Here at Twenty Over Ten, our clients make up who we are. Every couple of weeks we like to chat with our clients to showcase their financial advisory business and their new website. We got the opportunity to talk to Lorri Winkcompleck, president of Gap Financial Services. Lorri and her team took advantage of Twenty Over Ten’s self builder package to create their own stunning website.
Gap Financial Services, based in Austin, Texas, was created with the goal of giving everyone, not just the extremely wealthy, equal access to quality financial planning advice and investment options. They have a great mission and unique perspective that we loved hearing more about. Take a look at what we learned in this Q&A:
First, tell us a little bit about Gap Financial – what makes your firm so unique?
My husband originally created the firm, but he is in the final months of riding out a non-compete from his old firm, so for now, I am building the business on my own. We launched Gap Financial because so many of our friends and neighbors wanted to work with my husband, but did not meet his previous wealth management firm’s $2 million minimums, so they were stuck with a broker using suitability standards and high fees/commissions.
The name “Gap Financial” was chosen because we wanted a firm to fill the void or “gap” between our friends and neighbors who were forced to use a broker and could not meet the minimums of an independent fiduciary advisor. We like to think we are bridging a gap between financial planing and wealth management without any account minimums.
We know designing your own site can seem like a daunting task. Your site turned out great! Have you ever built or designed a website before?
I’ve been a freelance writer for various books and publications for years, so the content part was not too overwhelming. My husband had done some work on a wealth management site with his previous employer so between the two of us, we managed to come up with something that accurately portrayed both our services and our desire to help clients in an objective format. We also reviewed many of the sites Twenty Over Ten has built and took away pointers where applicable.
With 5 different frameworks to choose from, how did you go about choosing a website framework for your firm?
Twenty Over Ten offers several great options. It was not easy finding a framework based on all the good options. But in the end, we chose as we did because the overall feel of the framework we chose was most conducive to the modern, “not-your-daddy’s-financial-
From beginning to end how long did the web design process take you? Were there any setbacks along the way that others should be aware of when taking the self-build approach?
In the future, we would like use the Twenty Over Ten pros to build out our site as the firm grows. However, like most advisors starting out, we had a tight budget and wanted to be wise with our resources. It took us probably 20-25 hours from start to finish. The site is not yet a finished product, but I feel like with Twenty Over Ten’s help and resources, we can make it better and more customized over time.
My advice for others would be to expect to feel a little overwhelmed and a little frustrated at times, but to know that is normal, and not to give up. The result is well worth the work. At the phase we are in now, we definitely need your SEO help. You guys have expertise there that is critical to growing our business with our target audience.
We’d love to hear more about your experience in working with the Twenty Over Ten platform. What features made your life easier when building the site yourself?
Too many options can feel daunting. Twenty Over Ten had enough choices that we felt adequately equipped to create something great, but not so many that we were paralyzed by it all. We first started the website building process by using a generic website builder, and they had forty or more options from which to choose. It was too much. Because Twenty Over Ten specializes in financial planning and RIAs, it gave us confidence to use your resources to build our site and curb appeal. The conference calls and blog posts were also extremely beneficial when we needed some encouragement that we were on the right track.
We see you’ve even got a client login page setup, that’s great! Share with us the process in integrating eMoney on your site.
That was super easy. We obtained the necessary link from eMoney to embed on the Twenty Over Ten site. We told eMoney we were using Twenty Over Ten and we needed to know how to link a log-in. They provided the link and Twenty Over Ten helped us know where to place it. Very user friendly!
Now that you’ve launched a great website, what other digital marketing plans are on the docket for your firm?
We are highly skilled and experienced at financial planning and investment management. Not so much with digital marketing. Before the year is out, we have a priority of using Twenty Over Ten’s SEO expertise to build upon our foundation. We also hope to create Facebook and Twitter business pages, which we will use to draw customers to the website. We also want to create a digital newsletter, highlighting our blog posts. This marketing is not our expertise, so I’m sure we’ll reply on Twenty Over Ten’s expertise to help implement these year-end goals.
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