I’ve been speaking with a couple of financial planners about their website design.  In both cases, they have existing websites that were set up a few years ago, but haven’t had much time devoted to them to keep them fresh.

There’s a couple of observations I made about the sites that are important to write about here.

Who Is Your Target Market?

Neither planner had a clear target market in mind.  This is important because when we’re discussing the design of your financial planning website we need to know who it’s aimed at. Are they young or old? Are they employees or do they run small business? What sort of information are they after? Do they like watching video, listening to audio or reading articles?

In both cases we spent some time with the planners to help them define their target audience.

What is the purpose of your financial planning website?

This may sound like a crazy question, but what do you want visitors to do when they come to your site?

The answer to this question will influence the design of your financial advisor website.

In most cases, the number one outcome you want is for the new visitor to connect with your business.  Ideally, you want them to pick up the phone and call you. Second best is that they send you an email asking for some kind of additional contact, third best is that you get their email address and permission to remain in contact with them.

How Will People Know You Exist?

It’s not enough to build a nice financial planning website. People need to be able to find you!

In both cases, these financial planners had built their sites and just assumed traffic would come. Wrong!

Building a website is like getting a financial plan – the plan and the website are just step one. It’s the bit that comes afterwards that is most important.

You need to work with an expert who can help you with things like Search Engine Optimization, understanding social media and article directories, using press releases and how to re-package your content.

So, if you’re a financial planner looking at website design for your business, have a think about these questions. And contact us to find out how we can work best with you.