Not all financial advisors have the bandwidth or budget to hire a full-time designer, we get it. Turns out there are some really amazing (and free!) tools out there to help you with things like sourcing images, creating logos, choosing color schemes and more! Check out our list below with some of our favorite tools that will help you do everything from designing your site to creating a presentation.
7 Free Design Tools to Help Your Website
These seven tools below will help you to boost your online presence without breaking the bank.
1. Infographics
Lead Pilot enables advisors to launch robust content campaigns from a streamlined, easy-to-use dashboard. Team members can collaborate and share content pieces, upload original content, and customize content from a media library that includes video, editorial and infographic content that are all unique to Lead Pilot.
Did you know that 40% of people respond better to a visual than a plain text? That’s where using infographics can come into play on your advisor website. Infographics help you to engage better with your audience. The pre-designed infographics turn complex data and subjects into easy-to-understand visualizations.
Infogram is a free data visualization company that helps people create charts, infographics, maps and reports. You can choose from over 20 ready-made design themes or create a brand theme with your own logo, colors and fonts.
2. Images
We all know that images are one of the most engaging components of online marketing, but unless you’re willing to pay significant costs for access to a database, trying to find good quality, high-resolution images can be incredibly time-consuming. But your website, blog and social media posts need great images, so what do you do? Look no further than these 10 go-to sites for free high-quality, beautiful stock photos.
3. Image Editing
Not savvy in using the Adobe Creative Suite or have hundreds of dollars to spend on a plan? Don’t fret! Pixlr is a free and fairly robust browser photo editor, for all your editing needs. With Pixlr Editor you have full control over your images including layers and effects, and there are two different options:
Pixlr X
This tool is much easier to use with:
- Modern photo editing for quick edits, and beginners.
- Open most images like PSD (Photoshop), PXD, JPEG, PNG.
- Most tools in a few sections.
- Perfect for quick, playful photo edits.
- One-click to add artistic effects to photos.
Pixlr E
Pixlr E is the photo editor for the professionals with:
- Classic photo editing with must-have tools, but sleeker
- Open most images like PSD (Photoshop), PXD, JPEG, PNG
- Classic desktop UI
- Selection tools
- Cut, copy, paste selections
- Fill and Gradient tool
- Sponge / Color tool
- Advanced color picker
- More tools, more control
- More filters, more adjustments
4. Visual Content
Canva, is a free visual content creation tool specially made for non-designers. Aside from its massive library of pre-designed, pre-sized templates, Canva also boasts thousands of premium-quality design elements ranging from custom fonts to free stock photos. Bonus: Canva also offers a Design School for all of its users. Learn more about Canva.
5. Presentations
Prezi makes presentations fun again helping to make your messages more memorable and motivational with its free presentation software. Whether it’s your sales pitch or an annual presentation to a client, Prezi’s simple drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to arrange content in an open canvas layout.
6. Website Design
And of course, it would be remiss of us if we did not share with you the powerful features packed into the Twenty Over Ten platform. Twenty Over Ten truly makes designing and editing your website a breeze. Our intuitive CMS (Content Management System) gives you the tools to easily manage your website like a pro, even if you’re not!
When designing your website, your site is mobile-friendly and easy to use. You can seamlessly edit and manage your website on the backend so that you won’t need to call a designer when you want to make changes. With multiple frameworks and plans to choose from, you can find what best fits your firm and go from there!
7. Icons
When you need to create icons on your website, look no further than Noun Project. With this tool, users can easily upload icons and make them further discoverable by adding search words. When using this, you can search through millions of curated icons that are created by global community.
Icons are so important for your website, as they can be used to:
- Describe functions
- Explain a story
- Help fill out forms
- Optimize navigation
So, create these using this awesome tool and boost your firms’ user experience.
Have What You Need?
Designing an advisor website that drives leads, boosts your SEO rankings while also staying in budget is no easy feat, but these tools should help you get a step in the right direction. They are interactive, easy-to-use and very affordable or even free!
Struggling With What Content to Share on Social Media or via Email?
We are offering access to our content for advisors to use via Lead Pilot for 7-days completely free (even on our month to month plans).
About the author
Blair Kelly
Blair is a digital marketing assistant at Twenty Over Ten and has a passion for uncovering what drives online traffic and the highest engagement. She follows more animals on Instagram than humans and her greatest achievement is her daughter, Grey.
