4 Website Mistakes Advisors Make

Planning and building out your office space probably took quite a bit of time and attention to detail. Most advisor offices are pretty classy places. There’s a color scheme. The flooring, walls and decor are designed to impress but also for functionality. The nicer offices take a little more time to reach. Entering each room gives you a specific feeling.

Do you remember the first time you walked into your office? What caught your eye? Was it the wall color? A big weighty desk in a corner office? Did you notice the style of the furniture? Maybe it was the technology that others were using that really impressed you.

There are some basic principles that interior designers implement based on industry that exude competence and professionalism. Maybe your office has a little more edge to it. Maybe it’s more buttoned up than most. Hopefully it accurately reflects your values and culture.

Now think about your website. Does it reflect the same image that your physical space creates?

• Are the walls of your website blank or do they have pictures that fit in with your brand?
• Do visitors know what to do when they first arrive? Is there something that welcomes them and helps them find their way?
• How up-to-date is your information? Is the last time you published something woefully out of date now?
• Are you hounding them for their personal information or, even worse, ignoring them completely and only talking about you?

No one wants their physical office to be a mess, but it’s so easy to neglect your virtual office. Keeping it tidy, welcoming and easily accessible takes significant effort. You are not alone in this difficult task. Regardless of the industry, the difference between how a company treats you in-person and how they treat you online is often the distance from the North to the South Pole.

You might be thinking to yourself, “My website doesn’t look like some of the worst ones out there, so I’m okay.” First of all, thank goodness your site doesn’t look The World’s Worst Website Ever. Secondly, your site doesn’t have to have blinking gifs or a song that starts playing when you first arrive to miss the mark with visitors.

Here are four of the most common mistakes advisors make on their websites:

**Note: I am including screenshots from real advisor websites, but I’m not here to hurt feelings, so I’m blocking out firm names.

1. Text-Heavy Home Page

This is the most common offense.

I know this site looks an “About Us” page, but believe me, this is the home page. Nobody is reading all of this. (This one also suffers from a largely firm-focused message).

What you need: Simple imagery and minimal text

Quick lesson: When you first land on a website, before you scroll, what you are looking at is called the “above the fold” portion of the home page. This is the most important section of any site as it is what most users see to decide if they’re going to stick around or move on.

Anything above the fold on the home page should be treated like a billboard. If a visitor can’t figure out what your site is about and what you can do for them in four seconds or less, they’re going to move on.

2. Unresponsive

Accessing a website on your phone that doesn’t adapt to phones is like using a telescope to read the drive-thru menu — you can only see tiny bits at a time, so you scroll blindly around while trying to find the right item. Suddenly your fingers seem giant and uncoordinated and all you want to do is click on one tiny link. As a user, it can be infuriating.

Personal aside: Can we please be done with the “personal CFO” pitch?

What you need: Mobile-Friendly Interactions

You need to make every component of your advisor website fully mobile functional or you should not have that component available in that view.

This means you should architect your site to be intelligent about mobile handling. If you have an image or piece of art that simply won’t function well on mobile, make sure you or your web designer write a media query to hide that element on displays where it won’t work.

You should also be cautious with using a “mobile theme” for your site. By this I am speaking to implementing a completely separate mobile view of your site that is different from your core look and feel. The danger here is looking untrustworthy and not having a cohesive user experience. While you can achieve a functional experience, you’re doing so while sacrificing brand continuity.

Choose a design that is responsive and adjusts to the size of a user’s screen.

3. Websites That Look Like a Template

Building a website is a lot of work, but in the end you get a professional site that represents you and the unique services you offer to your unique clients. At least that’s how it should work.

But some websites look and read like the firm bought a pre-built website and then just plugged their name and logo into the copy. Yes, there are companies that actually will sell you a template and plug your name in so you don’t have to do anything, but it’s a terrible idea. The end result winds up as mere noise in a prospective client’s search. It looks cheap and conventional — two qualities you don’t want associated with your firm.

If your firm is just starting out and you don’t have the time or budget for a large-scale site, this might seem like a good fix, but it’s not. It’s like trying to stick a wet Band-aid to a slug — it won’t work for long and, really, it’s just gross.

Look at the graphics on this page and read over the copy. It speaks in mostly broad terms that could apply to most advisory firms (seriously, I only had to block out four things) and includes zero images to help catch visitors’ eyes and differentiate this firm from others.

What you need: A Custom Website

In the same way you invested in the look and feel of your physical office, you need to spend time and money to get your online presence right. It should begin to build trust and brand recognition for your prospects while reassuring your clients that they’ve come to the right place.

4. Excessive Stock Photography

I can’t show you an example of this one because I could get in trouble with a stock photography company, but you know the kind of websites I’m talking about. They feature a lot of perfect pictures of perfect people smiling at each other surrounded by perfect landscapes. These pictures have their place, but it’s easy to go overboard.

I saw a page the other day where the banner rotated between a picture of a farm, a person standing on top of a mountain with their arms raised, a close-up of some flowers, and a picture of a middle-aged couple holding hands while skipping, laughing, and staring into each other’s eyes. That last one sounds like a caricature of bad stock photography, and it would be a good parody, except for the fact that it actually exists and is meant entirely unironically.

I suspect the site owners thought these pictures perfectly embodied what their firm is about and what their prospects might be interested in, but the pics actually have the same effect as item #3 on this list in that they made the site blend in too well with other bland sites.

What you need: Photography that makes sense

To be clear, I’m not saying you should avoid using stock photography (and if you can get it for free, you might as well). We use it. We would be lost without it, but when we use it the imagery meets the brand direction to create something that’s cohesive.

Limit yourself to one picture per page. If you absolutely need more pictures, you’ll want to lay them out thoughtfully and not in a slider with a whiplash experience.

I could keep going (I didn’t even get to optimizing your site for search or making sure you’re speaking to your audience), but I’ll save some for another day.