Hello, I’m Jordan; a web developer at the Yardstick agency. 

Everything you need to know about how I can help your advice business is summed up there… right?

You know who I am, and what my role is. And from my role, you know what aspects of your brand’s marketing I would be able to assist with.

Or not.

What does a web developer actually do? Does a web developer help you develop your presence on social media? Can they make your Trustpilot page look better? Can they make your videos on YouTube load faster?

Unfortunately, no. But these aren’t stupid questions to ask. 

If you don’t know what a web developer does, how are you to know what one can and cannot assist with?

A job title isn’t enough to demonstrate value

If someone lands on your website, or your social media profile, what does it say about you?

John Smith, Financial Planner at Firm Name since 2010.

It’s not wrong, but all too often do I come across a profile on a financial planner or adviser’s website, and that is basically all it says. It may have a few more words, but team profiles rarely show the following:

• What do you do for your clients? 
• How do you help them? 
• And, just as importantly, for your support staff – how do they add value?

I came across a profile for a paraplanner the other day, clicked onto a team member’s profile, and this was all their page said:

“John spends most of his time working alongside our financial planners to offer research and technical support.”

That’s it. An entire page dedicated to John, with his role, his picture, and a section for a description of him. And that is all the information this particular firm thought it was worth telling visitors to their website about John.

We have discussed numerous times why you should have team member profiles on your website, and what makes a good profile. You can read more about them in these articles:

• Our latest checklist: Building your team pages
• Let’s get personal: why the details make a difference on your team pages 
• 8 elements to add to your website right now (and 4 things to remove)
• Revealed: The 5 most popular pages on adviser websites (and the five visitors don’t look at) 
• 7 simple ways to guarantee your website stands out from the crowd 

Let’s jazz up John’s description just a little bit, so that if someone clicked on his profile, they wouldn’t have clicked on a page for a single sentence.

“John joined [our firm] in 2023. On an average day, he will be supporting Adam in helping create the perfect financial plan for his clients by offering technical support and aiding in research, while ensuring all work is up to the high standards [our firm] expects.

“John is currently studying to become a financial planner, with the goal of helping [our firm] better serve our clients.”

You could apply this format to anyone in your team: 

• A little about what they do day-to-day
• A goal they are working towards
• The date they started – not only to show off how long he has been with the company, but also to show you care about him as a valued team member
• The context of who this person works with in the business. 

Why bother adding detail to every profile?

You don’t need to.

If you want to just have a list of your paraplanners, administrators, and other support staff and leave the full profiles solely to your financial advisers or planners, that’s perfectly fine. 

But if you’re going to give every team member their own page, or popup with more information, then they all need to share similar levels of detail.

John’s page had a single sentence alongside his image. Adam had two paragraphs talking about his history as a financial planner, and his role within the firm.

The difference in quality can be perceived in many ways. Whether it’s that the paraplanners and administrators aren’t worth the time of having a full description written about them, or just that the pages were rushed and look unfinished. 

If your team member profiles are inconsistent in the amount of detail in them, then the standouts aren’t necessarily the ones which you want to be front-and-centre, and may even reflect poorly on how people perceive your website.

I remember John’s profile which I looked at over a week ago, because it seemed like such a waste of a page. I had to look at Adam’s again to confirm it wasn’t a firm-wide issue.

Let us make your team stand out

If you’d like to make your team profiles stand out, get in touch with a member of our team at 0115 8965 300 or send us an email at hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk.