This newsletter addresses two topics - the latest version of our client newsletter for advisors and a perspective on financial advisor websites and some of your options.
A website is comparable to a yellow pages listing. It means you are real, makes it easy to locate your firm, and is a very effective way to provide information on your business to clients and prospects alike.
A website doesn't have to be perfect from the start; it's a work in progress. A simple opening site can grow into a more complex and effective presentation as you become more familiar with using the site's capabilities and with what visitors are looking for online.
Website Tips
- Make certain you own and control your domain names.
- Register "like" names and other names you like and point those names toward your main site.
- Link email accounts to your website through the use of aliases to increase visibility for your site.
- Use search optimization techniques.
- Visit your website regularly to make certain it is working, up to date and accurate.
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| Website Options |
 The template website
Search the web for "financial advisor websites" and you will find a number of providers of hosted template websites where you can select a design template, and within the limits of that template add your logo, photographs and copy. A template website is typically a good starting point for companies just starting to put together a web presence. These sites are easy to set up and provide ready made content such as a newsletter articles, financial calculators, etc. While the templates available today are much more flexible than earlier generations, however, they have limitations when it comes to customizing your site.
The proprietary website
A proprietary website is one created specifically for your use. The look, navigation and content are designed to meet your firm's needs rather than the needs of a larger market.
I prefer proprietary websites. Template websites are a good starting point if you don't know what you want in terms of a web presence but know you need something. Initially, they are relatively cost effective. Their disadvantages are largely those related to flexibility. Templates tend to have trouble growing with a company. The providers are often slow to adapt to new web technologies and the templates are designed for the mainstream, not the innovators. Because content is often supplied for the sites in the form of newsletter articles, educational information, calculators and other content, there's less incentive for the company to establish its own message.
You have three basic options when designing a proprietary website. (1) Take an existing site that you like and have a designer customize the look for your application. Keep in mind that most sites and graphics on the sites are copyrighted. If you opt to use the look of a site, it needs to be changed sufficiently to become a clearly separate entity.
(2) Purchase a design and use or adapt it as you wish. There are a number of sites where you can browse, purchase and download code for a site design that can then be customized with your logo, photographs, artwork and copy. To start, you might want to visit http://www.websitetemplates.name/.
(3) Have a designer create a site unique to your company. This is typically the more expensive approach initially, but may result in the best site for your firm. It's nice to note that web design costs are significantly lower than they were as little as five years ago thanks to better design programs and more competition.
Your design should have a unique home page and two or more different interior page layouts. The main navigation links, once set, are more difficult to change later because they impact every page on your site. As a result, it's important to think navigation through carefully before you start building the individual pages.
Avoid designs that use frames. Frames are the reason some web sites, when printed, print only part of the page or several pages, each with a different element of the whole page. Search engines also have a tough time with frames, giving yet another reason to avoid using frames in web design.
If you opt to go with a proprietary website, you are going to need to find a host server for your site. I host my site through my dsl provider because the cost is right and the service all I need. For a basic site, it can cost as little as $50 a year to have your site accessible on the Internet. Your host will provide you with access codes to allow you to upload changes to the site as needed. The more support and special features you want on your site, the higher cost.
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Content for Your Web Site |
| A website should be written as carefully as a brochure that will have thousands of copies printed. You need to clearly set forth what you have to offer, why the visitor should be interested and why they should believe you are the best firm for their needs. If you have a company brochure, your website should be reinforcing the key messages presented in the brochure. With that said, websites have a tremendous advantage over a brochure - the ability to bore down to more and more specific information.
Many web designers will tell you your copy needs to be short because people don't read. That is true only to a point. If the subject is of interest and well written, the copy will be read. I recommend that the main pages of the site be terse, but that subsequent pages have as much detail as is appropriate for your management style, including lengthy articles, presentations, disclosures, client forms, and much more. Visitors should have the ability to find additional information they might want on your firm on levels below your main pages.
You can use the website for information that requires a login to access as well as to provide links to account access logins at your custodians. Incorporate capabilities to track where visitors come from and where they go on your site, capture email and address information for follow up contacts, and identify return visitors.
I prefer information on a website that is specific to the business and try to stay away from tools such as stock quotes and market updates. Five years ago, these might have been useful. Today there are excellent resources available on the web that are typically superior to what you can subscribe to use on your site.
Beware of clutter on your site. Everything should serve the purpose of better explaining and selling your firm and providing clear benefit to the visitor in terms of useable information. Content for the sake of content clutters your message.
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| Optimizing for the Search Engine |
Once you have a website, you need people to find it by (1) driving traffic to your site by marketing efforts, (2) facilitating the ability of search engines to find your site and rank its relevancy, (3) utilizing paid searches or (4) a combined effort.
Books can be written on each of these methods. To provide you with a few useable tips now, we offer the following:
Crawler-based search engines follow algorithms that are closely kept trade secrets to minimize "spamming" the search engines and to provide the most relevant links. In general, these rules use location and frequency of keywords to determine relevancy. In-bound links also matter if the algorithm considers those "good" links that are authoritative on your subject. It's equivalent to a third party endorsement. Crawlers follow links, so if you have good links to your site, relevancy increases.
Search keywords should appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. If search terms appear in the HTML title tag, the page is often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic. Pages with a higher frequency of keywords in relation to other words in a web page are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.
This means that in advance of writing the content of your main web pages, you need to think about what search terms a prospect might use to seek your services. You can't simply use those terms in meta tags. In fact, many search engines are now disregarding meta keyword tags. The terms need to be in the content of your message.
Head tags that still do matter include:
<TITLE>Investment Management Services for Retirees Concerned about Capital Preservation> This will appear in the reverse bar of the browser when the web page is viewed and is used if someone bookmarks your page.
<META name="description" content=Investment advisory services provided by Superior Investing Inc. encompass retirement planning, portfolio management, tax minimization and estate planning for moderate and high net worth individuals.> This tag will be used by some, but not all browsers, to describe the page content when search results are displayed.
<META name="keywords" content= > is largely disregarded by crawlers today. When the crawlers do reference this line, keywords need to appear in the page text as well to have relevancy.
You can also use META tags to tell the search robots NOT to index a page. This might be of value for pages containing forms that you do not want commonly available.
For more information on search engine optimization, an excellent site is http://searchenginewatch.com/.
Submitting your website
Search engine submission or registration refers to listing your website with the search engines. Rather than waiting and hoping a spider makes it to your site, you specifically ask to be registered. This does not mean you will necessarily rank well, but it does mean the search engine knows your site exists.
Free search engine submission is possible, however, using paid programs typically speeds up the listing process. Consider submitting your site to Yahoo's human-compiled directory for one year (flat $299 annual fee). This helps ensure that major crawler-based search engines pick up your home page quickly. Here again, a good site for understanding search engine submission is http://searchenginewatch.com.
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| Pay per Click Advertising |
This topic is a whole newsletter on its own, which is why we will be covering paid search advertising in more detail in the next issue. |
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If you have questions about implementing or improving your website, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the project with you. For further information on our services, visit the Active Manager's Resource Center website at www.activemanagersresouce.com
Have a wonderful fall!
Sincerely,
Linda Ferentchak, President
Active Managers Resource Center
Financial Communications Associates |
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4th Quarter Thoughtful Investor |
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Our 4th quarter client newsletter for financial professionals is now available. For a preview, click on the image above or the links at the end of this article.
This newsletter takes on three short subjects as well as four more detailed topics. The short pieces are:
October through April Historically the Best Time to Invest
Hyman Minsky Was Right
The Importance of an Exit Strategy
While the longer articles cover:
When Good Stocks Go Bad - A look at why problems in the lending and housing markets impact non-related stocks
Is Buy-And-Hold Really the Answer to Successful Investing? - Questions investors should ask before they accept a buy-and-hold recommendation.
Make Annual Credit Reports a Priority - Free reports are available annually from the major credit bureaus. This article explains how to request them.
Two Vital Documents - A Living Will and a Power of Attorney.
The Thoughtful Investor is FINRA-reviewed and published quarterly for the use of investment advisors and financial professionals. Your photograph, company identification (including your logo) and contact information are added to each issue to make it uniquely yours.
A number of different formats and customization options are available.
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Use the newsletter as a printed self-mailer with the Thoughtful Investor heading or customized with your masthead.
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Create custom issues that merge in-house articles with the Thoughtful Investor articles you prefer from the current and past issues.
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Use the newsletter as a PDF file for emailing and posting to your web site.
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Request an html-coded file of the newsletter that you can email to clients. This can be one individual email or a series of shorter emails from one newsletter.
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You can also purchase reprint rights to individual articles in this and prior issues.
Newsletters are one of your best marketing tools for reaching out to prospects and existing clients on a regular basis. With the Thoughtful Investor, the quarterly contact is a relatively painless affair.
For more information, visit the newsletter section of our website www.activemanagersresource.com or contact Linda Ferentchak at 303-989-5656.
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