As a financial adviser, it’s only natural you’ll want your website to stand out for all the right reasons. Having a slick, stylish website that attracts and keeps visitors is absolutely crucial for online success. However, that’s only part of the story. Looking good is one thing. It needs to function well too. One of the most important things a website should do for your financial services business is drive lead conversions. There is little point in creating new enquiries without doing all you can to convert them.

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)

Your conversion rate is the proportion of visitors to your website who complete an action, meaning they are interacting with you or your website. This could be anything from completing an online form to calling you on seeing your website content to becoming a client. The optimisation is about maximising opportunities to make that happen.

So, what can you do to maximise opportunities?

How to improve conversion rates

1. What does a conversion mean to you?
Before you can improve your conversion rates, you’ll need to know what they are. So, establishing this is the first step.

Are you going to count those completed, submitted forms? Appointments with prospective clients? Newsletter subscribers?

2. How to calculate conversion rates
The basic conversion rate formula is pretty straightforward. To get the conversion rate, divide conversions by total website visitors, and then multiply by 100 for the percentage.

You can adapt the formula as you need to, depending on what information you’re looking for.

3. Conversion rate benchmarks for financial advisers
Naturally, this will vary depending on the business type and goals. As a starting point, aim for at least 25%.

4. How to track conversion rates
It’s all about the data. Make analysing users’ behaviour and patterns on your financial planning website and other channels a routine operation.

It will help you see what you’re doing well and what might need tweaking. Ongoing refinement of your content is highly likely to increase conversions.

Google Analytics can be your best friend, here. It can help you make sure your website is operating properly and that it’s up to speed.

5. A/B testing
This is a great way to identify what is working for you. It’s simply where you run a variation of a website page and run a slightly different version of the page to identify whether one version has outperformed the other. You can keep tweaking pages, making subtle changes, or at times, you may feel you need to adapt multiple parts of your content at the same time.  

6. Updates
Ensuring your website is regularly updated is great for search engine optimisation (SEO) and showing that your financial services business is on top of the latest industry news and trends.

7. Effective SEO
We already mentioned SEO, but it’s absolutely deserving of its own heading. If your website is optimised right, it can generate substantial, quality leads from online searches. The more optimised your website, the more search engines can send potential clients your way.

8. Keep it user-friendly
Naturally, your financial advice website needs to be easy to navigate. For visitors to be happy to stay and look around for a while, it will need to load speedily, look professional and interesting and be easy for them to use.

9. The competitive advantage
The financial advice sector is a competitive one, so it’s vital for your business to engage its website visitors – and potential clients. To have the competitive edge, you’ll need to know what your competitors are doing well – and not so well. Equipped with this information, you can make sure your own website is up to scratch and capitalise on any areas where others are falling short.  

10. Know your audience
Understanding those who visit your website is fundamental to understanding their needs. Google Analytics can help you pinpoint where prospective clients are based, how they came to view your website, and provide you with so much more important information.

11. Social Proof
When it comes to choosing a financial adviser, the single biggest factor has to be trust. It’s a huge decision for potential clients to make and they will want to know that they’re making the right one.

You can start to build trust by offering social proof on your website. For example, using testimonials or highlighting awards that you’ve won.

12. Outstanding content
By outstanding, we mean content that stands out. Strong, eye-catching headings designed to garner attention, wording that provides the answers all visitors want to know and inspiring calls to action that will make them want to get in touch.

Our knowledgeable team of specialists are always happy to have a conversation on conversions, so why not give them a call today?

Recap: There are many, many things you can do to increase conversions and grow your financial services business. Whilst there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, the above steps can help you as you begin, or adjust, your conversion quest. Try different methods and see which blend works best for you.

WEBPRO knows

No less than 60% of businesses perform landing page A/B tests.