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Often, your website's homepage is a prospect's VERY FIRST impression of your firm. This week Samantha Russell, CMO at Twenty Over Ten, shares an exact formula to optimize the copy, visuals, and CTA on your homepage for more conversions.
What should be on the homepage of your website?
That's what we're going to talk about today, so buckle up and get ready because I have exactly what you should be putting on the homepage of your website as a financial advisor to keep people engaged and keep them scrolling through the site so that they eventually will book a meeting with you.
Okay, so let's start with the basics. Number one, we want to think about what is someone going to see. Our brains process imagery 60,000 times faster than text. So if you have an old outdated stock photo of an elderly couple in a car going over the Golden Gate Bridge, or you have some other cheesy photo that nobody else really thinks is a picture you took or resonates with them, get rid of it. It's not going to work. You need to have photos that reinforce the copy of your website.
So let's circle back to design in just a second and go forward to copy. You want to write the copy on your homepage in what we call the problem-solution method. So, what are the problems that many of your clients have? What keeps them up at night, what are they thinking about? Get in their heads, and then think about what is the solution that you provide to those problems. That's what you want to put on the homepage of your site. So a formula for this is something like: I help- and then you would put in who that person is- so, I help busy tech entrepreneurs- to do something- so, to manage their whole entire financial lives, so they can benefit, benefit, benefit. So in this case, reap tax benefits, spend less time coordinating their financial life, and focus on growing their business. So again, the formula is: I help "who" to do "what" so they can "benefit, benefit, benefit." That's the formula you want to put on the homepage of your website.
With that formula would go a picture that matches what it is you're talking about. So in this case, if you're talking about busy tech entrepreneurs and executives, you might want to have a picture of an office space that's sleek glass, you know, with people working on computers or something like that, so that the image reinforces the copy. Now again, because we live in the era of scroll and scan, you want to make sure that all of the copy on your page is really easy to scroll through. So don't have big blocks of paragraphs; we don't read a website like we read a book, top-to-bottom, every word, we scan. So instead you want to use icons, columns, lots of different things to break up the text on the homepage of your website.
The next element you absolutely want to make sure you include is something to reinforce your credibility. So if you've won an award, if you've been featured in CNBC or the Wall Street Journal, put a "featured in" section that has the icons or the logos for those publications or those awards so that it, just again, triggers in the person's mind really quickly, subconsciously, "Oh, this advisor is credible," or "This firm is the expert in this area."
And then the last thing you want to make sure that you do is have a very strong call-to-action that tells the visitor what to do next. So if you're trying to get the most people to book a meeting on your calendar, then you should have a button that says something like "Interested in reviewing your own portfolio to see if you're on track to retire? Let's schedule a free complimentary call." And have a calendar button where they can schedule a time that works for them.
Again, those are the main elements that you want to put on your homepage for the maximum number of conversions and getting people interested and learning more about your firm. And just keep in mind that first impressions matter. The same way you wouldn't show up to a first meeting in your pajamas, don't let your website be something that you're neglecting. It's out there for anyone in the world to see, and thousands more people per year will visit your website than will ever meet you in person.