Financial Advisor Website Showcase: Van Hulzen Financial Advisors

Based out of El Dorado Hills, California the Van Hulzen site uses our Fresnel framework to provide a traditional, well-organized user experience.

From subtle features, like showcasing each advisor’s personal interests, to the inclusion of video on the Values page, the site maintains a consistent goal – personalizing the financial services process.

Below are 7 features that reinforce this message, along with a few reasons these features work. Let’s dive in.

7 of the Most Effective Features of the Van Hulzen Financial Advisors Site

1. A Strong Homepage

Your website’s homepage should accomplish a few things, and do them quickly. First, it should tell visitors what you do, and how you’re different from other firms. Second, it should give visitors a “next step,” like a call-to-action to contact your firm, a button to learn more or a link to download an ebook.

The Van Hulzen site does just this in a few ways. First off, the hero message at the top of the site focuses on the needs of the audience. It tells visitors what they can expect from working with Van Hulzen. The differentiator here is reliability, unlike other advisors that may focus on growth, the hero message on the Van Hulzen site focuses on growth and sustainability in the message “and stay there.”

As for the next step? The homepage offers a few, from the most important  CTA to schedule a meeting, to “learn more” buttons beneath each service, visitors have an array of options to choose from.

2. Effective Use of Video

Video is an incredibly powerful communication tool. It’s often more engaging than text alone, but it also offers the chance for visitors to hear and see the speaker, providing and personalized user experience.

The Van Hulzen site uses videos on several pages to outline the background and values of the firm. Including these videos near the top of the page makes them one of the first things visitors will see, increase the chance of engagement, and page on-time, which has the added benefit of improving SEO.

3. An Active Blog

Speaking of SEO. An active blog is essential to target the right keywords for your firm and showing Google and other search engines that you’re site is active.

And the Van Hulzen site, despite its recent launch, already has an active blog. Better yet, the blog currently has a published article for each week. This level of cadence plays into the site’s activity, improving SEO, as listed above. It also gives more resources for visitors to explore when first visiting or returning to the page.

4. Showcasing the Team’s Personality

Many advisor sites contain a professional and personal description of each team member. But the Van Hulzen site takes this a bit further by including a visual feature to add to their personalization factor.

Whenever a visitor comes to the “Extraordinary People” page and hovers over a team member’s portrait, it will reveal an alternative image showing a hobby of that team member. For example, here is the team member portrait for the founder of Van Hulzen Financial Advisors, Craig Van Hulzen:

This addition creates an extra level of engagement, but also adds to the site’s overall sense of personalization. Many of the images are also not referenced in team members’ bios, making them a great conversation starter for future clients.

5. Communicating Values

Many sites differentiate themselves based on their services. Van Hulzen on the other hand, offers an array of services, providing benefits to clients but making it difficult to select one to highlight. For this reason, the site focuses on the personality of the firm. And one of the biggest strengths of this personality is its values.

With the standalone “Values and Mission” page, the Van Hulzen site clarifies the focus of their firm for new visitors, reinforcing what it will be like to work with them.

6. Placing an Emphasis on Community Engagement

Going even further, instead of just discussing their values and mission, the Van Hulzen site backs up its statement by providing an entire “Community Engagement” page.

This page highlights the firm’s list of community activities – alongside a description of their participation.

7. Inclusion of a Careers Page

Lastly, the Van Hulzen site also features a “Careers” page. Typically, careers pages are found in the footer of a site, away from the main navigation.

However, including the careers page here is good for both potential clients and team members. Not only does it offer a description of the firm’s culture to any visitor it also reinforces the consistent sense of personalization and teamwork present on the site,

Final Thoughts

It’s exciting to see the results of advisors working with our design team. The way each site leverages design and marketing best practices to attract and convert leads is a great source of inspiration. What’s most satisfying though is how these combine to create a unique website for each advisor.