Your website is a very important tool in your marketing strategy. It is most likely the first place someone checks before they even do business with you, so it’s important that your website is designed well. It should explain how you and your business can help clients reach their financial goals. Here are five tips for designing or re-designing your financial services website.
1. Make your site intuitive.
If you can create navigation that is easy to use, then you are way ahead of many other websites. Really think about what your client or prospect would want to achieve by visiting your website. What do you think they are looking for? How can you get them there in one or two clicks? Look at the sites you frequent. Emulate your favorite site’s navigation and apply it to your business. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to navigation. Also, keep it simple and avoid redundancy. If you have a few areas of your site that are the same, then combine them. For example, if you have an About Us section, a Who We Are section and a What We Do section, then I’m guessing you can combine those sections into one. Keep it simple. Visitors to your site don’t want to navigate to three different sections to read essentially the same content.
2. Use good design principles.
One good principle is to keep your design simple and clean. This helps visitors know how to get to what they're looking for. Don’t bombard the user with a bunch of ads and unnecessary images. Do more with less. Another good principle is to make your text easy to read. Make sure it’s large enough and the colors work together. Also, be consistent with your fonts. If you use too many different fonts then the site will look messy and unprofessional. These are just a few web design principles to get started and I would encourage you to research more principles.
3. Make it mobile.
In the past, websites were made to fit computer screens. With smart phones everything changed. Smart phones, tablets and other devices are not going away. If your site is not mobile friendly then you will lose a large chunk of your audience. The website designer that creates your site should make the site responsive. When the site is responsive, it recognizes the size of the device and scales accordingly. More and more users are searching on their phones and if your site isn’t mobile then they will just move onto the next one.
4. Content is king.
Content is the difference between being found on Google and never being found at all. Make sure all of your pages have useful information. The pages can’t just be pretty, they need content and some depth. A great tool to get content on your site is a blog. You can blog about topics surrounding your business or what you think your clients and prospects will be interested in.
Blogs can also bring users back if they like your style. When you bring users back then they will be more likely to visit different areas of your site. For example, say you have a workshop going on and they don’t click on it the first time. But then they come back a second or third time to read the blog and they finally click to sign up for your workshop. Success! The blog draws them in. You can also use your blogs to improve your presence on social media.
Is there a blog you love reading? Try to figure out what the author did to get you to keep coming back. What do they blog about? Do they give their readers content they want? Do a little research on other blogs before starting to write your own.
5. Work with a professional web designer.
Make your business's website look more professional by consulting a professional. Someone who is experienced with building websites could help make your website look better and appear closer to the top of online search results. Your financial services website won't gain nearly as much attention if it's buried in the tenth page of search results. A professional web designer or website building service can help you quickly create the website you want. Plus, you don't have to spend your valuable time learning to write the code for your website.
Creating an easy to use website is just the first step to generate leads online. You need to have systems in place to help your prospects navigate from social media posts, to your website, and to ultimately contacting you to set an appointment. If you’re asking someone to trust you with their life’s savings, you need to demonstrate that you take your business seriously. Every website page, offer form, video, photo, and sentence needs to be skillfully designed. Every step of this process, from clicking on a social media post, to receiving a follow up email, needs to work smoothly. Reducing quality at any one of these steps could impact your first impression on a prospect.
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