Website Navigation Mistakes: 6 Things to Avoid on Your Advisor Website

You obviously want to have an awesome advisor website so that you can increase traffic and gain more clients. One way to make this harder though is if you have a site that is clunky and hard to navigate!

According to Tribute Media, you have 7 seconds to grab the attention of your visitors! Why would you waste that short amount of time that you have on a website that is hard to follow? If this happens, then there is a good chance that a visitor will leave your site for a competitor’s site! Check out these 6 mistakes to avoid

6 Mistakes to Avoid on Your Website

If you avoid the common errors below, you should have a stellar site that really drives traffic, so check them out! If you notice that you have them on your website, don’t worry, you can easily fix them as you are en route to creating a stronger website.

1. Having Too Many Options

At Twenty Over Ten, we recommend keeping your main navigation to only five items. Sure, it’s great to have options to choose from, but if you have too many, your users may become distracted and focus too much on things that don’t matter as much. If you have fewer menu items on your site, then your visitors will be much more likely to scan past the important options and will hone in on what actually matters.

Based out of Houston, Texas, Vineyard Family Wealth Advisors serves multi-generational families of business leaders. They have a beautiful and easy-to-follow website with only had 5 main sections, including:

• Who We Serve
• Services and Fees
• Who We Are
• Connect With Us
• Client Portal

It’s easy for visitors to find exactly what they need and the minimal yet effective navigation page ensures that they won’t be distracted by additional pages.

2. Being Too Generic

Your website’s navigation is a huge opportunity to boost your SEO rankings. Just think about it: your audience likely isn’t searching for “products” or “services,” so pages with these types of labels won’t help you rank.

The website above is anything but generic. PharmD Financial Planning, LLC offers financial planning for pharmacists which is an incredibly unique niche that you don’t often see in the financial world. When searching for a firm which such a unique niche, it’s much easier to rank than using generic keywords.

Instead, you need to use labels that include popular key phrases you’ve identified while using tools like Google keyword planner. Need help using this awesome tool? No worries, we can break it down for you very quickly right here! Within Google Keyword Planner you can uncover these 3 SEO boosters:

1. Top keyword ideas based on phrase or URL
2. Average monthly search volumes
3. Search volume trends for any given keyword or group of keywords over a period of time

Also, within this planner,  there are two main tools you can leverage, and that is: to find new keywords and get search volume and forecasts.

1. TO FIND KEYWORDS

If you’re looking to better understand what keywords you should be using throughout your blog posts, your website, or any other part of your page, then this is the report that you should be using. To discover new keyword ideas, all you have to do is to, enter a phrase, URL or word that’s related to the niche that you serve and  Google will give you some keyword suggestions. It’s as simple as that!

In the image below, the word, “fiduciary financial advisor” was entered:

In the financial services industry specifically, advisors tend to fall prey to being “too generic.” So, be sure to think outside the box and use your navigation as a way to better communicate with your visitors too.

2. UNCOVER VOLUME & METRICS FOR KEYWORDS

Unlike the “Find New Keywords” feature, this report below will show you what you can expect to see if you do decide to run an AdWords campaign. However, even if you don’t have any intention of running an AdWords campaign this data is still useful!

3. Don’t Consider The Order

Research has shown that users are most likely to remember and pay attention to the items at the beginning and end of the list. When it comes to your website navigation, this means that the pages you think will be most important to visitors should appear at the front and end of your navigation.

You don’t want to sandwich the most important information right in the middle of your website, as many people just scan your website, rather than read it like a book, so they may by-pass something important that you were trying to say.

In the above image, Twenty Over Ten client, Mercer Street Personal Financial Services, does a great job of putting pertinent information at the top of their website, which was built on the Acuity framework. They have strong images, with an immediate call to action to simply, “Get to Know Us.” Next to that, on the right side of the homepage, there is a family-oriented image with a description of what the firm does. This information is all seen immediately without having to scroll to find it.

4. Don’t Link Your Logo Back To The Homepage

It’s actually disorienting when a site doesn’t operate this way. The logo in your header should also be a link back to your homepage. A logo is such an important part of your firm’s overall brand. When you think of a company, many times the logo is the first thing that will come to mind. When you think of Nike, does the iconic swoosh pop into your head? What about Apple? Do you think of the simple apple with a bite out of it? Probably so! This is why it’s so important to create a strong one for your business.

Because of the importance this piece of your website carries, your visitors are more likely to instinctively click on your logo…even if you have a “Home” button in your navigation.  Needing help adding a logo? This is easy to do within the Twenty Over Ten platform!

Once you have set up your logo and added it onto your advisor website, then be sure that it links back to your homepage.

5. Having Long Drop-Down Menus

The bottom line is that having drop-down menus in your navigation actually encourages visitors to skip your important top-level pages. Studies have shown that we move our eyes much faster than we move the mouse.

Additionally, even though it may seem slower, typing in what you are searching for is actually faster than navigating through a longer drop-down menu that might not actually have what you are looking for.

Twenty Over Ten client, Valley Wealth Strategies has its pages listed on the top of their page, and they are very straightforward without drop-down menus. You can find all that you want simply by searching in the headers above and won’t get caught up when you click on a section only to have five more dropdowns. It works for some sites, however, keeping it simple is your best bet.

6. Using Long Names

In this case, and like in many other instances, it’s better to be short and sweet, rather than long-winded! People are busy and don’t stay on websites long, as mentioned above, so making long names is not advised.

Additionally, people scan your website, so they want to quickly be able to pick up on something that you see. If scanning over a name quickly, you are much less likely to remember what you saw if the name is long, rather than it being clearly stated and have the name of what they are reading in the actual name.

The Takeaway

You don’t have long to impress your visitors, so keeping your website succinct is key! You don’t have to pile as much information in there as possible even if you feel like you need to. Break up the information with strong graphics, headers and calls to action. Make your website simple to read and easy to navigate and watch your SEO rankings skyrocket!