When it comes to running a business, honest feedback from clients is one of your most important tools. It gives you specific things to work on from the people who are actually using the product or service you offer. As a financial advisor, one way to get real client feedback is by holding client advisory boards. Recently, The Client Driven Practice published an awesome article called “What Your Clients Told Me About Your Website.” They hosted several client advisory boards this past spring and, because digital presence is so important these days, many of them had a large focus on advisor websites. Not surprisingly, most had very similar feedback on how advisors could improve their sites.
As millennials begin to hold more wealth, their business is becoming increasingly important to advisors. This means that, in order to attract clients who grew up on digital, firms are going to have to nail their company website and UX. The points made in “What your clients told me about your website” had a universal application to most advisor sites and all of these tips can (and should!) be incorporated into your Twenty Over Ten website for maximum client appeal. Today, we’ve brought you some of the most important takeaways from the article and how you can make these changes on your site.
1. Forget the Jargon & Superfluous Content
This is more of a copy strategy than a design tool, but wording is one of the biggest elements of your site that clients will leave with. Websites being too text heavy is a huge complaint from clients. This makes your word choice even more crucial.
These days, people want to get to the point quickly. Visitors of your site are very unlikely to read several paragraphs and will instead skim through, which may result in missing important points. They’re also more likely to take one look and move on.
We created the Twenty Over Ten platform specifically for advisors to easily edit any text with our inline editor with a simple click. Our intuitive CMS (content management system) gives advisors the tools necessary to autonomously manage their websites like a pro without ever touching any code. Score!
Besides how much text you use, the type of words you choose on your website are just as important. Clients want to have a clear understanding of your business and services, so stay away from heavy financial jargon. This leaves clients and prospects easily confused and unlikely to keep reading. Instead, choose words and scenarios they can relate to. If clients are making connections between what they read on your site and what they experience in their personal lives, they’re more likely to want to work with you.
2. More Multimedia
If you’re taking our advice and using less text, you’ll need to fill space on your website with other media including photos, graphics and videos. But according to The Client Driven Practice, this doesn’t mean just throwing in any random old stock photo. In fact, due to the rise in popularity of video, visual learning and infographics, the pictures and videos you choose are becoming even more important. If you’re not using meaningful media, it could make your business appear cheesy and unauthentic. Potential clients want to feel at home when working with an advisor, and you can convey this strongly through your website. Clients and prospects would much rather see actual pictures of your staff, client interaction and offices. Putting a face to the name of your firm establishes a sense of familiarity.
Video in particular is a huge new marketing trend in 2018. As people, especially the younger generations, grow more fond of quick summaries and visual information, video should be integrated into your website at some point. Whether it is to explain your company philosophy, elaborate on services or introduce your staff, video provides a faster and more entertaining portrayal of information that millennials are attracted to. Additionally, hearing from the advisor gives a website more personality, helping you stand out from the competition and show off your firm’s unique qualities.
Thankfully, we’ve also made it super easy for our users to integrate pictures and videos onto their sites! And, most importantly, every multimedia asset you add to your Twenty Over Ten site will be mobile-friendly. This is absolutely crucial for a generation that consumes much of their information via a mobile device.
3. File Sharing
Feedback from the Client Driven Practices’ advisory board showed that clients like to keep all their documents in one place. Not only that, but security is another huge factor when it comes to sharing documents. However, it’s incredibly important to make these sharing services easy to use and easily accessible via your website.
There are plenty of file sharing services out there for advisors and it’s easy to integrate them via the Twenty Over Ten platform. In the example below from Twenty Over Ten user, IMPACTfolio, they offer a client tools page, which gives their clients the ability to access their important accounts, view their financial plan and other statements. Creating easy access like this for your clients is 🗝 to providing a fluid website experience.
4. Keep Clients Informed
With more and more information coming out daily, its important that you’re keeping up! This means posting regularly on your blog and social media. Not only is this helpful for your clients, but it shows them that you’re diligent, updated on industry trends and active. If a client goes on your website and sees blog posts that are years old, trust us when we say that they won’t be impressed. Your blog is another chance to stand out and show clients how your business is run, showcase your expertise and thought leadership.
The Twenty Over Ten platform is known for many things but one stand-out feature are our advanced blogging capabilities. As the most advanced blogging platform for financial advisors, our users can create diversified blogs, categorize posts, and enable social sharing options.
And while you’re free to edit your Twenty Over Ten blog anyway you like, an easy way to save time while producing regular content is through our Content Assist feature. Content Assist provides baseline blog posts with popular topics and allows you to customize them to the specifics of your firm and target niche and post them directly to your blog page. You can tailor everything to fit your needs, from the images used to the SEO description.
Struggling With What Content To Share on Social Media or via Email?
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