing leads.
Beyond this, we’ve also learned that there are several important best practices that can improve your firm’s website conversion performance to get more prospect meetings and more new business. Here are a few:
- Clear and simple navigation, not too many choices: Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and clearly organized. Prospects need to be able to figure out how to get to where they want to go quickly. Giving website visitors and prospects too many navigation choices increases the time it takes them to make a choice and reduces the likelihood of conversion. Often, offering limited choices can increase your target conversions. For more insights on the role of choice in online decision-making, read A Guide on How to Stop Overwhelming Visitors with too much Choice.
- Compelling, attention-grabbing buttons and calls to action: Make sure that your desired action on the page isn’t hidden in your site navigation or as a boring hyperlink. Instead, use a visually prominent button or graphic that invites users to click and offers something of value. For example, “Find the right advisor for you” is a better call to action than “Contact us” and “FREE 60-second self-assessment” is a better button label than “Complete our contact form”.
- Fast loading times: Your website loading times can have a dramatic effect on conversions. Seconds become crucial – and in the time it takes a slow-loading web page to appear, your prospect can change their mind and abandon their journey. This can happen in as little as 3 seconds. Make sure your website loads as quickly as possible for optimal conversion rates. And don’t forget the mobile experience, where the majority of your prospects are today!
- Images and video convert better than text: Images and videos can increase website conversion rates, especially on pages dominated primarily by text, such as a profile of a financial advisor. People form first impressions in a matter of seconds and short videos make more memorable impressions and help facilitate emotional connections. Just be cautious not to slow the page loading speed down too much with any graphical elements.
- Qualify prospects: If your goal is to optimize for revenue, of course, you want more website visitors to set up meetings with advisors. But you also want those meetings to be well-qualified so they can successfully convert a high proportion to new clients and revenue. A tried and true conversion strategy is to ensure that you are qualifying your prospects and with highly relevant questions and choices. For instance, say you want to find out more about what kind of needs a prospect has or what kind of advisor they are looking for. The more relevant and specific questions you can ask and have the prospect answer, the better. However, always be mindful of the balance between getting good qualifying information and asking for too much. The more specific you can get a prospect to be, the greater likelihood of conversion – though you may lose some of the less committed tire-kickers in the process.
- Test different scenarios, collect data: The key to successful conversion on your website is to test variations on messaging and collect data on which messaging and tactics produce best results. Change messaging on buttons and in forms, change colors of buttons, then keep track of performance metrics. Never stop testing.
See: What online dating can teach us about how people choose their financial advisor.
Prospects are coming to your wealth management firm’s website right now, but your website is failing to optimally convert them to live meetings and new business opportunities. The good news is starting to address this can be the easiest, most efficient and most cost-effective way to drive growth at your wealth management firm.
For more information, visit Guidevine Enterprise Solutions.