Have you thought it may be time to refresh your financial website?
The decision can be made by analysing several aspects of your current website to determine whether it needs a much-needed makeover.
Bad financial website design, outdated aesthetics, and low usability are major credibility killers.
88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience.
This shows the importance of your website having a clean, attractive and easy to navigate design.
It takes a minuscule 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave.
It is time to consider a refresh of the website if any of the following are true to your current website:
- Low conversion rate
- Outdated design
- Does not look great on mobile devices
- Poor/no consideration of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Your brand message is outdated
- Slow loading speeds
Insufficient traffic means you are missing out on sales opportunities every day!
Your website plays a crucial role in projecting the perception of your brand among your target audience.
If your messaging is outdated, how can you expect to attract business?
Also, if your financial website is not built with SEO in mind, you could miss out on a ton of organic, inbound business.
Slow loading times and poor customer experience also lead to losing prospects.
If you haven’t paid attention to your website in a while, and any of the above are true of your current site, it is time for a refresh.
Refreshing your financial website
Let us look at how we can help you update your website to ensure it is industry-leading:
1. New Design
You should consider the following elements when redesigning the layout of your financial website:
- Easy-to-Use Navigation – This is essential if you want visitors to stay on your website. Your chances of converting leads are higher if they stay longer and can easily find everything they are looking for.
- Responsive design – Make your website accessible from multiple devices, platforms and screen sizes, such as smartphones, tablets, desktops and laptops. Responsive design will lead to visitors spending longer on your pages. It will also increase your Google ranking, so that you can become more visible in organic search.
- Clear Call to Actions (CTA’s) – A key element on any webpage is to let prospects know what actions to take next. Without clear CTA’s, the user may not know the next steps to take to leave their details, and is likely to leave the site without achieving your website goal.
2. Social proof is paramount!
What is financial social proof?
Financial social proof is evidence that you have worked with people like your prospects in the past, and that they have verified your services.
It can also be used to refer to positive news coverage, reviews or to showcase your financial qualifications.
Client testimonials and case studies are a good way to add social proof.
We recommend including widgets that link to your online reviews on Google / VouchedFor / Unbiased or others.
Video testimonials are also FANTASTIC social proof if you have clients willing to get on camera to share their experience with your business.
Social proof is essential for a financial website. It gives prospects the confidence that you can help, but also do an excellent job.
3. Speak directly to your prospects
Keep in mind the website is intended for information to your target audience.
So ensure you are talking directly to them by answering their questions and allowing them to find what they are looking for.
Perhaps one of the most frequent mistakes on wealth management websites is not talking directly to your prospects.
If your website text focuses primarily on your business, its functions, and how you work, and you are not addressing your prospects fears, needs and goals. This is a problem.
Imagine you are at a dinner party, and you start to talk to someone you don’t know.
Imagine the person talks only about themselves, their accomplishments, and what they are good at.
They aren’t interested in learning about you and don’t ask any questions. You’d probably want to talk to someone new ASAP, right?
Whereas if you engage in conversation with someone interested in your thoughts and opinions, and they are eager to learn more about you, you’re likely to want to chat more.
Websites should use this same concept to engage.
Instead of focusing solely on what your financial website copy can do, think about who your potential clients are and their needs.
Then you can talk about your business by positioning your company as a solution to their problems.
4. Live Chat Feature
What is live chat?
Live chat allows your prospects to communicate directly with your team.
It works within a company’s website, usually as a pop up chat window.
Sometimes, website visitors will need to initiate online chat features.
In other cases, the chat box could pop up automatically and be used as a proactive way of engaging with visitors.
Live chat on your website can provide instant communication and responses to visitors’ queries.
Live chat support also has a client satisfaction rate of 92%, the highest of any channel.
These are many ways that live chat can improve the success rate of your website. Some include:
- Improved engagement, which results in a higher conversion rate.
- Improves client support
- Allows your business to communicate instantly with your target audience
- quickly establish a relationship
Today’s prospects expect all information at their fingertips.
With smartphones in the hands of almost all millennials, it makes sense to consider the need to appeal to the online masses.
Providing an online chat feature on your financial website means you can connect with your audience immediately and answer their questions with ease.
So if you don’t already have one, why not?
5. Blog Content Marketing/Blog
Blogging and content marketing can help spark a conversation with your target audience.
Content marketing is a key tool for increasing revenue generation.
Your content marketing is also something that needs close consideration when it comes to your financial website refresh.
Your website content should:
- Be SEO friendly to boost your search engine rankings, resulting in more organic traffic to your site.
- Establish yourself as an industry leader to gain trust from prospects.
- Increase brand awareness for almost no cost.
- Be used to connect with your audience in many formats, such as videos, articles, blogs, and tutorials.
- Be used to fuel your social media presence. This will help you keep your content consistent and increase your market credibility.
- Support your sales funnel. Use your content to provide additional support for your audience.
Content marketing for financial services will help you attract new clients and expand your business.
It will also allow you to increase your profile and show your audience that you are an expert and industry thought leader.
Your content should give your reader value-added wisdom in return for their attention.
This can be a powerful way to raise awareness of your brand or service and keep people coming back to read more.
6. Thought leadership
Prospects expect great content, but also added value content, such as guides, factsheets, white papers and articles, when they do their initial research on your site.
Remember that content marketing helps to power your SEO.
Authorship, Author rank, Online Authority, Thought leadership – whatever you call it, we are talking about building trust.
You can build trust by establishing yourself as an authority within financial services.
It’s much easier to grow your advisory firm once you have the trust of your clients, colleagues, and prospects.
If you’re considering getting the ball rolling with the refresh of your website, our friendly team is on hand for no obligation advice.
We’re experts in financial websites and SEO strategy.
After all, if you Google ‘Financial Adviser Marketing’, ‘Financial Adviser Lead Generation’ and many other relevant terms, you will see us ranking organically on Google.
The proof is in the pudding – we know what we’re doing.
We can help you optimise your website to get you found for your desired searches.
Get in touch to get started with your refresh.
