4 Elements of an Effective Website Design Strategy

Your website is the central hub of your firm’s brand, the interface which hosts the majority of interaction and engagement that takes place between you and a prospect. And while a beautiful website will definitely draw the attention of prospects, what will truly move them beyond mere attention and toward genuine engagement and closing the deal is a well thought-out web design strategy.

If up to this point, the word “strategy” has not crossed your mind when planning out your website, it’s time to consider these 4 important elements that will set down the blueprint for your website and help leverage your website to produce better and more sales.

1. Determine your Website Goals

Because your website is a crucial housing for your firm’s activities and will require considerable time and effort to maintain it, how will you use it to reach your company’s marketing and sales goals?

To get you started, consider the what, why, and how for your website strategy:

• What do you want to achieve with your website? In other words, what actions do you want your visitor to do on the site? For example, you may want prospects to read through your content and provide you with their contact information.
• Why do you want to achieve this? Consider the underlying reason for these actions such as maybe wanting to compile a database on contact profiles, which can be used for email marketing purposes.
• How are you going to achieve this? How will you motivate the visitor to take these actions? For example, this may be achieved by offering an opportunity to download a resource such as a free eBook on a relevant subject of interest to your visitor or getting your visitor to sign up for your weekly newsletter.

2. Clearly Define your Audience

While this may seem obvious, many firms only have a vague idea of who they’re trying to sell to. Take the time to research and develop your buyer persona by interviewing current customers, ideal prospects, and even a few prospects who didn’t buy, which can help you to clarify who is most often visiting your website and what they need.

Rather than seeing your buyers as just a transaction or sale to be made, understand your customer holistically by getting to know their interests, needs, and their buying behaviour and how it will change through each stage of the buyer’s journey.

What pain points and concerns would prevent them from taking the next step? What motivates them to make a purchase? How do they best consume information?

For example, you may learn from your research and interviewing existing customers that they are very busy people and are looking for a no-fuss investment solution that won’t require as much time commitment and that they also enjoy listening to podcasts on-the-go as they continue throughout their day.

Knowing this, you can strategically produce content for your website on alternative investments and create a form page that prospects can then enter their information to receive emails with helpful podcast links on the relevant topic. Optimizing the tone of your website and which channels you use to best cater to your ideal buyer’s needs will help drive traffic to your site and boost lead generation.

3. Select the Right Methodology (Inbound Marketing)

The Inbound way is all about recognizing that the buying process has changed and is comprised of various stages and therefore, your website shouldn’t be offering a one-size-fits-all solution to a buyer’s problem. Instead, firms should navigate through all their marketing and sales initiatives with the goal to meet a prospect’s unique needs and pain-points and how they may change through the buyer’s journey.

Understanding which capacities of your website you can use to attract prospects, convert them into leads, close deals, and delight your customers will make your firm stand out from the rest. For example, how can your firm write blog articles to attract the right visitors to your website? What kind of resources and pages will you provide to create conversion opportunities?  

4. Decide on a Website Platform

Now that the core foundation for your website strategy is laid out, it’s time to tie it all together with a platform/software that will enable you to take advantage of all the features of your website to engage prospects and reach your company goals.

When finding the right website platform for your company, look for one that includes a CMS (Content Management System) that will allow you to regularly edit your website as needed, easily upload new content, create helpful resources such as landing pages and online forms, and a way to track the effectiveness of your website through traffic and lead generation rates.

Our #1 Marketing Platform Choice - HubSpot:

Our top choice is HubSpot. Not only are they the pioneer of Inbound Marketing, but they provide all the must-have features for a well-rounded website platform and many more for financial services. They are heavily invested in education in order to make sure that you are up to date with the best practices in both sales and marketing. Their platform is excellent for financial services who are looking to implement an Inbound Marketing system to drive traffic to their website, generate leads and close more deals better and faster.