Financial Advisors Website Design in Ireland – what do you need? Why?

The planning takes one week. The design usually takes two weeks, plus any delay due to revisions at your end. The Development takes two weeks from the time we receive your website content, written and photographic. Then a week to optimise and test, so usually between 4 to 8 weeks.

Yes this is the same for Wealth Planner Website Design or Financial Planner Website Design or financial consultant website, as the process is the same

The planning takes one week. The design usually takes two weeks, plus any delay due to revisions at your end. The Development takes two weeks from the time we receive your website content, written and photographic. Then a week to optimise and test, so usually between 4 to 8 weeks.

Do it yourself. Do it with you. or Do it for you.

Yes, if you have the time, in theory you could do it all yourself, plan, design, develop and optimise a website for your independent financial advice firm. In fact if you want to DIY the project, read our blog articles to find out how to tackle each step properly. It could be a good way to start.

Or talk to us about doing it with you, where we guide you and you do the work or even the marketing, whichever bits you want, once we write up a plan with you to give you some guidance and support.

Or we can do it all for you, whilst you focus on your own Business. In which case we need to use the new website to make you more money than you are investing with us. This is the sort of challenge we readily take on and overcome evry time. Yes, actually, we do Guarantee it. :0)

Our own team based here in Ireland, mainly Donegal. We do not offshore our work. The developers and project managers are team members on the web design agency payroll. The designers are all local and hired per project, as they all have different styles. We match the right graphic designer with your project. All website are custom designed for you individually. We do not even offshore SEO strategy, as our senior SEOs are also on the staff.

In fact, our Financial Controller and co owner Edel is a Qualified Financial Advisor.

Yes, we actually design for mobile first viewing and then make desktop work too. Mobile page load speed is very important, especially since Google introduced Web Core Vitals, as an important ranking factor since May 2021. Responsive and mobile should be a basic expectation for you.

This depends on how many services you want to promote. It could be as low as 5 and as high as you like or need. How may financial advice services do you offer? Add Home, About, Contact and News. What about a blog or a page to reference SFDR Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulations in line with Brokers Ireland. Or explain your Terms of Business as per the Brokers Ireland Compliance Manual. Add a page for Pensions advice or Mortgage advice or any other financial service that you might offer.

Every page is a sales page or a conversion page, so done well each one will generate business. However you can start low and build up, so you dictate the budget totally.

You do. We can get original written content done for you by a content writer. And we can buy photos for you too if you need them. However when it comes to Financial Advice, you are the expert. Your content on the Home page should explain:

• Do you help people like me reach my goals?
• How do you do that?
• Do you have a proven process? Show me.
• How do I know I can trust you? Show me some testimonials and case studies.

We do not sell or resell hosting. It is too important to be used as a way of making a little side profit. We recommend suitable WordPress hosting for your specic WordPress requirements. The hosting, like your domain name, should be in your name and on your credit card – much like the deeds of your house.

No, you do not. However we often recommend having one.

This is to allow you add supporting content for your main financial advice service pages. If you have a service page called Critical Illness Cover, then why not write a supporting blog article about what is required to get the best deal in Critical Illness cover in Ireland. Or what are the typical charges are in relation to Critical Illness cover.
Or explain about Insurance-Based Investment Products (IBIPs) and how you look at your customer’s ‘sustainability preferences’, especially where there might be a conflict of interest or how the IBIPs are a contract of insurance which offers a maturity or surrender value and where that maturity or surrender value is wholly or partially exposed, directly or indirectly, to market fluctuations.

Basically you can use your blog posts to show your experstise to Google and to visitors.

Yes, absolutely. Insist on this from your web design agency.

If you work with us, we will set you up as a User. And we will provide you with a Website User Manual. Plus you can book training with us as often as required. The website is a Content Management System and is designed to allow you add, edit or delete content.

Yes. Unusually for our industry, we do in fact stand over our work with a Guarantee. We are happy to have some skin in the game.

We agree targets. We even offer money back because we only take on projects where we know we can add value to Financial Advisors. We have never had to give any form of warranty refund. And why not talk to Pascal or Gwen or any of our clients.

Marketing Strategy – Create awareness in your target market of your financial advice services.

Tactics
1. Content Marketing – Ideally you want people coming to you organically. One of the best ways is to give them useful content to read, that makes them realise that you are the right Financial Advisor for them. Answer questions in detail, just like you would if someone asked you a question in the office or over the phone. Think of the money questions you get every day or regularly, as in Frequently Asked Questions. Ensure that this content is on your website, then promote it through SMM Social Media Marketing via your Social Channels, Linkedin, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads or Google Ads PPC Pay Per Click Advertising. You can even create a Facebook Group if you want to use it as a medium to engage with existing or potential clients. Adding video is a good way to get engagement and the video can be shared or promoted or put it on your own video marketing platform in Youtube.

2. Blog – Write some useful financial guidance articles to add value to your website for visitors. Show people you know a lot about these financial products or financial services you offer clients. If you feel that you cannot write or do not have time, hire someone to create ‘original’ content for you. No boilerplate content that gets published on dozens or hundreds of financial advisory websites. Use SEO Search Engine Optimisation to help your pages and posts get found in Google search for relevant key terms. Are you featuring on page one in Google for these key terms? You can use an email Marketing Campaign to send content via a Newsletter, to inform or bring people such as existing clients to your website to read more. Can you guest blog on other financial advice websites to show your authority.

3. Niche – if you specialise in ‘Retirement Planning’, then focus any content creation on that specific area, rather than trying to write content on too many topics. Financial Planning is a vast area. What about niching further, say retirement planning for nurses or firemen or men in a certain area of Ireland and of a certain age, whatever is your best space.

4. UX/UI – With all this wonderful content you are creating, make sure that it is easy to find in your website. Usually referred to as User Experience and User Interface. All artices on any given topic can be clustered or grouped together and be easy to flow from one to another in a logical way. Your Blog may have Categories of different finance advice posts. Your service pages may be in sub navigations, to break up the content and funnel people to where they want to go.

5. CTAs – On each page or post, have a logical CTA Call to Action, such as ‘Get a FREE Quote for Life Cover’ or ‘Make an appointment with a Qualified Financial Advisor now’ or whatever is right for that page. Only have one CTA if possible to avoid confusion and help with flow.

6. Updating – when you create these pages or posts you will need to keep the financial advice up to date. And you may well think that your clients would not read 5000 words about Life Cover options, and you may well be right. However some of them will like to get the long answers to their queries. And Google will definitely like it, so they may then rank you higher than other financial advice firms for this query. This is important, if you are not ranking on page 1 in a Google search in Ireland for your key financial terms who is going to find you?

7. PPC Ads – You could spend lots of money competing with Pay Per Click advertising. This can get quick short term results as long as you pay to play and works faster than SEO which is a longer term play.

Sounds like work! Yes it is, but this way you say it once to many rather than many times to one person again and again. So this will save you time in future. And more importantly, it allows you to answer questions for potential clients, whenever they ask the questions 24/7/365. Plus it helps you get found by people who do not know you even exist yet.

The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) is a European regulation introduced to improve transparency in the financial advice market for sustainable investment products, to prevent greenwashing and to increase transparency around sustainability claims made by financial market participants.

It imposes comprehensive sustainability disclosure requirements covering a broad range of environmental, social & governance (ESG) metrics at both entity- and product-level. The main provisions of the SFDR have been applicable as of 10 March 2021, with a statutory instrument known as a Delegated Act containing more precise disclosure standards yet to be adopted by the European Commission. The SFDR is a fundamental pillar of the EU Sustainable Finance agenda, having been introduced by the European Commission as a core part of its 2018 Sustainable Finance Action Plan, which also include the Taxonomy Regulation and the Low Carbon Benchmarks Regulation.

Read the full details from 2019 at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32019R2088&from=EN in the Official Journal of the European Union.

What are the Sfdr classifications?
SFDR product classifications fall under 3 categories: Article 8, Article 9 and ‘Other. ‘ Article 8 and Article 9 products consider sustainability in a binding way. Article 8 products promote social and or environmental characteristics whilst Article 9 products have a sustainable objective.

Who does SFDR apply to?
The SFDR regulation applies to FMPs such as investment firms, pension funds, asset managers, insurance companies, banks, venture capital funds, credit institutions offering portfolio management, or financial advisors.

Who needs to report under SFDR?
SFDR Level 1 requires financial institutions within the European Union or marketing to EU investors, to make principles-based disclosures on ESG Environmental, Social and Governance related activity. Firms must report not only on the sectors they invest in, but also on their portfolio companies. And SFDR disclosures are not limited to marketing materials. Private and Corporate investors apply these non-financial factors, more and more every year as part of their own analysis process to identify material risks and growth opportunities.

What are Environmental, Social and Governance financial products?
ESG funds are portfolios of equities and/or bonds for which environmental, social and governance factors have been integrated into the investment process. This means the equities and bonds contained in the fund have passed stringent tests over how sustainable the company or government is regarding its ESG criteria of its use of or dependence on fossil fuels, its use or management of water and other resources and its pollution levels.

What is ESG or Environmental, Social and Governance marketing?
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Marketing is based on the ESG criteria. The aim of these criteria is to help consumers and investors to get in touch with products and companies that demonstrate similar values to their own.

What is YMYL Your Money Your Life? And how does it affect Financial Advisors websites?

Any website that sells a product or provides a service or even just information that can be deemed to impact someones ‘financial wellbeing’ or ‘financial safety’ and their ‘happiness’ or their ‘health’, can be classified or categorised by Google as YMYL “Your Money or Your Life”.

The very definition of the service you as a Financial Advisor provides means that your content could be so classified. Bear in mind this is a ‘topic’ so it is not just a page, but rather the whole website that gets classified as YMYL. One page or post could classify you in this category. It is not necessarily a bad thing or even something that you can avoid. However, you do need to be so careful about what you write or post in your website.

As the CEO you are responsible for anything posted by other members of the financial services team or your digital marketer, so do check your website content regularly. Talk to your Search Engine Optimisation team about what content to create, which financial advice to give and how to display it, as well as link to it. Your SEO can tell you if your website is affected positively or negatively by the content you are posting, which might be considered YMYL.

There are ways that you can use your website to recruit Qualified Financial Advisory staff?

1. Post a Position or job vacancy for a Financial Advisor or Mortgage Broker etc on your website.

2. Give as much detail as you can in the job description. Include details of the post, the workplace, the team, the type of clients you deal with, the salary range on offer and any other bonuses or targets etc. You cannot give too much information, so keep typing until you run out of ideas. Let the reader know what it would be like to work with you and your team. Make the reader feel welcome and show them how good the position is. Sell it as if you were talking to someone who answered an advertisement for the job.

3. Optimise the page so that it can rank in Google search. This could save you a fortune in recruitment agency fees. Get your web design agency or SEO to do this if you do not know how to do it.

4. Use the link to this post and paste it in to Facebook and Boost it if you like to whichever demographic or geographic area you want to target.

5. Use the content of this post and paste it in to your Google Business Profile.

6. Use the link to this post and paste it in to Linkedin and promote it if you want to try a small spend. Bear in mind that Linkedin is expensive.

7. Use the content of this page to do an advert on your local digital news website and include the hyperlink to this post in your website.

8. Create a blog post about working as a QFA or how to become a QFA. Answer as many questions as you can.

9. Post the details in any Financial Advisors ‘Groups’ in Facebook or Linkedin or any ‘Forums’ that you may belong to.

10. Create a poll in Linkedin and ask people what would make them choose a particular Financial Advisory firm to work with.