So, one day, I went to visit a Financial Planner.
I won’t reveal names to protect the innocent but let’s say his name was Bob.
I was referred to him by a good friend. Nothing like word of mouth advertising.
I could immediately tell he was really good at his job. Over 16 years he had built a great business purely on word of mouth advertising.
On top of that, he was a really trustworthy and honest man.
We got talking and the topic of his website comes up.
He was clearly not very happy.
I had already told him what I do so I asked him what the problem was.
He then vented his frustration. He decided he needed a new website to replace one that was well over 5 years old. Fair enough. His current website didn’t even work on mobile devices!
His problem was that he wasn’t happy with his developer. He just felt the developer was designing something he liked rather than what the business needed. On top of that, the developer wasn’t really interested in listening to feedback or explaining what was going on.
I really felt sorry for him so I gave him some suggestions and told him he could call me if he wanted to talk some more.
A few days later he asked me for another chat about his website.
He showed me what had been done and it was really obvious what the problems were.
Here is a list of some of the issues we found:
- The new website was focussed completely on design. Things like fancy pictures, that weren’t really relevant. There was even a video playing in the background of the home page that the developer had shot of people walking around their new offices! Unsuprisingly it was a slow website.
- There was no plan to capture customer data. That’s a crime!
- There was no plan to nurture website users to convert them to customers.
- There was no measurement plan (critical if you want to know what’s working on your website).
- No plan to drive traffic. Probably a good thing because there wasn’t a plan to capture the data.
- Site navigation that really was so unique the average user would need to spend a minute or two working out where to go on the site.
I could go on as there was quite a list of problems but I think you get the idea.
The problem was clear, the developer had a very strong “design” bias and this was his single focus.
Of course you want to make sure your website looks good but this is just one piece of the puzzle.
After a couple of hours I quickly outlined for Bob what I would do to fix it.
Although I wasn’t looking for the work Bob quickly asked if I would take over the project and we quickly came to an agreement.
Fast forward some months later and, after following our proprietary online growth process, we successfully launched his new website to great reviews from customers.
Just some of the key elements of his new site:
- Fresh modern design
- Fast loading and mobile friendly
- User Friendly content that shows they are experts in Financial planning. We even had some videos made that look really professional.
- Customer capture plans (using highly valued content that website visitors want)
- Once we have a lead they go into an email nurture sequence that provides real customer value.
- Lots of social proof – think testimonials, books, star ratings
- Site optimized to improve google search results
- Data. Full analytics implementation so we know what is working.
Finally, we also worked on improving the off-website presence of the business. Potential customers often do a google search on a business before they call so we needed to make sure the search results were good. We quickly discovered Bob hadn’t sorted out his Google MyBusiness listing. We claimed it and asked his customers for a rating to provide further proof they are awesome!
This was a great project to work on. The clients were just amazing and so keen to really do something great. They thoroughly deserve an exceptional online presence that reflects what a great and trustworthy business they have.
Here is to many more projects like this.
If you need any help using digital to grow your business see below for a free strategy session (when available).
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