If visitors get confused when they look at your site, then the web design for your financial planner website has failed to achieve what was intended. The bottom line is that you have to drive traffic to your financial advisor website and convert that traffic into clients.

5 Points to Keep in Mind for the Web Design for Your Financial Advisor Website:

• Marketing Focus & Purpose
• Design & Layout: Keep It Simple
• Do Not Make Visitors to your Financial website work (too hard)
• SEO: If You Build It (properly), They Will Come
• Build Your Financial Website for the Long Term

Marketing Focus & Purpose

Attracting customers to a financial professional website isn’t an easy job. Your financial professional website shouldn’t look like an online brochure, as it doesn’t serve any marketing purposes if it is designed that away.  The content and web design for the financial planner website should allow the visitor to comprehend the marketing message you want to get across. If you want your financial planner website to carry your ideas to a larger audience, you need to consider pay-per-click and other online advertising media.

Your financial website can be a “virtual salesperson” if you include these elements:

• White background with a simple design and no flashy animation.
• Easy navigation of your financial advisor website.
• Precise and well-presented content that talks about exactly what you offer.
• Simple code with minimal graphics on each page of the financial website.
• Pages that load fast.
• Proper optimization of your financial planner website for search engines.

However, if you intend for your financial website to look like an online company magazine highlighting your work, then focus on graphic design.

Design & Layout: Keep It Simple

Using fancy graphics might make the financial webpage look amazing, but your objective is to sell your product or service. Because a financial web designer will not know about marketing or the type of audience you are targeting, it is up to you to communicate to him or her what you want to incorporate in your financial website design. Visitors to your financial planner website should know immediately the products and services you offer. Ask yourself these questions:

• Does your HOME page have a marketing focus?
• Does your copy talk about the benefits your products and services offer?
• Does your content encourage and make it easy for the visitor to contact you?
• Do your page headlines create reader interest?

The content you use for your financial professional website should list the benefits of whatever you are offering. Don’t include too many links and choices in your financial advisor website (don’t provide back doors or easy exits to your visitors). Come up with a creative headline as that will catch the audience’s attention right off the bat. They will make the effort to go through the entire content if the headline is interesting and catchy. Provide your number on every page of the financial webpage so that visitors don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Do Not Make Your Visitors Work (Too Hard)

Information and data should be easy to find on the financial website or else the visitors will move on to a website that doesn’t require multiple searches to access particular information. Your financial advisor website content must be well-organized and concise, using one or two sentence paragraphs, headings, subheadings, and bulleted lists whenever possible. Make the navigation of the financial website as simple as you can without complicated dropdown menus or links. Subtly direct visitors towards the desired action you want them to take.

SEO: If You Build it (Properly) They Will Come

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is necessary to ensure that people from your target market visit your financial advisor website. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN are the main sources of traffic for almost every financial website. Your financial website needs to be optimized with appropriate keywords (terms that people use while searching for services online) in the content and financial webpage coding. This ensures peak performance across the complete spectrum of search engines. Be aware that traffic from SEO will not happen overnight – be patient and you will get a good rank after a few weeks of implementing SEO strategies.

Build Your Financial Advisor Website for the Long Term

Your financial website should be built on a CMS (Content Management System). Technology changes with time, so be careful that you don’t use something that is outdated in a year or two. Your financial planner website should last for some years at least.