10 Financial Website Best Practices

Turn Your Financial Services Website into a Lead Generating Asset

Your most powerful sales asset is your company website. A good website is like having a salesperson who works every single day to bring in and convert visitors into qualified clients who benefit from your firm’s financial advice and services.

A well-designed website is your most effective marketing tool. It introduces your firm and your providers to your best prospects while continually generating new sales business opportunities.

When it comes to financial services, people don’t receive services directly from your website but, if you present compelling offers and relevant information, you will see an uptick in consultation requests.

Conversion Killers: Fix These First

Your ideal clients have plenty of choices in the marketplace and everyone’s competing for their limited attention. First impressions matter and if a potential client lands on your website and experiences any frustration, they are unlikely to return.

The primary conversion killers are:

  • Slow loading time
  • Confusing layout or navigation
  • Poor mobile experience
  • Lack of personal connection to your firm

When your site delivers a poor user experience, not only are you fighting an uphill battle with prospects, you’re also going to struggle with ranking on Google.

If you’re struggling to get positive lead flow from your current website, the good news is that most of your colleagues report being in the same situation.

Only 20% of financial professionals believe their website has a positive impact on their business goals.

How Do You Create a Financial Services Website That Stands Out From the Crowd?

After function, design and messaging are the foundations of every strong, lead generating website. You need a website that attracts and converts revenue producing clients to grow your financial services business.

You can probably appreciate that most people are overwhelmed by numbers or lack financial literacy. They may have a daunting tax problem.

Your website design should deliver key pieces of critical information in a way that is easy to access and easy to read. Skip financial jargon and acronyms that could confuse visitors.

Too many financial services firms make the mistake of taking the “brochure approach” to website content and that hurts conversions. If your site content is firm focused and not client focused, you are losing opportunities to your competitors.

Delivering information in the absence of creating a connection won’t turn website visitors into clients.

You know all too well that when faced with so many options, people tend to choose a bookkeeper or accountant that “seems nice” and approachable.

You need to strike the right balance between credentials and connection. Creating this balance makes creating the best visitor experience on your website even more important.

Financial Services Website Best Practices

When you get your website right, it will consistently be a source of high-quality leads that can easily be converted to business.

These best practices set you up for success from the moment your ideal client lands on your website:

Images of Success:  Who is your ideal client?  It’s critical that those potential clients see themselves in the images on your website. Do you work with creative service professionals?  Put someone with pink hair and a tattoo on your website.

If that is who you want to work with, you aren’t going to repel them when they feel seen and represented. You may drive away some people, but they aren’t the right fit for your firm. Let them work with someone who is better suited for them.

There are plenty of your people out there.

Ensuring visitors see people like them who are exhibiting signs of success is the first step to creating a critical connection with your firm. Make people feel like you’ll be a good match.

Trust Signals and Social Proof: When people are looking for financial advisors, tax professionals, or anyone who is getting access to their bank accounts, you cannot provide enough trust building information. From security, to recognized platforms and programs, to case studies, everything you can do to display the good reputation of your firm is critical to converting visitors.

Everything on your website must conform with all industry standards and meet compliance guidelines and regulations, too.

Easy to Navigate: Keep your site navigation friendly and intuitive. Try to limit how many clicks it takes to reach pages and use internal linking when it makes sense. Keep people on your site and invite them to go deeper.

Check that your site’s navigation is clear on mobile devices as well.

Client Focused and Benefit Rich: When people come to your website, they’re searching for solutions and transformation. They want to see you understand and can address their needs and challenges or help them reach their financial goals.

Tell your firm’s story in a way that you keep the focus on the benefits to your clients while conveying all the things you can do to help.

Optimized for SEO:  It’s a rare website that produces traffic without having a comprehensive search engine optimization (SEO) plan. To get visibility in search results, you need a robust strategy that considers a wide range of keywords and how to leverage them to generate traffic to your website. And with most people searching generic terms like “accounting firm in Grand Rapids” you need a blend of branded, unbranded, and local terms to show up.

Social Media Links: Social media should be part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Not only does it widen your audience, but it does also seem to convey some SEO benefits. Asking people to connect with or follow your accounts and pages gives you another conversion opportunity.

Company Blog with Rich Content: As a financial services firm, you’re held to a higher standard by Google and your potential clients as well. “Your Money, Your Life” (YMYL) sites need to focus on producing high quality industry content. This is a ranking signal for Google. To get more site traffic, you must demonstrate your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT) to the public.

It’s a major missed opportunity if you don’t have an active blog that consistently publishes good, relevant content. Blogging is still a very effective way to drive content to your website and create a perception of value.

Powerful Service Pages: The best service pages clearly state what you do and who you do it for. Your ideal client is someone else’s ideal client too. Create service pages that set you and your firm apart from others.

Do you do something other than basic accounting or financial planning?  Let people know. The fact that you hold monthly QuickBooks training sessions for small business owners might be the thing that wins you a perfect client’s business.

People Do Business with People: Have great, high resolution headshots of the professionals and, if they have significant interaction with clients, the support staff as well.

Write compelling bios for everyone. Don’t be afraid to be personable and share hobbies and interests. Your point of difference might be that you’re the CPA for cat lovers.

Extra Bonus: Add a quick 1-2 minute video on your bio pages. Google loves video and so do website visitors.  Video is great for breaking up walls of text and helping people easily consume content. When people see you on video, they can also get a first-hand impression of your communication style and determine if they think you’re a good fit for them.

Running the Numbers

You deserve to have a great, well-designed website that brings in a steady flow of qualified leads. By focusing on site performance and user experience, design, and messaging you will put yourself ahead of competitors and earn the business of your ideal clients.

Not sure where to start?  We offer comprehensive web design services and SEO optimization for financial services companies. We’re currently accepting applications for new financial professional clients. Get on our list here to transform your website into a valuable, lead generating business asset.

Marc Apple

Marc Apple

Digital Strategist

I like inbound marketing strategy, creative design, website development, analytics, and organic and paid search. That's what I write about.