How Much Content Should You Add to Your Financial Advisor Website?
Have you ever visited a website that’s bombarded you with too much information? You know what I’m talking about — a website that’s so packed with content it gives you flashbacks of episodes of the TV show, ‘Hoarders’.
When you see these types of websites, do you leave with a positive impression? In most cases, the answer is ‘no’.
When a visitor is presented with too much content all at once, they become frustrated because they can’t quickly find exactly what they are looking for. The information they’re looking for may already be on the page, but it’s buried under lots of other text and images. When a visitor gets frustrated, they’re going to leave and look for another source of information.
You have to remember that the average website visitor won’t spend a large amount of time or effort digging through all the fine details of your site. If the information they’re looking for isn’t immediately visible, they expect you to at least be able to guide them to it.
When it comes to your website content, quality matters over quantity. But aside from this, you also have to be able to present information in a logical manner so that people can explore your site much better and easily find the information they want.
Here are a couple of tips you can use to make your content more effective at delivering information and driving up conversions.
Focus on Above-the-Fold Content
To avoid the effects of information overload, you need to trim down the content that appears on your homepage to the most important ones. Everything that’s visible above-the-fold should be finely tuned to attract visitors to find out more about your brand.
The term above-the-fold comes from the print publishing industry. It refers to the top half of the newspaper that’s visible when it’s on display in newsstands. This real estate is the most important and contains the main headline and an accompanying image that will make people pay attention.
When it comes to websites, the term above-the-fold refers to everything that’s visible when your page first loads up on the screen. Your visitors shouldn’t have to scroll down to understand what your main message is. It should be clearly visible and easy to understand.
Make the UI Logical and User Friendly
Another important aspect you shouldn’t forget when it comes to delivering content effectively is your website’s user interface and navigation options.
Your website visitors should be able to easily figure out where they need to go to get to the information they’re looking for. This means your navigation menus and call-to-action buttons have to be visible but not distracting.
You should also highlight important pieces of information so that people don’t just skip over them mindlessly. People tend to quickly scan and scroll through pages, so you have to accommodate this type of consumption.
Ideal Content Length
The ideal content length depends on what type of information you’re delivering. For example, the web copy on your homepage and landing pages should be concise yet clear. Ideally, you should be able to deliver the message in one or two sentences or phrases to catch people’s attention. You can give them access to more information by directing them to a different page that explains things in more detail.
When it comes to blog posts, the sweet spot is around 1,600 words which translates to roughly 7 minutes of reading time. But again, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. If you’re discussing something in great detail and in an interesting manner, people won’t mind if it’s 3,000 words long. Longer content does perform better in search rankings, so you should try to avoid thin content that’s only around 300 words long.
If you need help developing a great content strategy for your financial advisor website, send us a message through the contact form below and we’ll help you sort out your issues. Here at AltaStreet, we’ve been helping hundreds of financial advisors build and develop their online presence for the past 20 years.