Optimizing your site can give you a leg up

You've heard this warning ad nauseam: Update your website or perish. This time it might be true. When Google announced re-cently that its latest algorithm change would favor mobile-friendly websites in search results, the need for refinement became much more than just the usual plea for cosmetic appeal. Our technology reporter, Alessandra Malito, wrote in late March that Google's new approach, which will go into effect April 21, means advisers' sites will need to be optimized by that date to continue ranking high when potential clients try to find them in Google searches. “Websites are like modern-day yellow pages,” Chris Horton, a digital strategist at Syne-Core, poignantly ex-plained in Ms. Malito's story. “If you weren't in the yellow pages, people didn't do business with you. They didn't trust you.”

THEY GET IT

Advisers get this. According to the 2014 InvestmentNews Financial Performance Study of Advisory Firms, “firm's website” was chosen by far (65%) as the most successful marketing tool. Despite this fact, only 44% of advisory firms report having websites that are optimized for mobile use, according to the 2015 InvestmentNews Ad-viser Technology Study. It's no longer enough to have a snazzy site that looks great from a desktop. As Ms. Malito re-ported, a Google study found that 94% of smartphone users look for local information from such devices. Your site needs to be at their fingertips — literally. But don't look at this compulsory renovation as a burden. Instead, because relatively few of your competitors' sites are mobile-friendly, your website will have a better chance of standing out in the crowd if you make the effort to adapt. This new Google ranking factor — which identifies mobile-optimized sites as “better” — can actually give your firm a leg up where you didn't previously have one. So take the time to get your site mobile-ready, and make sure the content on it is easily readable and navigable by all those potential new clients out there looking for you.