Fintech

Advisers whipped by new website projects

Financial advisers who have recently upgraded their firm websites unanimously agreed that the projects were more taxing than they expected.

Two weeks ago, when Jeff Rose went live with the latest version of GoodFinancialCents.com, he tweeted to his followers, “Launching a new site design is almost as stressful as launching a new book.”
His biggest challenge was finding a site designer who was affordable and understood the message he was trying to get across with the website. The update took about four months to complete — three months longer than Mr. Rose expected.
Financial advisers interviewed for this story who recently upgraded their firm websites unanimously agreed that the projects were more taxing than they expected.
Mr. Rose likened the process to building a house, only in some cases, the website was worse.
“At least when we built a house, we could drive by and see if progress had been made,” he said.
Once the designers provided access to the web development site, Mr. Rose could finally see what was being done, but even then there were surprises. First off, Mr. Rose thought he knew how he wanted to convey his expertise and target his ideal client, but when he started seeing it designed, he wanted to do it differently. He also agonized about each word of the text, taking two to three weeks just to write a headline in one instance.
Mr. Rose hired a professional to design the site and turn it into HTML code. The code, however, didn’t communicate with his website platform, WordPress. That step took a different coder about 25 more hours, Mr. Rose said. Knowing about that technical detail ahead of time would have been helpful, he said.
Mr. Rose spent about $7,000 on the site update, though he expects it would cost at least $15,000 for a site like his to be developed from top to bottom.
Frank Astorino’s firm, Astorino Financial Group, launched an updated, “cleaner” website last week, though building out the site’s capabilities is not completed. One major upgrade is that clients can access their accounts and Mr. Astorino’s financial life coaching services at AstorinoFinancialGroup.com.
It took about 13 months to get the site up and running. Mr. Astorino said the greatest challenge was coordinating the “team” of people who made it happen, including the content editor he hired and the technical person who made it jibe with the host website.
He hasn’t received all the bills yet for the site’s new look, but estimated it would cost between $5,000 and $15,000 to design a comparable site from scratch.
“The website is the first impression [prospects] get if they are interested in working with you,” Mr. Astorino said. “It isn’t going to sell, but it provides a first impression, and that’s important.”
Adding the ability to offer videos on the site is one of Mr. Astorino’s next goals. He would like to post a short video that describes the firm, as well as other YouTube.com videos, he said.
Cole Financial Planning and Wealth Management upgraded its ColeFP.com website about a month ago. So far, it incorporates the firm’s new logo, is more user-friendly, is less wordy and has a “fresher” look, said Scott Cole, founder of the nine-year-old firm.
It became important to update the site over the past couple years because more and more prospects are ending up at the site through the firm’s increased use of social media, Mr. Cole said. He said the update does a better job of showing his firm’s culture.
It includes a prominent graphic of the client experience from the first contact at the firm to meeting follow-up. It also clearly lays out the adviser’s fees, something surveys show consumers increasingly want and are used to getting from other purchasing experiences.
“It’s not about getting a client because I tweet,” he said. “But it’s about our firm being the one they remember and have warm feelings about when they experience a transition and need financial help.”
Getting the site up required Mr. Cole to look constructively at his business, re-evaluating everything from the fees he charges to his processes — and that took much longer than expected, he said. He also rewrote the text to make it shorter and simpler, and his “technological ignorance” didn’t help move the process along, Mr. Cole said.
He also found it difficult to express clearly what he really wanted.
“Trying to communicate with our designer really kind of beat me down,” Mr. Cole said.
Andrew Klausner, principal at consulting firm AK Advisory Partners, said designers and programmers “speak a different language.” That’s one reason advisers feel frustrated, and some can benefit from hiring consultants for web projects.
He thinks the biggest mistake financial advisers make when seeking to update their websites is trying to create the content and branding aspects themselves, instead of having a third party flesh out what’s different about a particular adviser.
Advisers also should be thinking about whether they have “responsive” websites — those that are automatically viewable on mobile devices, Mr. Klausner said.
Jeff Seidel, a retirement planning adviser in California, said he couldn’t find any designers who would commit to an exact price. He also recognized that he wasn’t really sure what he wanted, which would add to the cost. As a result, he built his own site RetirementManagementAssociates.com, which launched in March 2013.
He started out in early 2012 using the GoDaddy.com platform, but switched to Square Space because its templates looked “cleaner” and they had a built-in blog.
Mr. Seidel said in an e-mail that the learning curve “was a bit steep.” He has produced some videos for the site, though he mostly uses those for advertising on social media.