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But whether an advisor is building a site from scratch or taking advantage of a corporate site template, there are several ways to ensure that a site gets noticed by prospects and becomes an integral part of the client relationship. Here are some tips:
FINDING THE SITE
A big problem faced by all advisors — independents or employees — is that people using popular search engines often can’t find their sites. That’s because advisors aren’t properly tagging their sites and doing their utmost to register them and get them indexed with search engines, says Paul Lima, an electronic book that discusses ways to ensure that a Web site is found by surfers.
For example, if an individual searches the words “financial advisor” and “Toronto” on the Google search engine, he or she can drill down through page after page and never find an individual. But do the same for “lawyer” or “chartered accountant,” and you are immediately given names and Web sites. A search of “investment advisor” and “Toronto,” should reap immediate rewards, which demonstrates how important it is to ensure that a Web site holds the right words and terms for which surfers are looking; otherwise, the site will not be found.
“If you are in a competitive industry, it is very difficult to get to the top spot [among search engine rankings],” says Lima. But there are things advisors can do to improve their chances. “If you were looking for a financial advisor, what search terms you would use?” he asks. “Talk to your customers and talk to the people who have found you online.”
That means embedding keywords into the Web site’s “meta tags.” This is Web-speak for the computer code that describes aspects of the Web page, which the search engine indexes to make it easier to find in the future.
The keyword meta tags could include your name and important descriptors, such as “investment advisor,” “financial advisor,” “investments” and your location.
There is also a description meta tag, a one- or two-sentence blurb that summarizes the content of a Web site. Think of it as your “30-second elevator pitch,” advises Lima, and use words that will attract surfers to the site. Web site design software will show users at which points to incorporate keyword tags so they will be found by the search engines.
Lima also recommends advisors intersperse keywords throughout the content on different Web pages. As well, Lima says, the more links you can get to your site from other Web sites, the greater the probability that it will be picked up and indexed. Advisors should also register their sites with search engines.
“You want to beg and borrow links to your site,” Lima says. This could come from industry associations and colleagues with whom advisors do business.
WHERE'S THE BEEF?
“Content is king,” says Steve Wylie, senior manager of marketing programs. “Clients aren’t online to read a brochure. They’re there to get some information and find out something they didn’t know. A brochure site doesn’t cut it any more.”
Having no Web site is better than having than one with poor content, says Tom Watson, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. “Unless an advisor is willing to take the time to reach out to his or her clients through the Web site, it doesn’t make sense to take the trouble,” he says.
That means providing regular updates and fresh content so that surfers will want to return to the site. The length of time required to update the site depends on how often it is updated.
Different advisors take different approaches to updating. For instance, Adrian Mastracci, a fee-only investment counsellor and president of KCM Wealth Management Inc. in Vancouver, relies on the graphic designers who built his site to update it with the content he provides. Ken Hawkins, an investment advisor does it himself, and says it takes four to five hours a month to keep the site current.
A important consideration about content is that “less is more,” says Long. “People tend to skim more than anything else.”
That means using bullet points, brief sentences and short paragraphs that convey a single message. Don’t clutter up pages with lots of bells and whistles.
Other suggestions: highlight keywords and use colour to offset important points; use links to help people navigate through the site; and place a “return” button at the top and bottom of each page to allow surfers to move back and forth easily within the site.
FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND
Ease of navigation is extremely important, says Wylie. The site must address the clients’ needs, not the needs of advisors.
Long suggests breaking the site up into sections and creating separate navigation buttons for each heading.
Some possibilities for sections include:
- personal profile
- mission or vision statement
- investment philosophy
- financial planning process
- company profile
- investment tools
- account access
- testimonials
- publications/library
- favourite investment links.
If an advisor is looking for things to put on a site that will help investors, Wylie notes, it allows advisors to download a range of investment calculators free of charge. There are a total of 14; they include RESP, RIFF and RRSP calculators, a range of illustrators and a loan planner.
COMPLIANCE
The Mutual Fund Dealers Association and the Investment Dealers Association of Canada have rules in place governing sales and communications materials, and these cover Web sites. IDA Rule 29.7 governs sales literature, including written and electronic communications, while MFDA Rule 2.7.3 governs sales communications for its members.
The MFDA issued a notice in late 2004 indicating that it was aware of Web sites that were not compliant with its rules, and that member firms need to review the Web sites of the “approved persons” who conduct business through them to ensure that advisors are compliant.
Specifically, the MFDA says, member firms need to put policies and procedures in place that require:
- advisors to inform dealers that they have Web sites;
- the dealer to review those sites;
- all Web sites that refer to or promote an MFDA member’s business be approved;
- changes to these sites follow an accepted approval process;
- corrective action be taken if a site is non-compliant.
Web site compliance with various regulatory requirements is less problematic for large bank-owned firms, because the template approach allows an advisor’s information to be centrally monitored.
For non-bank-owned firms and small independents, compliance is much more difficult. Long says compliance at bank-owned firms is “very high”; at independents, it is “very low.”
Child says it is not that difficult to be compliant if you use a good back-office service. He uses Independent Planning Group in Ottawa as his MFDA-licensed member. “It does a full compliance check on our Web site,” he says. “I’ve been through an MFDA audit, and everything passed fine.”
Where to go next on the Web? That’s entirely up to clever advisors. Child plans to allow his clients to access their accounts through his Web site: “We try to spoil our clients best as we can in every aspect of their contact with us. We are in the middle of setting up accounts that clients will be able to access [online].”
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