You’ve heard it many times before, but short and sweet copy is more often than not, the best way to create an awesome website. Financial advisors and their prospects and clients are extremely busy, and when someone is reading through your website, they don’t want to spend too much timing poring through your pages to find the information that they want. Read on to find out why short beats long and lengthy website copy.
“After 750 words—or sometimes after only half that—you risk losing your reader’s attention.”
-Forbes.com
Of course, since you are using your website to gain more clients, the last thing that you want to do is to scare them off with too many pages and long copy. So, how do you fit everything you want and need to tell your followers into your advisor website while making sure it’s not too long-winded?
The first rule of thumb that our team of copywriters follows here at Twenty Over Ten is to always write as much as you need to write but no more. You want to make a persuasive presentation with your copy, but you don’t want to make it so long that your visitors get put to sleep and go on to do something else. Time is money, and you don’t want to lose a potential client because they moved on to a firm with a sleeker and more succinct website.
In an industry like ours, we keep to the mantra: short, sweet and to the point. For other industry like technical products, those kinds of websites require more long, technical copy that requires much more explanation. Your website copy should quickly convey what you are offering, how it works, and how it will solve your target audience’s problems. Want to see a few advisors that have excelled in this?
3 Advisor Websites Making a Big Impact with Short Content
1. Medicus Wealth planning
Based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, Medicus Wealth Planning does an exceptional job of packing in a lot of information in a small amount of space. With their strong hero image and a call to action that stands out against, visitors are immediately roped in and more likely to explore what the firm has to offer.
They only have four sections, including an “About Us, “Our Process,” “Blog” and “Contact,” and that’s all that they need! It’s a single-page scrolling site, so everything can be found easily. The “Our Process” section is broken down in 6 easy steps in graph so that you can follow what needs to done easily. The “Blog” section is well-organized with images for each one and topics that pertain to the readers.
2. Quest Financial services
Quest Financial Services has a single-page scrolling site with a call to action, “Tell Us Your Story” above the fold on the homepage. This is a great example for switching up the phrases on the calls to action from something different than simply, “Schedule a Meeting” or “Get in Touch”
Visitors can quickly move from the “About Us” section so you can find out more about what Quest Financial Services does, an informative guide to show the services offered followed by headshots of the entire team. By clicking on the images, you are able to read a quick bio, which paints a better picture of who you will be working with.
The “Knowledge Center” has everything that clients and prospects need to provide additional information. From a video section to provide details and quick information, a blog section, works in the community and a market summary.
3.fourfront advisors
With beautiful imagery and an easy to navigate website, FourFront Advisors has a crisp and clean website with all the information necessary that visitors need to know. Right when you land on the page, you get the sense that you will be working with advisors that really “get” their clients.
Their images and designs that they use make visitors feel more at ease, as many of them have a “playful” design to go with each situation. We love the “Answers” section with “Situations” and “Questions” so that prospects can get a feel for situations, as they are almost like short case studies. Once reading these situations, the phrase “Say Yes To Success” with a CTA button, “Set Up Time To Chat” below that will prompt people to take the next step.
Tips for Sharing Information Without Lengthy Copy
1. supplement with video
Adding video can be a good alternative route to take if your visitors are in a hurry and they want to find out something about your business without reading through an entire section or page. They can get the information they need by watching and listening instead. Not only can they find out what they need in a quick video, but it’s just a different way to stand out from other firms, especially since many companies haven’t started incorporating it, even though it is something that is gaining in popularity.
Fourfront Advisors has videos in their “Resources” section, called Money Matters TV with helpful episodes to discuss financial topics that will help clients and visitors.
2. incorporate strong imagery
You’re competing with a billion other web pages. Without a striking image, short content doesn’t stand a chance. The old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words rings true. According to this study from Sage Journals, visually appealing stimuli is an incredibly important tool for getting people to stay longer on a site which leads to converting more visitors into customers.
Include a strong hero image
More often than not, this is the first thing that visitors see when they visit your advisor site, so obviously, you want it to be a strong one! A few things to keep in mind when designing your image are to:
- Capture a visitor’s attention
- Remember that a high-resolution image will provoke people to stay your site longer and find out more
- First impressions are everything, so make sure your design is strong and well-done
- A strong hero image can keep visitors interested and establish trust
Use Real Images of your Team as Opposed to Stock Photos when you can
If you include strong headshots of your team, this establishes trust right off the bat by “humanizing” the advisors. It really helps to put a face with a name, so you know who you will be working with before you even meet them in person.
In the above team section from Quest Financial Services, they include the entire team on this page, we only included the first three. It also provides the option to click on a link and find out about speaking engagements that the team does. Additionally, if you click on the page, you are taken to the bio, which provides even more personalization.
3. use header tags and other typography hacks
Header tags are a great way to make your firm stand out, especially with all of the firms out there to compete with. If you don’t include header tags with strong keywords integrated onto your pages, then it will be much harder to stand out in Google searches. As algorithms for search engines continue to grow, header tags are an increasingly important way to ensure that your business shows up on the first page when someone is typing into the search engine. Using keywords in tags is a great habit to instill when you are creating content for a website.
4. use calls to action strategically
By interspersing strong calls to action throughout your copy, you don’t have to worry about dragging your copy on and on. Having a call to action on your website is so important to ensure that your prospects take that next step to provide information about themselves, while also getting something in return, such as a newsletter, whitepaper or eBook.
Make sure you don’t limit them to just one page, as they can go on any part on your site. You don’t know what page of your website is the one that made a prospect take the next step, so be strategic with your placement.
Lastly, a call to action should be short and sweet, just like your website. Include actionable phrases with 3-5 words, such as:
- Schedule a Meeting
- Download our Whitepaper
Find out more
Those are just some simple examples, as many advisors choose to get creative with their phrases.
In the above image from Medicus Wealth Planning, they have a slightly longer CTA, however, it stands out well against the white background and provides visitors with a useful guide with “20 Tax Planning Strategies” in an easily downloadable form.
What Does This Mean For Your Website?
At the end of the day, trust us – your prospects are sick and tired of reading “salesy” marketing copy on your website that is chockfull of fluff. They want to read what really matters, find out what it is about your firm that sets you apart from the others and read the most important parts. They want to find this quickly without having to sift through fancy words that people in the financial business might not even understand well. We hope this blog helps you to write about what really matters when it comes to your copy so that you can create a website that generates even more prospects and creates awesome clients that know what they want when they work with you.
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