Does Your Financial Advisory Firm's Website Pass the 5 Second Test?

Your website only has a 5-second window to grab a user's attention. Samantha Russell, CMO at Twenty Over Ten, shares an easy way to test if your firm's website is optimized for prospects.

Did you know that the average person will land on a web page and decide within just 5 seconds whether or not they want to stay or exit out of the page? This is why in marketing we have something called the "Five Second Test," and it's a great way to determine whether your site has been optimized to attract the right people and keep them on your page. I'm Samantha Russell from Twenty Over Ten and I'm going to tell you very quickly how to run this test on your own website

So here's what you want to do. You want to find someone who does not know really what you do for work. So typically I would tell people at a coffee shop, or at the grocery store, or anywhere like that. Right now, with the pandemic, maybe you want to ask a neighbor or somebody. But you want to ask someone to take a look at your website and spend just 5 seconds, and then you're going to close it and ask them a series of questions. So, it really needs to be someone who does not know your business and what you do for a living.

So again, you're going to say "May I have a couple minutes of your time?" You're going to pull up your website, count to 5 and then close your laptop. And then these are the types of questions that you want to ask: What do you remember seeing on the page? What was the name of the business? What service does that business provide? Who do they provide it for? Right, what is the audience that they serve? So you're going to ask them these questions and jot down their answers and you want to do this actually 10 to 15 times.

Then you're going to go back and look at all the answers, and if at least 80% of people are answering them: they can know the name of the business, what service that the business provides and who they are targeting, what audience, then your website is passing the 5 second test. If people are saying more ambiguous answers, something like, "I think they do something with investments, or maybe they're a stockbroker, or I think it might be a bank," you know, they know that it's something in finance but they have no idea who it's for or what service they provide. Then you have your work cut out for you, and you need to update and modernize your home page.

So, what we suggest is that anyone landing on your site can immediately tell who you are, so your business name. What you do, what services you provide. And who you do it for, so they're your audience that you serve. Those three key things. And then, optimally, what steps they should take next. So, whatever, whether it's a "start here" button or a "schedule a meeting on our calendar," what is the main call to action?

Now, I'll give you a quick example. A website that says "Securing your financial future is way more ambiguous than a website where the homepage copy says "We provide investment management and financial planning advice for busy tech professionals in Silicon Valley," right? Who the company is, what services they provide, and who they provide those services for.

So go back, run the 5 second test on your own website, and if you are looking for more information on how to do this, the steps you should take, we will link below to a whole blog post we have-including a 1-hour webinar where we go through lots of examples running the 5 second test live with an audience of other financial advisors, and you can take a look at those examples as well. Make sure you give this a thumbs up if you like this video and found it helpful, and subscribe to Twenty Over Ten's YouTube channel for even more marketing tips every single week. Thanks everyone!

Related: How Financial Advisors Can Write a Strong Bio for Their Website