As we’ve said many times, your website is your shop window.

It’s where prospective clients make decisions about whether you’re the right adviser/planner for them. That means you need to give them what they want to see.

Our research shows that team pages on adviser/planner websites are popular with visitors. In fact, if you have a team page on your website it’ll almost certainly be the second or third most popular page.

Consequently, we believe you should make the people connected with your business (your team and your clients) the heroes of your site. But recently we’ve noticed that some advisers/planners don’t want to do that, resisting our recommendations to showcase themselves and their team.

Some of the objections we’ve heard include:

• “I don’t want to look like a small business.” – Sorry to break it to you, but you are. So why hide it when the prospective client will find out about your size anyway? Instead, celebrate it and remember that a lot of clients actively prefer dealing with a small business.
• “People aren’t interested in our team.” – Yes, they are. Prospective clients want to form a trusted relationship with an adviser/planner. Is it any wonder they’d like to know a bit more about you before getting in touch?
• “I don’t want my photo on the website.” – We completely understand that, very occasionally, there are times when it’s not possible to put your picture on a website. Those aside, come on, it’s time to put the grown-up pants on, especially if you’re the business owner.

So, after hearing these objections, we thought we’d see how many others are making the same mistake. And, how many are genuinely showcasing their team?

Over the past week we’ve visited 500 adviser/planner websites. Here’s what we found.

Most have a team page

365 of the sites we checked (73%) had a team page.

That’s great news. But it still leaves a sizeable chunk of websites that will be more impersonal, even soulless, because they don’t have a team page.

Only 50% of websites have individual pages for team members

When we say that your team (along with your clients) should be the heroes of the website, we mean everyone. This includes the managing director and the latest apprentice through the door. No one should be left behind.

We’ve seen sites where the firm only includes the board or senior team members, others feature just the advisers/planners. This looks egotistical and elitist. Instead, we believe that your website should have a team page, with every member of your team having their own individual page where people can learn more about them.

So how did the websites we reviewed do?

Unfortunately, only half (50.14%) of the websites with a team page took the extra step of building a page for every member of the team.

There are many benefits to having individual pages for all your team:

• It helps visitors find the member of the team they’re looking for
• Potential clients can start to get to know, and make a connection with, the adviser/planner they might be working with
• It allows the adviser/planner to empathise with the visitor and demonstrate their expertise while support staff can explain their role
• It has an SEO benefit (if that’s important to you) because it means you have more pages on the site and can include important keywords in the copy.

Pop-ups are a mistake

23% of firms who include more information about individual team members use pop-ups rather than full pages.

That’s a mistake.

• There’s less room on a pop-up than a full web page, which means you can’t display as much information
• Pop-ups are harder to style on mobile devices
• They don’t usually have a specific URL, which means you can’t easily send someone a link to the page. It also diminishes the SEO benefit (again, if that’s important to you).

Instead, change your pop-ups to full pages.

Only 28% of websites are getting it right

The best adviser/planner websites include:

• A team page with everyone on it
• An individual page (not a pop-up) for each member of the team.

Our research shows that only 140 of the 500 sites we visited (28%) have this combination.

All the answers…next week

In next week’s blog we’ll explain how to solve the problem by revealing everything that you should include on your team member pages.

In the meantime, take a look at your website. How many of these mistakes are you making?

Then, if you’d like our help to fix them, please get in touch by emailing hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or calling 0115 8965 300.