Digital marketing fundamentals — Responsive website design & final thoughts

This is the fourth and final post in my Digital Marketing fundamentals article series for Financial Institutions. My previous article covered the benefits of anchoring social media deep within your digital marketing strategy.

The last key element, essential to your future digital marketing successes, is your responsive website.

Mobile Responsive Website Design

Once thought to be a luxury of website design, mobile responsive design quickly became an essential requirement. Each year, as the number of different types of devices, platforms and browsers increase, web design has to take into account all of their various sizes and shapes in order to able to deliver an optimal web experience. If you’ve ever tried to view and navigate a non-responsive website on a smartphone or even a tablet, you’ll know what I mean.

With more users (especially next generation clients) relying on mobile devices to browse the Internet, a website must be able to respond to the screen size and orientation of the device. That also includes responsiveness to the user’s preferences — landscape or portrait, image size, and type of device (i.e. able to switch from a tablet to a phone). Of course, that would eliminate the need to develop different designs for different devices; however, it also means finding a web designer or website provider specializing in responsive design.

Did you know? The latest data shows a consolidation with mobile digital media time in the US significantly higher at 51% compared to a desktop (42%). Read full report

Why should you go responsive?

If my case about making sure that your website self-adjusts to any device or screen size your visitors are using is not enough, how about this: Search engines such as Google tend to favor websites that are developed with mobile devices in mind. This means that if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, Google may bump you down in ranking when your website is searched from other mobile devices. You can test if your website is mobile-friendly here.

You can also read Google’s recommendations on mobile friendly websites if you need additional convincing!

Final Thoughts

The Financial Services Industry is finally starting to realize that technology has shifted the power of the message to the consumer. The days of mass marketing, and forcing the message onto the consumers are over. Web technology and social media along with the continuous innovation of the devices that deliver it have empowered consumers to dictate their behavior, preferences, and expectations which messages they want to receive, and how and when they will receive them. More importantly, they fully control how they and when and to whom they will respond.

Extra material: Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends Report — how financial organizations can increase their reach and revenue on social channels. Download full report

The impact on the ability of financial advisors to be able to connect with their desired markets and communicate in a way that engenders trust hinges on the technology they have available at their fingertips.

In the next five years, the success of your financial advisors will come down to how effectively they can scale and manage client acquisition and retention in the digital arena. For next generation clients, advisors will have to be able to demonstrate their nimbleness and proficiency in high tech before they can achieve high touch and high trust. Providing such a customized experience for all clients and prospects is simply beyond the realm of financial advisors without a comprehensive, well-designed digital strategy.

Broker-dealers and advisory firms intent on moving their advisors to the forefront of web marketing should consider partnering with technology providers that can assist in the development and delivery of a comprehensive digital strategy that includes responsive websites, integrated social media, content creation as well as the training, coaching, and resources to implement it.

2017 is going to be the year for leading Financial Institutions to accelerate their integrated digital marketing rollouts, increase their reach, create new ways to connect with their customers and boost their revenue derived from digital activities. In short, it is going to be an amazing year!