If you haven’t invested much time, energy or resources into your site, you may be allowing your prospects to make early impressions of you that just aren’t accurate. The good news is that you can easily change the situation. These days, a website refresh isn’t costly or time consuming.
However, it’s important that you get your website project right the first time. Here are nine tips to help you get the most out of your site. Implement these pieces of advice and you’ll likely see more prospects willing to take the next step in the relationship.
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Update Your Design
Your website is a digital extension of yourself and your office. It’s your proxy when you aren’t able to communicate with your prospects directly. Ask yourself this – would you go to a networking event in an old, out-of-fashion suit? Would you go without combing your hair? Would your bring business cards that were torn and tattered and had old contact information?
Then why would you let your website have a stale design and dated content? Understand that your website sets a first impression just as much as your physical appearance does
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Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
In 2014, Nielsen released the results of a study that found that people actually spend more time on the internet on their mobile devices than they do on a computer. Mobile will only become more important in the future, so it’s critical that your website function well on a variety of devices, not just a computer.
Fortunately, most websites can easily be built today with a responsive design, which means that the website alters its appearance to fit whatever device is being used to access it. If your site isn’t responsive, now is the time to make a change.
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Update Your Site With Current Content
The more content you have on your site that is fresh, relevant and helpful, the more value your visitors will get out of your site. That will boost their perception of you and improve the odds that they move forward to the next step in the sales process.
Posting regular content also helps with search engine results because it gives your site new pages for Google to index. Additionally, you can use your content to support your social media efforts by sharing links to the new content across all relevant platforms.
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Establish Yourself As A Thought Leader
Do you ever wish your prospects and clients just understood you and your process better? Do you wish there was an easier way to differentiate yourself from the thousands of other advisors out there?
There is. Your website is your platform for sharing your thoughts, beliefs, and strategies. You can use your site to share what makes you different from your competitors and to speak directly to your target prospects. That will help you better establish a connection and gain influence.
Remember: Don’t forget about compliance.
Just like all your other marketing materials, your website and all of its content will need to go through compliance. Many advisors put their initial site through compliance, but then don’t establish a process for submitting new content.
Remember, your website is an ongoing project. You’ll be adding content regularly. Work with your compliance department to streamline the content compliance process. If there’s already a process in place, make sure you understand it and use it properly so your content can be posted.
CreativeOne offers digital marketing solutions to help you with your website. Our digital marketing experts will look through your website to determine if, and where, there are opportunities for improvement, before developing a personalized and detailed plan to make it more than an online business card using custom websites, lead capture programs and an on-site SEO audit. We also offer digital marketing services to help you optimize your social media profiles through our digital marketing program, Social Media Elite. Our team uses proven strategies and best practices to ensure your plan is completed in a timely fashion.
Digital marketing can be a time-consuming endeavor, but with CreativeOne’s help, our team will ensure your website is optimized.