News article

Adviser websites: What’s the average number of monthly visitors?

We’ve always believed that advisers and planners need effective websites if they are to successfully market their businesses.

There’s a problem with that though; analysing effectiveness.

Google Analytics (if you don’t use it yet, call us and we’ll help you set it up) will show you how your website performs. But, how do you put this into context? Is your site performing more, or less, effectively than others?

The solution

We recently reviewed the Google Analytics accounts of adviser websites, some of whom were clients, others who weren’t (we are still working on them!) and collated the data to use as a comparison.

We then built a simple tool (that we’ve snappily named The Adviser Website Index) where you can enter your own analytics and see how they compare to the average.

The Index tool is free to use, and you can access it by clicking here.

What can the Index tell you?

Plenty.

For example, if you are above average for number of visitors, and overall time spent on your site, then you must be doing something right. Drawing people to your website and keeping them there is no easy task.

The Index is especially useful in highlighting where your website is weak. No website is perfect, but addressing weak areas and improving them over time will improve the effectiveness of your site.

It will also give you the answer to our opening question, which by the way, is 281 people, visiting 406 times.

What does our research show?

Several key trends that advisers and planners need to be aware of:

Traffic levels are static: We’ve seen no significant increase or decrease in visitor numbers during 2017.

Improved visitor engagement: Despite static traffic levels, visitor engagement seems to be improving:

  • Visitors click on average 2.63 pages per visit, up 8.54% during 2017
  • Each site visit lasts for an average of 116 seconds, up 20.51%
  • The average bounce rate (the percentage of website visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page) has fallen to 50.99%

UK traffic: The percentage of visitors from the UK has risen to an average of 71.03%, up from 65.53% earlier this year. This is crucial, most advisers and planners are looking for clients in the UK; consequently traffic from overseas is generally useless.

Mobile and tablet: The percentage of visitors using mobile and tablet devices is on the increase:

  • Desktop 63.59%, down from 72.48%
  • Mobile 26.82% up from 21.58%
  • Tablet 9.59% up from 5.95%

The increased usage of mobile and tablet, coupled with the emphasis given to mobile compatibility by search engines, means that it’s never been more important for advisers to ensure their site is mobile friendly.

Source of traffic: The top three sources of traffic to adviser websites are:

  1. Organic search 39.36%
  2. Direct 37.33%
  3. Referral 11.56%

Social still a bit part player: Only one in 10 (9.89%) visits to adviser websites come from social media.

The top three sources of social media traffic are:

  1. Twitter 37.13%
  2. Facebook 27.63%
  3. Redditt 20.90%

Social is an easy and cost-effective way to engage with potential clients.  The fact that this figure has stayed static in 2017 is surprising and represents a missed opportunity for many advisers.

Some final thoughts

You can find the full results below, or use the Adviser Website Index to easily compare your site.

Based on our research, adviser websites are heading in the right direction. Engagement levels are up. Crucially so are the percentage of visitors from the UK.

The research also reveals opportunities, principally the need to improve traffic levels from social media, as well as threats; increased traffic levels from mobile and tablets, which mean advisers must ensure their website is mobile compatible.

We hope you find the results of our research interesting and the tool helpful.

However, for either to be of practical use, you need to take action. Understand where your website is letting you down, fix the problems and then analyse the results.

As always, we are here to help if you need us.

Until next week…

 

The Yardstick Adviser Website Index
Average sessions per month 406
Average unique visitors per month 281
Average page views per session 2.63
Average time per session (seconds) 116.97
Bounce rate 50.99%
% of new sessions 67.04%
% of UK visitors 71.03%
Desktop 63.59%
Device Mobile 26.82%
Tablet 9.59%
Direct 37.33%
Organic 39.36%
Paid 0.67%
Acquisition Referral 11.56%
Display 0.48%
Social 9.89%
Email 0.70%
Other 0.01%
Tiwtter 37.13%
LinkedIn 7.91%
Facebook 27.63%
Reddit 20.90%
Stack 0.00%
Yelp 0.00%
Social Disquss 0.00%
Blogger 4.85%
Google+ 0.02%
WordPress 0.00%
Pocket 0.01%
Pinterest 0.32%
Instagram 0.37%

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