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29th July, 2026 - Webinar replay

500 adviser/planner websites reviewed – here’s what the best do differently

Phil Bray 

Good morning everybody, and welcome to our July webinar. So, what have you got in store for the next hour? As the screen suggests, we’ve been busy and we’ve been looking at 500 adviser planner websites in the UK, and today you’re going to find out what the best do differently, and therefore what you can do to stand out. So the agenda for today is as follows: we’re going to explain our research, just give you a quick update on the methodology. We’re going to, as Simon Sinek says, “start with the why” and we’re going to give you three key stats to show why this is important. You’ve all turned up, so I’m assuming you think it’s important, but we’re going to just confirm why this is important. Going to talk about some problems and a solution around financial adviser planner websites, and then we’re going to do the seven things that will make your website stand out. And today is going to be quite an interactive session, which Dan is going to explain.

Dan Campbell   

Yes. So should we do our usual bit of housekeeping? So what do we all need to know? I mean, first of all thanks to you Phil, for making it the round number of reviewing 500 adviser websites. I was reading a report earlier in the year by the Harvard Business Review, and they analysed 597 company logos. And let me tell you, I’ve been losing sleep about those three missing logos for months. Anyway, usual Yardstick house rules apply. So get stuck in with your comments. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Honestly, there’s no such thing as a silly question. If you’re thinking it, so is somebody else, and you can use that by using the Q&A box or the chat function. And famously, speaking of which, if anybody in the crowd can just give me a “hello” or a “good morning” to test its working, that would be much appreciated. And speaking of getting involved, we’ve got some polls to run today. Now I’m in charge of triggering them. I’ve got seven, so if seven appear on screen at the right time, everybody can say, “Well done, Dan. You did that well.” And if not, throw something at me. So we’ve got Matt, we’ve got Amelia, Karen, Carys. So thank you. So chat’s working, and as usual, we’re recording the webinar, which means you’ll receive the neatly packaged follow-up email with the video link, all the important notes, and the resources we mention. So Phil, should we get stuck in?

Phil Bray 

We shall. Trying to work out why Harvard wouldn’t have gone in the extra three and done 600. There must be something in that. They’re clever people.

Dan Campbell

I’m sorry. Have I made you lose sleep now over that? Because honestly, it’s a slippery slope.

Phil Bray  

I’m twitching, mate. Let’s start with explaining our research. So we’ve been doing this every year now for a while, and we look at 500 UK adviser planner websites. As an aside, we’re redoing this for the first time ever in the US. So currently, we have one of our team beavering away looking at 500 websites in the US. So we’re then going to be able to compare and contrast. But right now, we’re sticking in the UK. The research was undertaken in May and June 2026, and previously we did the research using the Money Helper Directory. Now, as you know, the Money Helper Directory is no more. Boo-hiss! It’s a shame it’s down. It was a really good directory, but nevertheless, that’s not here anymore. So what we did was use the 25 areas of the UK, searched on Google, and went with the 25 websites. Sorry, 20 websites that came up first in those 25 areas. Now that method, it’s worth noting, has changed the makeup of the sample this year. So in 2026, the sample includes 122 websites for SJP partner planner practices. Not easy to say, SJP partner practices. And that represents 24.4% of the overall sample, which actually is less than the proportion of planner firms in the UK, SJP compared to to everybody, but just wanted to make that note that this is the first year when SJP websites have really been included to quite a significant extent. So that was the research that we did. If anybody’s got any questions about that, just drop them in the chat or the Q&A, and I’ll try and answer them. So Simon Sinek says “we need to start with the why.” Three stats then to show why everybody on this call needs an effective website. First one, everyone knows this. We talk about this a lot from Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask You Answer. 80% of a prospect’s buying decision is made before they meet you. So everybody will take a digital journey to your door. The journey is different. They’ll look at different things, but clearly one of the things that they will look at is your website. So that’s the first reason it’s important. Further research from Gomez: “88% of consumers will not return to a website if they’ve had a poor first experience.” So people are not necessarily in the mood these days to give you a second chance. And third, our research showed that 75% of prospects seriously considering an adviser planner website will visit. Sorry, seriously considering an adviser or planner will visit the firm’s website before making contact. So, 80% of buying decision before they meet you. 88% of consumers not returning if they have a poor experience, and 75% of consumers, including those who have been referred and recommending to you visiting your website before they make contact, makes this really really important. Unfortunately, most adviser planner websites, getting better, but many adviser planning websites are often pretty selfish, talking about themselves and their business before they talk about their client or the prospect, the person on the website. Many of them, I think, are also cliche ridden, and I’m thinking mostly they’re around images. So the picture of the linen-clad couple walking down a beach to signify retirement, lighthouses, compasses, boats, yachts, that sort of stuff. And we want to move away from that. A lot of websites lack empathy. They talk about the firm, but they don’t talk about the trigger for the visitor. Every visitor onto your website who’s not already a client, it might be a client in the future, has got a trigger, and that trigger is a problem they want to solve or an aspiration they want to achieve. The first thing they talk to you about as an adviser or planner when they get in touch with you, and everything will fall under those two columns: problem they want to solve, aspiration they want to achieve. So we need to think about those triggers and show to the visitors that they’re in the right place to solve those problems and achieve those aspirations. As we’ll see, many advised websites are missing social proof. If you don’t have social proof on your website, you’re basically asking strangers to believe you that you are any good, and that’s not great. So we need to show people the value of working with you. And then many adviser websites, planner  websites, are treated as a commodity. “We’ve got a website tick in that box”, but there’s no thought given to whether it’s actually effective, and you can see that in the tyranny, the plague of templated websites missing the right calls to action, and then they’re focused on products, not people. Much, much more powerful to talk about the type of people you work with than the type of products you recommend. Let’s talk about people rather than products. And why is this the case? I think it’s very simple. Most adviser planner websites are built by people that don’t understand financial planning for people who don’t understand marketing, and it’s the blind leading the blind. So, is it any wonder that we end up on sites that aren’t great? And the effectiveness of this, or the effect of this, is you don’t stand out. Your website looks like everybody else. You create doubt in people’s minds. Hit your website, “I’m not entirely sure this is right for me.” There’s an opportunity cost. You’re not building trust, and those things combined mean prospects consider you and move on, which means your website’s costing you. It’s costing you referrals. It’s costing you right fit enquiries from other people. And we see firms that have effective websites get more people who are referred to them contacting them and get more right fit enquiries from the right type of people. Firms with poor quality websites often end up competing on price as well, and this is really important, then spending quite a bit of time wasting time on tire kickers and wrong fit prospects. I presented a marketing strategy last week to a firm, really low conversion rate. One of the reasons is the people coming to them are not the right fit. And part of the problem when you look at it, is their website. You look at the website, you look at the problem, and you can see the connection between the two. So if that’s the effect of the problem, how do we solve it? We solve it by standing out and giving right fit prospects the things that they want, and the things that your peers and competitors are not doing. And we’re going to give you a list of things today that your peers and competitors are doing and not doing, and at the end we’ve got a checklist, and you’ll be able to take that away and score your website. So for each of those seven, this is where Dan’s going to get the polls ready, and everyone’s going to start clicking. For each of those seven, as we work through them now, we’re going to tell you what it is, we’re going to explain why it’s important, and then we’re going to ask you to guess the proportion of firms doing it, and then we’ll reveal the actual answer. I’m really hoping we get through this in a nice, slick way. We up for this, Dan?

Dan Campbell  

Yeah, I do fear it’s the “can Dan count?” segment. So yeah. So shall I launch the poll now, or not?

Phil Bray 

Not yet. Yeah, I’ll do the poll in a minute. So the first of the seven things that will make your website stand out: showcasing your team on your website’s homepage. This is really, really important, and we need to see your team, the advisers, the planners, the support team, as your clients’ guides, taking them from where they are now to where they want to get to. And we believe you should introduce those guides, helping your website visitors start to get to know them as soon as you possibly can. And clearly, the earliest opportunity when someone visits your website is on the homepage, and it starts to help people, visitors to the website, get to know your team. And of course, people buy people, not faceless businesses. It’s one of the reasons why LinkedIn personal posts will always outperform company posts because people are interested in people, not brands. So, first question: what percentage of the websites we reviewed had pictures of team members on the homepage? What percentage of websites we reviewed had pictures of team members on the homepage? Dan, now you can launch the poll.

Dan Campbell  

Okay, poll is being launched.

Phil Bray   

So, if everybody can answer that, and apparently hosts and panelists can’t vote, we can’t vote Dan, although I do know the answer to that, probably there’s a good reason for that, isn’t it? So, if everyone can vote about that, as a reminder of the question, what percentage of websites we reviewed had pictures of team members on the homepage? That then would help visitors who remember have that trigger start getting to know the team that they might be working with. So, Dan, what is the answer on the poll?

Dan Campbell   

Let’s give it a few more seconds because the votes are still flowing in. So we had three answers. We had “9%”, “23%”, “49%”, and “87%”.

Phil Bray  

Yep.

Dan Campbell 

Well, collectively between the group, we agree that none had 87%. So we can rule that out. That got no votes. Then coming in third was 49% with 6% of the votes. This is going to get confusing, isn’t it? Then coming in second was 23% which meant that the majority of our group today believe 9% had pictures of team members on their homepage.

Phil Bray  

No problem at all. So, if you were in the 6% give yourself a pat on the back. 49% of the websites that we reviewed had pictures of their team on their homepage, so one in two. However, only about one in five had a “meet the team” section on the homepage. So the other 30% were using images of their team dotted around the homepage. Only about one in five were using or had a meet the team section on the website, and really, really important that we have that meet the team section, so people go and look at the individual profiles of people in the business, which we’ll talk about more later. So, if you’re in the 6% give yourself a pat on the back. So number one was talking about showcasing guides, the people who will help take your clients from where they are now to where they want to get. Next, we need to showcase your clients. There’s two groups of people that are really important in a business, team, and the clients. And our view is that we need to showcase clients on adviser, planner websites. Three key reasons: proves the value you add. Client testimonial videos prove the value that you add. Client testimonial videos also show the type of people you work with, and we know that people are drawn to people like them. People want to understand that you help people like them, and practically, it’s the easiest way of getting your clients talking to prospective clients. So, if a prospective client visits your website on a Sunday afternoon, you’ve got no clue that they’re there. So, how do you get a client talking to them to explain the benefits of working with you? The only practical way of doing it is through video. So, next question: What percentage of the websites we reviewed had client testimonial videos on? What percentage of the websites we reviewed had client testimonial videos on them? Dan over to you, mate.

Dan Campbell  

Okay, so polls have been launched. Let’s see these votes come in. I feel like there should be a quiz segment for all future webinars. 

Phil Bray 

Should be some music in the background or something. And while everyone’s doing this, as I say, a reminder: those client testimonial videos, if you have them on their website, they are for me the most effective way of your clients telling their story about working with you. There’s no other way of doing it, and written case studies, written testimonials are just not as effective. So, Dan, what have we got?

Dan Campbell 

Okay, so the possible answers were 13%, 38%, 52% and 75%. So, in joint last place with 3% of the votes each, we had 52% and 75% Then, in second place with 23% of the votes, we had 38% which meant the leader and the winner. Well, is it right? Who knows? Is 13% with nearly three quarters of the group thinking it was 13%.

Phil Bray   

Yep, three quarters of the group is correct. Only 13% of firms had client testimonial videos on their website. The sites that had them put them on their homepage, where most people will enter the site. Not all, but most. They’ll also build dedicated sections out, so our client stories, with each video having its own page, transcript on the page as well, and then they will also scatter the client testimonial videos around the website, so that people see them incidentally to their browsing. So back when we started building websites, the best most websites had was a client testimonials page, written anonymous testimonials, and they’re pretty pointless. Only about 1% of people ever go and visit them. So what we need to do is scatter the social proof. In this case, client testimonial videos around the website, so people see them wherever they’re going. We’re putting them under people’s noses, and if you have client testimonial videos, you are bound to stand out because 87% of firms don’t have them, and there’s all sorts of barriers. And if anybody is thinking right now about barriers, about blockages, and objections to recording these. Pop them in. Let me have them, and we’ll deal with them all. Yeah, pop them in the chat, and we’ll deal with them all. I think I had a sneaky look down. There’s a couple of questions that have come in while we were answering that poll.

Dan Campbell   

There is. So these go back to images of the team on the website. Andrew asked, “are you talking about pictures of the team on the landing page or a dedicated team tab?”

Phil Bray  

Both. So on the home page, I would have pictures of the team and a meet the team section. Maybe showing all pictures of individuals in your team or some sort of scroll, depending on how big your team is. The design would be dictated by, say, how big your team is, and then that would link through to a dedicated section on the website “meet the team”, and we’ll circle back to that in a minute if that’s okay.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. And then Ishbir asks, “what if you’re a solo broker or a small team? Would it undermine the message they’re trying to convey by having images of the team on there?”

Phil Bray  

I guess it depends what that message is you’re trying to convey. For me, if you are a small business, I would absolutely shout about that loud and proud. There are consumers out there who actively want to work with a small business, where potentially they are advised by the owner of that business, and they find that attractive, and therefore we should market for that. If you are a consumer out there who wants to work with a large business and is impressed by big teams, big glass atriums, and corporate events, that sort of stuff. Then you’re not going to go to a small planning firm. So for me, play to your strengths. And a small sole practitioner business absolutely has strengths. So I wouldn’t try and I wouldn’t try and hide them. I would shout about them loud and loud. Anything else coming down, or shall we move on?

Dan Campbell 

No, let’s move on. 

Phil Bray

So that was number two. Number three. So I get into trouble when I talk about this, disclosing fees on your website. Now, I’m not stood here saying you must do this. However, we’re seeing more and more evidence about the benefits. More and more firms who do it, the more and more evidence we see. So, what is that evidence? What do advisers, planners who do this tell me that happens? Well, the first thing they tell me that happens is that it improves enquiry quality. Intent levels go up. Quality of enquiry, crude, but as measured by AUM, goes up. It doesn’t tend to increase lead numbers, but it definitely increases lead quality from everything that I’ve seen.  It also demonstrates transparency. If you are a business that prides itself on its transparency and talks about the fact “we’ll transparently tell you what our fee structure is”, then it proves that you are doing that, putting your money where your mouth is. And research from the states, this stats from Wealthtender in the US. “61.8% of consumers want to see information about fees and pricing before contacting an adviser.” So, if it improves enquiry quality, demonstrates transparency, and gives something that 6 out of 10 consumers potentially want, there’s starting to build an argument to do it. So, poll number three, what percentage of websites we reviewed fully disclosed fees? What percentage of websites we reviewed fully disclosed fees? And what we mean by that is that the consumer can go on there and see what the cost is at every stage of the process. So that might be the planning fee, implementation fee, and ongoing. And also here, I’m referring at this stage to the cost of the advisable planner, not total cost of ownership. So, Dan over to you mate.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. Votes are still coming in. Thanks Scott, for your suggestion of the countdown clock timer while the polls are running. And frankly, I’m flattered by your confidence in me. I’m just about managing to launch polls and not kick everybody out of the meeting and cause a power cut in my street. So perhaps for next time I’ll do some practicing. So it looks as though everybody who’s gonna vote has voted. So let’s end that and look at the numbers. So the options were 5%, 18%, 41% and 66%. So, in last place with 2% of the votes, we’ve got 66%. In third place with 11% of the votes, we’ve got 41% and then 18% and 5% are neck and neck with 5% just managing to get two more votes. So kind of we’re joint between 5% and 18% with five just just about getting ahead.

Phil Bray  

Thank you. So it was 11% that said 41% wasn’t it?

Dan Campbell 

Correct.

Phil Bray  

Cool. So if you voted for the 41% you are correct with a caveat: 41% of firms in the 500 fully disclose their fees. When you exclude the St James Place partner websites, that drops to 21%. So about one in five when you exclude SJP, and then 41% is the total. And there’s a way of doing this on a fees page on a website. Our research shows that fees pages, not always, but they’re generally in the third or fourth most popular page on an adviser planner’s website when they have one. So people visit them. People with relatively high intent visit them, and therefore they need to be done right because not only are they popular, but our experience shows that people spend longer on fees pages reading them than other pages on the website. So, what makes an effective fees page? First thing is you’ve got to show what the fees are, and I say show the fees at every stage of the process, the planning, implementation, and ongoing. Then I think you’ve got to give the features and benefits of the service. So, what are people getting in return for their hard-earned cash that they’re handing over in the fees at the planning, implementation, ongoing stage, and really, really importantly, what the benefits? We can’t assume that somebody is going to understand the benefits of the different features of the service. Then I think you need social proof on the page to show the value of working with you because fees is only one side of the coin. We need to show the value of working with you. Some worked examples. A lot of financial advisers charge percentages, and we know that people don’t necessarily understand percentages as well as cold hard pounds and pence. So we recommend giving some examples, and then depending on how you charge, you might explain how your fee structure separates you apart. So, if you charge fixed fees, planning, implementation and ongoing, that separates you apart because most firms don’t do that. So, you might talk about that. If your fees are lower than average, you might talk about that. I know one firm that we work with that doesn’t charge an initial fee, think of a couple actually. So we make a big deal of that on the fees page, but it isn’t enough just to slap your feet up and expect everybody to come running. The fees page needs to be really detailed, and that means the design needs to be good on them as well. So Dan, did I see a question come in about fees pages?

Dan Campbell  

We’ve got a few. So an anonymous attendee, I promise you it’s not me, asks “why does it improve lead quality?” And that refers to showing fees in principle.

Phil Bray 

It’s a good question. I think there’s a few reasons, and this is just based on what advisers tell me. And if there are any advisers on the call, planners on the call who have got fees pages and want to wade in on this, then by all means put some stuff in the chat. What do advisers tell me about this? First, it means that the fee conversation is happening earlier and is easier. So advisers tell me that people are coming to them having looked at the fees page and already accepting of what they’re going to have to pay to work with that advisable planner. Second, the intent level. If you have gone to the extent of reading someone’s fees page or completing a calculator, you just have a higher level of intent. As for why the AUM is higher, I don’t have a good answer for that. I really don’t have a good answer for that, but it definitely does happen in my experience. So, anonymous attendee, I hope that answers your question. If it doesn’t, feel free to come back.

Dan Campbell 

Thanks, Phil. Another question from Carys, who asks, “what would you do if your fees are varied?”

Phil Bray

So what you could do there is you could give some ranges. So we sometimes use, and are going to be using more and more, the Priceguide tool from Stephen and Marcus, and we’ve been building some out. So there, you could give a range of fees. You could give some examples. So if your fees are calculated, maybe you’re one of those firms that calculate fees at a bespoke individual client level based on complexity, the number of hours it will take, and then multiply that by an hourly rate. You could maybe give some ballparks and some examples.

Dan Campbell  

Perfect. And then a comment from Scott that says, “on fees, we ran a synthetic focus group using AI following another Yardstick webinar to look at our website, and the group all asked for an indication of cost. So we added fees along with the number of other changes the focus group suggested.” 

Phil Bray

I love a little bit of synthetic research. For anybody who was on our webinar last month with Mark Ritson, sorry earlier on this month actually with Mark Ritson, and he talked about synthetic research. Thanks Scott for that.

Dan Campbell  

And then Matt mentions “we find clients already know what the fees are and how they work. We end up with the conversation being easier and no objections or questions for 95% of new clients, and we pretty much reconfirm what they already know.”

Phil Bray   

Interesting. Thanks Matt. Any other questions around fees, Dan?

Dan Campbell 

A comment from Paul that mentions “fascinating to see that most SJP firms disclose fees in a way that ticks the Yardstick box.”

Phil Bray   

Yeah, I think that’s generally because, not always, but generally because the SJP firms that had websites in our sample of 500, they use the SJP template, and on a lot of occasions, and therefore they’re all doing similar things. Should we move on? If anybody’s got any more questions about fees and how to do it, then hit me at the end. So number four, helping people get to know your team. So this goes back to the question that we had earlier, and we believe you should go further than just putting your team on the homepage of your website. We should be doing more. We should be building out an individual team section, plus having pages for each individual team member. Few reasons why, it starts to create that connection earlier, gives visitors what they want. Our research shows that the team section on a financial planner’s website, when it’s there, will be the second or third most popular, most visited page. And there’s also research to show that consumers are more likely to do business with organisations they like, more likely to be a client of someone you like, and if having images and team pages helps to create that connection, then yeah, people are hopefully going to be more likely to like you. So this is a tricky one. What percentage of websites we reviewed had a dedicated meet the team section plus pages for each team member? So, what percentage of websites we reviewed had a dedicated meet the team section plus pages for each team member? So Dan, over to you with the choices.

Dan Campbell

Okay, so the poll is launched. Let’s just give people a bit of time to get those answers in.

Phil Bray 

Thank you, Dan.

Dan Campbell  

I can see it live as it’s happening. It’s neck and neck at the minute. Fascinating.

Phil Bray  

As I say, this is so important that it creates that connection, and it’s another example of giving visitors what they want on the websites that we see, where we’ve got the Google Analytics, where firms have got meet the team pages, we know that they’re really, really popular. Second or third most popular page, and in positions 5,6,7,8,9 and 10, you often have individual owners pages. Dan, back to you, mate.

Dan Campbell 

Let’s just give everybody five more seconds. Looks as though anyone that is going to vote has voted. Okay, let’s call it. So, in last place with 12% of the votes, we have 88%. Then, in third place with a quarter of the votes, we’ve got 10%. In second place, with 30% of the votes, we’ve got 28%, which means our winner is, of course, 54% and that had a straight third of people in the group thinking that was the case.

Phil Bray 

So here is the answer: 78% of the websites we looked at had a meet the team page but, and this is really important: only 28% had a dedicated page for each team member. So, what we think is best practice here is the following: meet the team section with photos of individual team members, their names and job titles. Then a button that someone can click on each of those, to go and learn more about each individual team member. Few reasons to set it up that way. Reason number one: you are putting everyone on the same level. Everybody has an individual page on the website, so we’re not leaving anybody out. Nobody gets left behind. Every person in the business is in some way, shape, or form, the client’s guide taking them from where they are to where they want to get to. Second, it can help boost the number of pages on the website, which can help SEO and AIO, search engine optimisation and AI optimisation. And then another reason, final reason for now, we know that consumers when they are referred or recommended to a financial adviser, will search for the business name or might search for the individual adviser’s name. And if they search the individual adviser’s name, what do we want to come up on the Google search results? You guessed it, the individual page on their website. To illustrate this point, yesterday I was doing the same thing in the shoes of a consumer, the firm that we just started working with. I googled their managing director, who’s also a financial planner, and nothing came up because he didn’t have an individual page on the website. The website had to be the team page, but it didn’t have the individual pages. And those individual pages, not only are they ranked by Google, but they also help, as I say, consumers to get to know the person. The page should talk about what the person does professionally, what they do personally. There should be some anxiety reducers on there to show that they are suitably authorised. FCA register link that they have their SPS, qualifications are on there. We have social proof on there, chartered logo, VouchedFor widget etc. So team pages consumers want them, so let’s give them what they want. Dan, anything come in?

Dan Campbell   

Yeah, a few things. So you’ve already answered Toby’s question about the page needing to be a specific page and not just an additional bio underneath a team page with everybody there together. So let’s go to Scott’s comment. So Scott asks “does it help on the meet the team pages if they link to the individual’s social media. So, for example LinkedIn, and then socials connecting back to their website team page. Or is there a little evidence that it makes a real difference?”

Phil Bray  

So, for me, I would see this as a one-way street, and I wouldn’t be sending people out from your website to social media. The example we see most often is a link out from somebody’s individual team page on their website to their LinkedIn profile. A couple of issues with that. There’s research to show that about only 1% of people are active on LinkedIn. So there’s a fair chance that if we send somebody out from the website to the person’s LinkedIn profile, that actually they’re going to see an account that there’s no value for them going there, and then we run the risk of if we send somebody out from the website to LinkedIn, LinkedIn’s very good at the top of showing notifications, direct messages that have come in. There’s a big red button. Notifications that have come in. There’s a big red button. That’s distracting. I might send someone down the rabbit hole of reading their DMs, reading their notifications, and not actually coming back. So for me, it’s a one-way street, and we should give people the opportunity to go from social media platforms to websites, but not the other way around.

Dan Campbell  

Perfect, thanks, Phil. So Ronan, we’ll keep your question until the end because it’s quite a general question. But I will ask Matt’s question. So Matt asks “is the case for a two-person team the same? We’ve got an individual page each, but not a high-level meet the team page.”

Phil Bray 

Good question. Trying to picture your website, Matt. There’s a couple of ways of doing it. You could say meet the team at the top navigation, and then have a page with you both on. You could say meet the team, and just have a couple of drop downs from there for you and Lucy. There’s a couple of ways of doing that. As long as people can get the information, that’s the important bit. Anything else, Dan?

Dan Campbell 

No, no. Let’s go on. Get these last three polls launched.

Phil Bray  

Let’s do number five. Really, really, really important. Showing the value of working with you. As we say a lot, showing beats telling. And if you are in telling mode: “we’re great”, “we’re really good at what we do”, “our clients are happy”. You’re basically asking strangers to believe you that you deliver value to clients. Much, much more powerful that your clients to explain the value that you deliver, and we do not want to try and show value through a page of anonymous testimonials. That is 2005 level of social proof. We can go so much higher than that. We should be scattering the social proof around the website, and we should be having a variety of different social proof. So, we’ve already talked about client testimonial videos. Let’s think about Google and VouchedFor reviews. We believe firms should use both Google and VouchedFor. I feel as though I’ve explained that a few hundred times, but if anybody does want me to explain again, I’m really happy to do that. So the question here is: what percentage of websites we reviewed displayed the firm’s Google or VouchedFor reviews? What percentage of the websites we reviewed displayed the firm’s Google or VouchedFor reviews? And there’s a number of ways of displaying. Those reviews, the ideal way is to embed them using Google widgets and VouchedFor widgets on your website. I’ve got a bit of a stat about that in a second, but over to you Dan, as people vote.

Dan Campbell  

Okay, so we’ve got a very early favourite. Let’s see how it fares with the rest of the team coming in. So let’s give everybody 15 seconds or so to get those votes in, and let’s see where we land. Interesting. It’s fascinating watching this live because some things are completely split across the board, whereas other people, other things people are so confident about. Let’s end it there. So we’ve got in so options, of course, were 18%, 26%, 52% and 68%. So in nearly joint last place with 9% and 11% of the votes, we’ve got 18% and 68%. In second place, we’ve got 26% with a quarter of the votes, and with just over half of the group agreeing, we’ve got 52% as our favourite.

Phil Bray   

Wow, I admire everybody’s confidence that your peers and competitors are displaying Google and VouchedFor reviews. If you were in, I think it was about the 1 in 10 who said 18%, you’re right. 17.6% to be precise of the websites we looked at embedded Google reviews on their website, and similarly small proportion 18% embedded VouchedFor reviews. So if we’re being generous, one in five firms are doing one or the other. Interestingly, one of the things we then tested was how people were embedding the VouchedFor reviews in their website. And in an ideal world, you should be using the VouchedFor widget. VouchedFor in the backend of VouchedFor has a wonderful set of reputational tools, and there’s a range of widgets and code that you can add onto your website, or we could do it for you. And that’s the best way of embedding them, because you see the reviews live. If someone clicks on the main widget, it comes up as a pop up. We’re still in the firm’s domain, but about 62% actually linked out to the VouchedFor platform, and we think that’s the wrong thing to do. The right thing to do is use Google and VouchedFor reviews and embed them in there live throughout the website. On pages that are about the company, you would use the company VouchedFor widget. On pages that are about the individual adviser, the individual adviser’s VouchedFor widget. And again, little reminder because we’re talking about social proof. Only 13% of adviser planner websites had client testimonial videos. Dan, any questions on VouchedFor and Google reviews?

Dan Campbell  

Well, you’ve read Alistair’s mind and answered the question that they’ve just asked. So thank you for that around using widgets as opposed to sending them off to VouchedFor to potentially look for somebody else. We will ask Richard’s question though, that is “which is better to ask people to leave a review on, Google or VouchedFor?”

Phil Bray  

Our view is both. Let me explain. So, Google reviews are really, really important because when someone searches for your business, your website should come up at the top left-hand corner of the search results page. Your Google business profile top right, and your Google reviews are there. So, it is an opportunity to immediately impress somebody who has searched for your business. Second reason to use Google reviews for those firms who want clients who live locally to them, it helps your local search engine optimisation. The more Google reviews you got, the better quality and the recency. And then third, as we’ve been talking about, you can clearly embed them into your website. Problem with Google reviews though, you’ve got to have a Gmail account to leave on, and your name is probably going to appear in public, assuming you’ve not set your Gmail account up as DonaldDuck@Gmail or some sort of anonymousattendee@gmail.com. Your name’s going to appear in public, so some people don’t like that. Other people can’t leave a Google review because they don’t have a Gmail address. So Richard, if you only ask for a Google review, you sent someone down a dead end. Our view is that’s not great because they want to leave you a review, they just can’t always. So let’s give them an option, and we’ve done a lot of work, and we believe that options should be VouchedFor. Why? Because there is a multiplication effect. In our experience, from every one Google review you get, you get between 5 and 10 VouchedFor reviews. They’re easier to do, and there’s a bunch of other things. You’ve got the reputational tools, you’ve got The Top Rated Guide. VouchedFor is a source used by AI, so it’s going to help your AIO. And for me the frame, Richard sorry this is a long answer to a short question. But for me, the frame is not “please leave us a review on both.” It’s “we use two platforms for your convenience. Please choose whichever you like to leave us a review on.” Some people will do none. Some people do one. Some generous people will do two. So for me, that’s the case for using both Google and VouchedFor. If anybody’s got a case against that, pop it in the chat. We’ll have an interesting discussion and debate.

Dan Campbell    

Thanks, Phil. Not a case against that, but a question around that by Carys who asks, “we use Trustpilot. Should we be pushing for Google instead?”

Phil Bray  

Yeah, I think so. I think there’s a couple of issues there. Trustpilot won’t help your local SEO as much as Google. That may or may not be a problem for you. They won’t appear. You miss the opportunity of impressing somebody immediately above the fold when they search for your business. And lastly, advisers tell me that the cost of Trustpilot is a bit of a barrier. I might be wrong, so do check it out. But I think the last time I looked, the first tier of membership, when you’ve got any decent widgets that you can embed in your website, was about £250 a month. It’s quite a lot of money, and some advisers tell me that’s a barrier. So personally, we’ve looked at Trustpilot and lots of other review platforms, I’ll be using Google and VouchedFor.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. Thanks, Phil. We do have another question, but let’s leave that till a bit later. Let’s do the next two sections, and then Ronan, I’ve not forgotten about your question either. So we will come back to that.

Phil Bray  

We’ve not forgotten you, Ronan. Number six, get your regulatory and statutory statements right. So your regulatory statement is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, or XYZ is an appointed representative of, which is authorised and represented by the Financial Conduct. Statutory statement is your registered office address, your registered number and where you’re registered: UK and Wales, England and Wales, or Scotland. And so, why should these go on? Well, they can keep compliance happy that they’re there. You need to do it. Keeps compliance happy. It gives consumers confidence. Consumers are about to get or are getting far more discerning, and that’s partly due to AI. We regularly run prompts on AI, asking it to recommend financial advisers to test things, and the AI always gives helpful additional stuff. And I can see a point where if the regulatory information, the statutory information, is not on the website, AI would start pointing that out. And it also shows you what’s small stuff that you’re getting the small stuff right. So, what proportion of websites we reviewed included the correct regulatory text? I remember what we’re talking about here with regulatory text is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority or the statement about you being appointed representative of a network, if that’s what applies. So, what proportion of the websites we reviewed included the correct regulatory text? Dan, over to you mate.

Dan Campbell  

Okay, so let’s allow people a few seconds to get those votes in. Yeah, this is a live demonstration of optimism and pessimism, and perhaps cynicism, isn’t it? Because we’ve got both extremes here. Obviously, our answers are 15%, 38%, 69% and 97%. Let’s give people just a few more seconds. Let’s see if any more votes come in. Let’s call that. So, what’re we saying? Well, only 5% of our team today think that it’s 15%. So, don’t worry we’re not too pessimistic. We still have hope in the world, Phil. How much hope? Let’s see. So, in third place, we’ve got 38% with one in five of us believing that’s the case. In second place, and third and second are close here. In second place, we’ve got 69% with 36% of people believing that. But one in four of us, the majority think that 97% is the answer.

Phil Bray  

Okay, so the one in four is correct. I was really pleased to see 97% of firms included the correct regulatory statement on their footer. However, one in five didn’t put the required statutory information. What we’ve got to remember is that this information, regulatory information, statutory information, should go on every single page of the website. It’s not enough to put it on one page. It needs to go on every single page, because compliance will tell you that people can come into your website in lots of different ways to lots of different pages, and they’ve got to have this information available to them. So let’s do number seven. We’ll wrap up the slides, and then we’ll go into questions down if that’s all right.

Dan Campbell  

Perfect.

Phil Bray   

So blogs and news pages. So why are blogs and news pages important? I’m using the words interchangeably. Let’s not get too bogged down in a definition, blogs, news, articles, pages. Quite important. They educate and inform. They demonstrate your expertise. They can, if you write content in the right way, embed you in your niche or the local area. But if you’ve got one, you’ve got to keep it updated. So, what percentage of websites we reviewed had not updated their blog this year? What percentage of websites we reviewed had not updated their blog this year? And if you don’t update your blog, what’s it look like? It looks like you started something and gave up. That makes you look unreliable. It looks like you are not sweating the small stuff. And of course, it’s an opportunity missed to do all those things: to educate, to inform, to demonstrate your expertise, to embed yourself in your niche and your local area. So Dan, what have we got?

Dan Campbell 

Okay, let’s give people 10 seconds or so because the votes are still flowing in. It looks quite split. We’ve got two options with hardly any votes and two options with tons of votes. So I guess this is your 50-50 if this were who wants to be a millionaire, isn’t it? Well, let’s end that then, and let’s give the answers a count. So our answers, of course, were 2%, 10%, 23% and 76%. So in pretty much joint last place, we’ve got 2% and 10%.

Phil Bray  

Yeah.

Dan Campbell  

Then in second place, we’ve got 76% with 40% of the group believing that, but just shy of 50% believe that 23% is the answer.

Phil Bray  

And they’re right. 78% of the websites we looked at had a blog or news page. Over 23%, one in four, have not updated it in 2026. And they run the risk of looking like they don’t sweat the small stuff, looking like they don’t care, looking like they’re behind the times and looking like they started something that they haven’t carried on with. And of course they’re missing the opportunity, as I say, to educate, to inform, to demonstrate expertise, to add value, etc. So yeah, one in four have got a blog page, had not updated it this year, so here is your two-page checklist to stand out on the homepage, and I’ve added a few things in. So on your homepage, have you got client testimonial videos? Have you got images of you and your team? Have you got other forms of social proof? Are we getting images right? And for me, I love websites. Not always possible, but certainly blogs probably need them. But I love websites where we haven’t got any stock photography. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t have images, but we have images of the firm’s team. We have images of the firm’s working environment and their office. We have images of the firm’s local area, if that’s important to them, they have images of the firm’s niche to resonate with people when they hit the website. So, are we getting the images right? That’s on the checklist. If you want to stand out, and I can’t emphasise this enough, this is not a hard and fast rule, although we are seeing more benefits of it, if you want to stand out, fully publish your fees online. It will be interesting, actually, I do think we’ll get to a point in the future where actually to fit in, you’ll need to publish your fees, and because you’ll stand out by not doing it. But that’s a different conversation. Are you talking about people on your website, not products? Does your homepage talk about the types of people you work with? For example, people thinking about retirement, at retirement, or in retirement, versus products. “We do pension, savings, and investments.” Go back to your blog. Has it been updated regularly? Everyone can define regularly differently. I would say a minimum of three articles a month. Do we have social proof scattered throughout the website? Your Google reviews, your VouchedFor reviews, your client testimonial videos, your client survey results, chartered logos, certified accredited press mentions, podcast appearances, all that sort of lovely social proof. Have we got it scattered throughout the website? Have we got the regulatory and statutory stuff right? Easy win there. Do we have two types of call to action? Read Donald Miller’s StoryBrand. He’ll talk about the fact that you need two types of call to action: direct call to action, enquiry form, telephone number, email, book in a calendar or Calendly for those people who are ready and want to take action now. Transitional calls to action for those people who aren’t quite ready to do that but do want to stay in touch. Sign up for a webinar, sign up for a newsletter, take a scorecard, do something that sort of stuff, and then build a team page out with profiles on for every team member. So that is your checklist. Should you choose to use it after this to check your website. Of course, we’re here to help. We can review websites. If you don’t want to do it yourself, we’ll review your website for you. We can update websites. We can build new websites. We’ve built about 350 websites at Yardstick over nearly 10 years now, and we can help you develop social proof as well. We can run client survey projects. We can run client testimonial videos. We can run Google and VouchedFor review products. We can’t and shouldn’t sit your chartered exam, so we won’t do that. But we can do this stuff. So do go and check your website today. We’ll send the recording out after this session, and you’ll be able to see that. Before we do some questions, the next session, we are missing August, because of holidays, so we’re not doing August, which is taking some off, and we’ll be back on 23rd September, Wednesday 10 am our usual slot. 10 great habits that will turbocharge your marketing. 10 great habits that will turbocharge your marketing. And why are we doing that? Very simply, because the key to marketing, good marketing, is getting stuff done. You just got to get stuff done. If I had Mark Ritson on, I’d put that slightly different. But you just got to get stuff done, and that means good habits and good processes. And we’re going to talk on this webinar about 10 things that can get done by having good habits and good processes. And we might do a bit of a bit of a book giveaway then as well. So that’s Wednesday 23rd September, at 10am. I hope you found today useful, and you can go back and look at your website and review it. Get in touch if you need some help. In the meantime, let’s wrap up with some questions, Dan.

Dan Campbell   

Sure thing. So with Ronan’s question, just before I read that out, yes Ronan, we’re recording today’s session, so you’ll be sent a link later on with the link to YouTube for that, so you can share that with as many colleagues as you want your end. You don’t need a password or anything to get through. It’s just a public link on YouTube that you can share with them. So, Roman’s question from a short while ago, “would you suggest a different approach for your website when you’re not actively using it for chasing business, but using it more for new enquiry verification? We only deal with new referrals from existing clients, and we would view our website as a form of verification for new enquiries.”

Phil Bray  

So would I, in terms of referrals. Referrals are always the best type of new enquiry, lowest cost of acquisition, highest conversion rate. But they will go on a journey as well. They might be recommended to two different advisers around you and somebody else. So they will go on a digital journey to your door because sat between becoming aware of you and taking action is Google and is now AI, so they will check you out. One of the places they’ll check you out, or 75% and will is your website. I completely agree. It is there as a verification tool. To be an effective verification tool, I believe you need all those things on there. So the short answer is yes. And in our experience, the majority of people who are recommended to an adviser or planner never get in touch with them. There’s a whole range of reasons, but one of them is they went somewhere else because someone else impressed them more on their digital journey to your door, including the website. So yes Ronan, everything we talked about today should be included on there, even if the only new source of enquiries you want is referrals from existing clients.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. Thanks, Phil. Let’s go to Amelia’s question next. Who says, “were any of the reviewed websites created by Yardstick?”

Phil Bray   

I bloody hope so. So yeah, they will have been Amelia. Yeah, I’ve not counted up, but yeah, they will have been.

Dan Campbell  

Perfect. Louise asks if it’s possible to have a copy of the slides from today. I’m sure we can arrange that, Louise.

Phil Bray 

What we’ll do there is we’ll put a copy of the recording in, but when Abi sends the follow up. We’ll get her to put a link to the slides in as well.

Dan Campbell    

Perfect. Then a question from Jane. Now this goes back to individual team pages we spoke about a while back and Jane asks, “what were the non-negotiables to include on those individual team pages?

Phil Bray 

So, what would I put on an individual team page? I would put contact details. Some people just visit them just to get the contact details. I’d put some social proof, the VouchedFor widget, client testimonial videos that were appropriate for that adviser, their chartered logo, appropriate certified logo, etc. I would include text to explain what they do professionally, what they’re interested in personally. Try and make sure that text doesn’t read like a CV. I put some anxiety reducers in there, links to the FCA register, SPS qualifications, and then I don’t always get unanimous approval, but let’s get a bit personal. Some spotlight questions, likes, dislikes. Try and put a smile on somebody’s face because we know that research. People are more likely to do business. People are more likely to become a client of organisations they like and people they like. There’s a networking group talked about no like and trust, and that’s a really really sound principle. So those are the things that I would have on there. Oh, sorry, and a photo. Sorry, I missed that photo of the adviser. Bloody hell, yeah, missed that.

Dan Campbell  

Lovely. What’d you think? We got time for two more quick ones.

Phil Bray  

Yeah, keep going. Let’s get them finished.

Dan Campbell  

Okay, so let’s go for Scott’s question next. Scott asks “is there a certain word count for blogs for SEO and AIO to see it as relevant content?”

Phil Bray 

Yeah, I think that there certainly is, and it’s generally seen as long form. I’ve seen different people talk about different definitions of long form, but I think most would aggregate around about 1000 words. But we wrote an article about this a while ago. I’ll look it up, Scott, and if I can find it, I’ll send it to you. Or you might just Google it, Scott. Google “The Yardstick Agency, how long should blogs be?” We definitely wrote it a copy as well.

Dan Campbell  

Thanks, Phil. Andrew asks a great question. “I notice that increasingly team photos are being enhanced using AI. Is that a good thing to do, in your opinion?”

Phil Bray 

I don’t. Dan, you might be able to answer this, but I don’t think we actually get asked to enhance photos by AI more now than we might have done two or three years ago. And when we do get asked, you know what? Generally by men. What’s your experience Dan?

Dan Campbell  

No, I’d agree. I think we’ve always been enhancing photographs. We’ve always done it with Photoshop, and that’s just been manually. Perhaps if someone’s had a wrinkle in their shirt, we might iron it out a little bit. If there’s a team shots outside and there’s some leaves on the path that haven’t been swept, we might just paint them out. So I guess the answer to your question, Andrew, is it depends. If it’s a sensible thing that we do anyway, as a bit of a hygiene factor for the photograph, then yeah, absolutely. But if you change someone’s appearance and it starts to look a little uncanny valley, that’s perhaps where you stop. And it might not be yourself that can answer the question when you’re looking at a photo of yourself. It might need to be somebody that can be quite frank with you to tell you when you’ve reached the point where it doesn’t no longer look like you, you know. So yeah, absolutely. It’s just now AI can do it, but we’ve always done it in the past with different software.

Phil Bray  

Yeah, we should maybe publish when we’ve retired some before and afters of what we did, not while we’re still working with those clients. Dan, anything else?

Dan Campbell 

Yes, let’s just nip back to Richard’s question from earlier around VouchedFor. There we go. “Can I use VouchedFor for my business? It’s a trading style of a bigger business. I’m going to be an AR soon, but I’m not at the moment.”

Phil Bray  

So the short answer is yes, because VouchedFor is built bottom up, so it’s advisers that have profiles, individual profiles. The reviews are collected on those profiles, and then for multi-adviser firms, those reviews are aggregated and placed on the company profile. So, providing you are authorised, no matter whether you are a directly authorised individual, a registered individual, yes you can have it. And also, in future, if you move, those reviews will go with you. You won’t start from scratch again.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. Well, I think that brings us on to our final question by Mark that asks, “is there a VouchedFor widget you recommend?” You mentioned it a little bit earlier, didn’t you?

Phil Bray    

Yeah, I like the one. It’s quite hard to describe, but if you go and look at any of the websites we’ve created, it’s kind of a round rosette. It shows dynamically the score that the adviser or the firm has got. You know, 4.9 out of 5, 4.85, etc. And when you click it, a pop up comes up, and you can read all the reviews. I think that’s a quite nice, neat widget. It works well, but others are available. Go and have a look at the backend of VouchedFor and take a look at the widgets. But I like that small one.

Dan Campbell   

Perfect. Well, all polls are launched. All questions are answered. I think that’s us done, Phil.

Phil Bray 

So, thank you to Dan “Countdown” Campbell for your work today. We will take a break in August. We’ll see everybody back in September for habits that will turbocharge your marketing. Recording out later on today. If anybody’s got any questions after the webinar, send them over to us, and we’ll deal with them. Thanks for your interaction today, guys. I really enjoyed that. See you next time.

Dan Campbell  

Take care, guys. Bye.