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21st May, 2025 - Webinar replay

Discover what great websites do differently as we break down three live on air

Phil Bray

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to today’s webinar. And we’re doing something a bit different today. We have never done this before, so who knows how it’s going to turn out, but come along with us for the ride for the next hour. And for those of you who are eagle eyed, you’ll notice that we’re joined by three willing participants today. You are all willing, aren’t you? Nod, yeah. You are all willing. Yes. Thank you. So we have Alefa, we have Ian, we have Paul, who I’m really grateful for because you guys have volunteered to have your websites reviewed live on air. Don’t think Abi needed to twist your arm too much to get you on and hopefully you get something out of this session too. But that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re gonna have a little bit about theory about websites, and then we’re going to break down three live on air and see where this takes us. So it should be a fun hour. Dan, do you want to start with your usual housekeeping, if that’s okay?

Dan Campbell

Yes, I certainly do. So welcome to another Yardstick webinar. So as Phil alludes to this one’s an exciting one. We’re doing stuff live on the air. What could go wrong? Well, luckily, we don’t have any animals in today’s show, so we’re not going to see Phil get attacked by a kestrel or chased by an ostrich. At least, I don’t think we are. But while we’re taking a slightly different format today, a few things remain the same. So the usual webinar Safe Space rules exist. So you can use the chat box or the Q and A section to add your comments and questions, which means that if you agree with what we’re saying, let us know, and if you disagree with what we’re saying, then definitely let us know. We’re all here to learn and grow, so get involved and have your say. There’s no such thing as a daft question. I promise you that if you’re thinking it, somebody else definitely will be. And as usual, we’re going to be recording the session, so I guess if an ostrich does get into Phil’s office, then you get to replay it later. So there’s that. But other than that, the email follow up with any links and resources we mentioned will arrive in your inbox later today, so don’t worry if you miss anything the first time around. And of course, we’ve got our very own Abi Robinson as usual to thank for that. So that’s enough of me and more of the ostriches. So Phil, you’re live on the air. Let’s review some websites.

Phil Bray

Cheers, Dan, thank you very much. So what are we going to do? We’re going to start with just a few minutes of theory about why your website is important and five things that make great websites. Then we’re going to go and take the screen share down, or take the PowerPoint down, and we’re going to share some sites. Ian, we’re going to start with yours, so prepare yourself, and we’re going to review those and get a bit of feedback from everybody about what we’ve said. But I want to start with a question, and I want you to put your answer in the chat, please. Paul, Ian and Alefa, please put your answers in as well, and let’s see how we feel. But what I want you to answer is this, on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your current website and be really honest? Number one, hate it. Knock it down, and I want to start again. Abi, that’s a sales opportunity for you. Number five, it’s okay, but there’s plenty to improve. Ten, I love it, and there’s nothing I would change. So put some numbers in the chat. Claire, “we need to have a chat”. What have we got here? Claire, “we need to have a chat”. Thank you. Charlotte “five”, James “four”. Lucy “ten”, look forward to seeing you later Lucy. Caroline “five”, Ravensca “five”, Phil “five”, Louis “eight”, Robin “five”, Jenny “two”, so just a bit above hate it and knock it down and start again. What else we got? “Zero, I don’t know where to start”. Very honest. Paul you are “seven”. Harry, at “five”. Jason, “five”. David, “zero”. And what have we got there from you Ian? What did you say there? I missed that one, “depends what the day of the week is, but a six or seven” come back to that in a bit. “My wife eight”, so we’ll have a conversation later about how we can get that to a ten. Let’s leave that and see. We’re going to do that a little bit later again and see what everybody thinks. But that’s really useful. Thank you for that, guys. I appreciate you doing that. So what do you need to make a great website? And why do we need a great website first and foremost? So let’s answer that question. Prospects take, these days, a digital journey to your door. So sat between them becoming aware of you, perhaps having been referred or recommended by an existing client, and then taking action and getting in touch is Google, and people will search for your business name. They will search for your own name, and that’s because they’re looking you up online. And they’re looking you up online generally for one of two reasons that, first they want your contact details. Second reason, they might have been recommended or are considering more than one advice firm. So they’re looking you up online to decide who to get in touch with. So prospects take that digital journey to your door, and your website is usually the final step in that journey. So when they search for you online, and the Google search results page comes up, hopefully you’re dominated by links out to you. We’ve got the Google business profile and your Google reviews. Then top left, you should have your website and the site extensions. So people first get to meet you on the Google search results page and then get to know you on your website. It’s usually the final destination on that journey before they decide whether to get in touch with you. So that means your website is your shop window, and it’s where decisions are made. It’s where people turn left and get in touch with you, or turn right and carry on looking for somewhere else. So it’s where decisions are made, and you have no ability to respond at that point, yeah, they’re on your website, Sunday afternoon, Monday evening, whenever it is, they’re looking around your website and they’re making judgments, and you have no ability to respond to what they are thinking or what they’re saying to somebody else that they’re with at the time. So we’ve got to get websites right. And one of the big things that I talk a lot about is that a website doesn’t equal an effective website. A website doesn’t equal an effective website. And to put it in your language for everybody who’s on the call, it’s a little bit like a pension doesn’t equal an effective pension. So if I am in my mid 50s, I’ve just ought to enroll myself into a workplace scheme. I’m paying the minimum contribution and I want to retire in five years time. Well, I have a pension, but that doesn’t equal an effective pension or an effective retirement solution, and it’s the same with websites. Just because someone has a website doesn’t mean it’s an effective website. So we need to do more than just tick a box with a website. And that’s so much is true with marketing in general, whether it’s newsletters or social proof or whatever, we need to do more than just ticking a box so a website doesn’t equal an effective website, which then leads on to the question, well, what does equal an effective website? What does make a great website? And for me, there are five things. I’m just going to unpack each of these, and then we’re going to come to Ian, first of all. So the first thing for me that a great website does is it shows empathy. It empathises with the reasons that somebody is on your website and somebody is on your website because they have a trigger, and that trigger is a problem that they want to solve or an aspiration they want to achieve. So when they hit your website, they want to know whether you are the expert that’s going to help solve that problem or achieve that aspiration. So we need to show them that you are, assuming you are, the right person to solve that trigger and that they found the right place, and finally, that you are the expert for the people like them. People need to feel at home, feel comfortable when they hit your website. And part of that, for me, is showcasing people, not products. We’ve all seen websites where it says we do savings, pensions, investments, ISA’s, life insurance, that sort of stuff. For me, we need to showcase people and not products. Better way of doing it and those people, as we move on to number two, should be real people. If anybody’s read Donald Miller’s Building a Story Brand looks like Ian’s read it. Ian smiled. If anybody’s read that Donald Miller talks about showcasing two groups of people, heroes and guides. Now I realise this sounds a little bit strange. It’s on Ian’s shelf behind, sounds a little bit strange when you break it down and move away from the marketing waffle. Heroes are your clients. Heroes are the people that you serve, and you help to produce better outcomes. And we’re going to look at how some of the guys on the call showcase heroes on their website a little bit later. I think Paul, your site, does that incredibly well. There’s a variety of ways of showcasing heroes, but client testimonial videos are a very, very good way of doing it. And we also need to showcase guides. Now the guides are the people that take the heroes from where they are now to where they want to be. And that means it’s financial advisors, the financial planners in the business, but other people involved in the relationship as well might be administrators it might be paraplanners, but really important, we get real people front and center on your website, on the homepage, on their own sections, and then throughout the site, so many reasons for doing that. And then if we’re showcasing real people, we’re also trying to impress real people, the visitors that come onto the page. And that means we need social proof, and social proof should be scattered around the website. If anybody’s on the call on the meeting going to own up to having a testimonials page on the website, stick something in the chat. But testimonial pages are largely pointless. Between 1% and 2% of all visitors to a website go and look at a testimonials page. Much better way of doing it, scatter the social proof around the website so somebody sees it. Your visitors see it wherever they go. Put it a slightly different way, if you scroll down your Facebook feed, it’s not a really nice, clean feed of people, you know, it’s full of adverts and sponsored links, etc. So those adverts and sponsored links interrupt your scrolling. You can’t avoid seeing them, and that’s what we need to do with social proof on websites. We need to scatter it all around so people see it wherever they go, and we don’t just rely on them hitting one page to go and find it. Types of social proof, Google reviews, VouchedFor reviews, client survey results, client testimonial videos, and they’re all what I call advisor driven, or client driven social proof. They’re all about clients. We then have advisor driven social proof or firm driven social proof, whichever you prefer, and that’s things like awards, qualifications, accreditations, if you’re mentioned in the press, that’s another type of social proof. So what we need to do for the numbers three and four of the five things that make a great website is get on here, advisor and firm driven social proof. We have a look at how the websites that we are reviewing today do that shortly. And then we need to get calls to action right. And there are a couple of calls to action, couple of types of call to action we need on websites and throughout our marketing. And again, the Donald Miller book is a good reference for this. So a bit of theory. Around 97% of people are not in the market for a product or service at any one time, around 3% are and that means we need different calls to action. We need a direct call to action, which might be a contact form, an email address, telephone number or meeting booking system, and some of the websites from memory use that that we’re going to review today, and that’s a direct call to action for people who are ready to immediately get in touch with an advisor or planner and start their journey. We then need a transitional call to action for the people in the 97% who have interest, curiosity, but have a lower level of intent. And those transitional calls to action might be webinars that people can sign up for, might be newsletter sign ups, might be guides and white papers they can download, a scorecard would be a good example of a transitional calls to action as well. So we need to have direct calls to action and transitional calls to action on websites to cater for the different needs of people that are in the market and those people who are not in the market at any one time. So for me, those are five things that make a great website. We can also talk about really nice design, really great pros on the website, good imagery, good photography, etc. But could have carried on for a long time, and I want to get to the websites that we’re going to review today. So I don’t know if anybody’s got any questions about that. Dan, I saw somebody maybe raise their hand.

Dan Campbell

All we’ve got is James in the chat, leaning very much into the safe space that we’ve created, and saying “guilty as charged about that testimonials page on the website”. So well done, James for owning up.

Phil Bray

Yeah, thank you for being the only one honest enough to say you got a testimonials page on your website. I’m sure there are other people as well. So let’s go into this Yardstick first and see how this works. So three websites to review, and all we’re going to do is break this down into what I think works well. And what I would recommend changing if Paul, Ian or Alefa came to me and said, “how would you review this website?” So we’re going to start with Work to Live Financial Planning. We’re then going to go into Bainlye Drake, and then we’re going to finish with Chiltern Hills. So this is the most nerve wracking part. Well, I need to take this screen share down and put up another screen share with the websites on. So let’s just see how we get on here. We did try this earlier, so let’s see how we’re going to do, we can still see the PowerPoint there can’t we? Let me get that down. Right, can we see the Work to Live website?

Dan Campbell

Yes.

Phil Bray

That wasn’t bad was it?

Dan Campbell

Seamless.

Phil Bray

Thank you, Dan. Right Ian, I spent some time on your website on the weekend, so your Google Analytics will probably have risen. Just talk a little bit about the history of the website, Ian, if you would, how old is it? Etc.

Ian Richards

I’ve had it about five years, and then got rejigged, I think around sort of September, October time. I’m probably one of those people that’s very guilty of constantly rejigging my website and then having it sometimes look like a bit of a mismatch. I’ve basically changed a lot of the messaging, and here I’m targeting over the last sort of month or two. So again, some of the language has changed, which has required some extra stuff to be kind of be added. So I’d like to say I probably got, like, a bit of a love hate relationship with my website. Like sometimes I think, yeah, this is really, really good and then advertised. I think that’s just doesn’t kind of work, which I guess, is probably usual for most people. I guess the danger is that you just keep tinkering with it.

Phil Bray

I think it’s you’re right, it’s finding a balance between tinkering and then letting it go for a bit to see how it performs. So as I say, I’ve broken this feedback down into what I think is good and what I would change but if anybody in the chat wants to challenge my views or add some of their own, then absolutely do it. So I thought on the really positive list Ian, when I was looking at it, it feels really warm, friendly and inviting. I loved how your personality shines through from the page. I thought that was fabulous. I really liked some of the language used on the site as well, the text, the words, I thought that was great. And again, it’s very specific about who you are working with. So above the fold, and the fold, for anybody who’s interested in the jargon, is the bottom of your screen, above the fold, and the fold is in different places on different screen sizes. You’ve got a line here in, that shows very quickly who you work with. And it looks very deliberate that you’ve put that there to show people as soon as they hit the website, whether you are right for them or not. Is that fair Ian?

Ian Richards

Yeah, that’s minor with the story. So the idea is to try and have a bit of that story brand, how they would do, kind of the website and that side of it. So, yeah, just trying to be really clear on it.

Phil Bray

And then again, straight immediately below that, you have got two calls to action there. Yeah, you’ve got your book, your free clarity call, and then you’ve got your “Work to Live alignment scorecard”. If I click that, I’m going out, probably into a score app domain or something like that. I’m going into a scorecard out from the website. Hopefully everyone can see that, and then “Book Your Free Clarity Call”. And that takes me out to Calendly, which seems to be a favorite of people, to be able to book websites too. So I really love the two calls to action there that you have you have side by side, and then also on your services page, if I find that there, I love this. Yeah, who it’s for, who it’s not for, yeah. I thought that was really clear. I think Nick Lincoln does this on his website as well, but you don’t see it very often, and I do love it where you’re showing absolutely you’re right for us if you’re in this list, we’re not right for you, or you’re not right for us, if you’re in this this list. And I think that works really well for you. What was your reason for putting that on there Ian?

Ian Richards

Yeah, I think just to kind of make sure people understand what it’s about. And the whole feel of the website is obviously the life first kind of money, second thing, and just to almost sort of get people to self select a little bit on that side of it. Obviously, the danger is that when you do something like that, you feel like you’re going to be putting people off. You might be an all right kind of fit, but hopefully it doesn’t kind of do that.

Phil Bray

And when you’re getting new inquiries coming in, do you feel that has a benefit of those two lists on the website?

Ian Richards

It’s fairly recent on that, I would say typically, the leads I do get in tend to be quite good fits. And I’m sort of hitting the demographic. I’m quite active LinkedIn, so I think most of them kind of come from LinkedIn, probably have a little check of the website, and then kind of go from there.

Phil Bray

Okay, and I love here how you’re really upfront with the fee that people pay for your signature reset. I thought that was really good, and I suspect I might be wrong, I frequently am, but I suspect there is going to be or there is a movement towards more people putting fees on websites, more advisors and planners putting fees on websites. Certainly something like someone like Marcus Sheridan talked about, I think Ian I might be inclined to then say, “look, there’s other fees on an ongoing basis”, if people want to take an ongoing service so someone can see everything that you charge.

Ian Richards

Yeah, it’s actually on there now. I think when you maybe checked it for some reason, it disappeared.

Phil Bray

Okay, no worries. And I really like this as well. “Only three spaces per month”. I think that provides a bit of reassurance for some people that you’re not just trying to build a massive business. I really, really like that. So a few things I would personally change about this site, and hopefully everyone who’s on here has taken away some ideas about best practice, few things that I would change. I thought the opening text, the three lines, “create a life helping successful professionals and a life filled with” just felt a little wordy to me.

Ian Richards

Yeah.

Phil Bray

I would maybe reduce that down a little bit to one heading and one sub heading and then I would love to have on this page, maybe on the first scroll, maybe on the second scroll, a section that introduces you. I know you’ve got the picture here, which you, I assume, two happy clients, as opposed to just random people just pulled off the street. But I would love to see on here a section introducing you. You are the people’s guide in here. You are the people that they’re going to trust the other person that they’re going to tell a lot of personal things to. I would love to have a specific section on here that says, “Meet Ian”, I think that would work well, I don’t know what your thoughts are on that Ian?

Ian Richards

Yeah, yeah, that’s an interesting one, because I think that comes down to, obviously, position yourself as a guide and hero and the warriors like, “oh, look at me”. You know, I’m kind of front and centre rather than the people. So that was probably why I’ve not gone down that route. And obviously, on the “about”, there’s much more about Ian, I’m not kind of opposed to it, but it’s quite interesting that you’ve sort of have back so high up to sort of introduce myself, rather than kind of focus on the clients, if you want, or potential clients.

Phil Bray

Yeah. And just be clear, you are the guide here. Clients are the heroes, and we need both on the page. But we do want people to get to know you and to meet you.

Ian Richards

Yeah.

Phil Bray

This is a little bug bear of mine, I think I feel like this, how Dan feels about justified text, yeah. And what we have here is, and you can see, maybe this is because of tinkering that’s gone on the site, few changes, we have some text that is in sentence case and some text that is in capital case. So here you can see this here, that is in sentence case, that is in capital case. So you’ve got a capital letter at the every word there, and a lowercase at the start of most words there. So I would just be consistent on the site. Yeah, if it was me, I’d be consistent with that style there, rather than the capital case. Because there’s some theory around capital case that it does put people off, make it harder to read, and can come across sometimes as a little bit shouty.

Ian Richards

Yeah. I think the challenge is figuring out how you do it on Webfly. I’m sure, sure there’s a way of doing it, but yeah.

Phil Bray

Fair point. And then I would probably change the order on the homepage a little bit. I’d reduce the length. And by he way, and everybody else on the call, I’m happy to send my notes across, rather than you having to make notes now. But I think I probably changed the order a little bit and reduced the length so this section “trusted by successful professionals” I’d potentially moved down the page a little bit. I’d remove this slider here, because it just felt to me personal opinion only felt to me as though it was a little bit of a barrier to coming down the rest of the page. It’s a full width slider, just felt a little bit of a barrier to me there. And I would then again, remove this section. I just didn’t think it added anything. And I would swap the written testimonials, which are further down the page, for I go with client testimonial videos. Yeah, so you’ve got, yeah, here we go. We’ve got these written testimonials and I’d love to see those turned into client testimonial videos. Yeah, I think that will be incredibly powerful. And if you’re on LinkedIn, you do some great videos on LinkedIn here, lovely things that you do side by side, and they’re great, yeah, I would be getting some test to client testimonial videos on them. Here are the little practical things that I would do again to help people move around. So what I would do here, and I think I would change the “about” to “Meet Ian” just be really clear, yeah, of who you are, yeah. Be loud and proud that you are a small business helping other people. And I would have me, Ian, there, I think that would increase maybe the traffic to that page. And then there’s a couple of areas where I would just focus on a little bit of detail, yeah, the odd typo here, but that’s here and there, and I’ll send you them privately. Ian, if that’s okay? But I think it’s worth just making sure that the little details are right. And I saw this down the bottom here. There’s a couple of broken links down the bottom.

Ian Richards

Yeah yeah.

Phil Bray

But I completely get that it’s not necessarily the easiest thing in the world to do when you’re managing yourself. And then finally, I would do a bit of an audit on the website and just try and reduce the amount of stuff on there.

Ian Richards

Yeah, no. I think I’m always of the opinion, ironically, that less is more. But the website doesn’t quite feel like it because you kind of add in and you feel like, “oh, actually, no, I want to have that, and I want to have that in” and almost kind of give kind of too much. I think it could be slimmed down. And again, on the homepage that kind of there’s the three steps, because that’s, again, a story brand thing. You have the three kind of clear steps, but we have to switch that out with, well, actually, this is the four steps of the service process that you get to again, just to sort of help slim it down a little bit.

Phil Bray

And for me, be really self critical, and if there’s something on the website, ask, “what’s it there for? Does it actually need to be there?” And you can also make it a little bit easier and reduce page length by splitting pages out. So for example, this page here, the “What We Do” page. I would split this out into several different pages

Ian Richards

Yeah.

Phil Bray

You’ve got “How We’re Different”. That’s almost a page on its own. “The benefits of working with you”. And I love this, “What You Walk Away With”. I thought that was really cool. That, again, is almost a page on its own. Then “Who We Work With” is a separate section. So for me, I think there are some pages and, I could keep going, there are some pages where actually it might benefit you to break those down, yeah, and have that less is more on individual pages. But I thought there was a lot to love about the site. Love the way you interact with your site and you try and improve it as well. And hopefully that’s given you a few things that you might want to go away and work on and change, and I’ll ping you my notes through as well. Ian before this, because I made it before the call. Ian, anything to say on what I’ve said there?

Ian Richards

No, I think, yeah, I agree with pretty much everything that you said. It’s just, the main thing for me is having that feel, of that approach and that sort of brand and that personality kind of come through is kind of the most important thing. But yeah, it definitely could be slimmed down. I think that’s a confidence thing, having “that less is more”, and that it’s clear, because I know if I go on websites I like, it’s kind of nice and simple and easy to do. And again, with that fees thing that you’ve mentioned, there’s nothing worse than we’re really transparent and open about our fees. And then there’s nothing there, and not just on, like, advisor sites, like on anything, like with some admin things. And you’re like, “well, I just want to know how much it is, because I want to know if it’s in the ballpark of what I want to do”. So, yeah.

Phil Bray

Yeah, that’s a markers show the line in the ballpark.

Ian Richards

Yeah, yeah.

Phil Bray

Ian, thank you so much for doing that and being a good sport. Charlotte, just want to deal with your question about client videos, client testimonial videos. Abi’s already spoken about it a little, a little bit there for me and Charlotte’s question was, “is there a tried and tested way to ask clients to do testimonial videos so they feel comfortable with the idea?”

Phil Bray

In my experience, if you ask the right clients in the right way, you will get enough to do a set of a set of videos. So hopefully it’s that you’ve just asked the wrong people so far, or maybe not in the the optimum way, as Abi says, we do have a template email that you can use to ask, and that’s proven really, really successful. If you’d rather pick the phone up and ask, then you can use that template as a script.

Ian Richards

Yeah. Sorry Phil, can I just jump in on that? Because obviously you do like the great client testimonials, and there’ll be people at different kind of revenue streams, but people starting out, I found, and I do have one that needs to be put on the website to send them the questions so they can basically answer the question. Do a minute video, and then you clip it together, rather than just saying, “can you do me a video testimonial?” Actually worked quite well with one of them. Said it was much easier to do it because you just, I think it probably was your questions to kind of ask them. And it did work really well.

Phil Bray

Yeah, good, good. Right. Thanks for that, Ian. Alefa, you’re up. Tell us a bit about this website, mate, please, and just the history of it, if that’s okay? Can you hear us, Alefa?

Alefa Bwalya

Just about, yeah, go on. Sorry. Say it again.

Phil Bray

Just tell us a bit about the history of the website.

Alefa Bwalya

Right so this is, I think, the second iteration, or third iteration of the website. I think it’s basically provided by a network. And then we’ve added some extra bits here and there. I read Story Brand and fell down the rabbit hole on some podcasts about it. So I’ve tried to or what we’ve tried to do is add a few little bits that we took from there into the website over the last few years.

Phil Bray

And how easy or hard have you found it to manage the template?

Alefa Bwalya

So this comes from our network. They sort of outsources to our network, I’m guessing this is just like a standard template they use. So I imagine one of the downsides of our website is that you probably see many, many that have got this kind of layout or a variation of it.

Phil Bray

Yeah. Okay, so what do I like about it when I was sat looking at it in a Nero on Saturday morning? and I think for me, it does a decent job empathising with visitors above the fold, it talks about who you work with. Can’t highlight it on that oh, it’s flipped over. It does a decent job on the slider of explaining who you work with. Do your clients mostly live and work in London?

Alefa Bwalya

No, they don’t. This has been pointed out to me before.

Phil Bray

You can see where I’m going with that.

Alefa Bwalya

Yep.

Phil Bray

Yeah, looking at the addresses of the business, they weren’t central London. So for me, I mean, you’re pretty close, you’re pretty close to London, yeah. But for me, I would be putting pictures on websites that resonate with the people that are visiting it, and I can remember we worked with one client who was from a sleepy Wiltshire village, and they got a big picture of the Gherkin on their website, yet they wanted people within about a five mile radius of their office, and you’re pretty close to London, so it might resonate. But again, I think with imagery, imagery really does need to resonate with the person that is hitting the website. And there’s all sorts of ways of doing that, but geography can work or it can be off putting. So I’d just have a think about the images on the site. I thought this as you scroll down again, you’ve got a picture of Waterloo Bridge or somewhere like that. Anyway, you’ve got a picture of London. So again, I’d think about changing that. You’ve got that direct call to action there with “Book A Call”, which is really nice. Might take a leaf out of Ian’s book and put a transitional call to action there with a guide, a newsletter, sign up, that sort of thing, and I am giving ideal world solutions here that might not be available within the template. So I do, I do absolutely recognise that. And so adding a  transitional call to action I think is worth doing. I personally would take off the LinkedIn link there. And I much prefer social media to be either entirely self contained, so we see more things on LinkedIn, like no link posts, so much potentially really contained on the social media platform, or using social media to drive people to your website, if I did, I won’t do it now, but if I click the LinkedIn link there, it will take me through to your LinkedIn page. But at the top of your LinkedIn page, I will also see any outstanding messages and notifications on my LinkedIn account, and that could put me off. So for me, I would take off the LinkedIn link there. What else did I put on here? If I scroll down, love this. You’re showing people a plan. You’re showing people the different stages. You’ve got three, but you’re showing people the different stages of working with you. And again, one of the things Story Brand talks about is showing people that you have a plan for them, really, really important. And for me then, I wouldn’t be talking about services at this point, I’d be talking about people. So how important to you, Alefa, is auto enrollment to your business?

Alefa Bwalya

We do absolutely zero.

Phil Bray

So it’s the first thing on your services list. And that’s because it’s a template. Yeah, that’s because it’s a template. And templates have to basically take a route of compromise, and it’s why we don’t do templates at Yardstick, why everything is bespoke. But for me, I think how much general insurance do you do?

Alefa Bwalya

Again, not a lot at all, one or two policies a year.

Phil Bray

So for me, some of the stuff is not particularly relevant. And then it’s much better to talk about people, not products. And again, if anybody in the chat is prepared to own up and whether they’ve got “savings, pensions”, etc, on their websites, I’ll be really interested there. But for me, let’s talk about people and people at different stages of life. Yeah, you might talk about the fact we work with 50 somethings in the glide path to retirement, at retirement and post retirement. That’s fine. You might do what Ian did, was it 40 something professionals? I’m on a meeting this afternoon with a firm that specialises in dentists. Don’t work with GPS. Don’t work with consultants. It’s dentists. So much better to showcase people rather than products. The other thing I would add onto the homepage is, you know, I talked about real people, heroes and guides. I’d say that’s missing here again last time I said, understand why, if it’s a template, but seeing your team smiling face, yeah, group shots of you together, client testimonial videos, even images of clients, Ian you’ve got a image of you and your clients in their kitchen I think it was, and even that would be better. So for me, I would be adding on here, heroes, your clients, guides, your team and social proof. I think we can elevate the level of social proof here above just a few testimonials. So I’m not sure if you’re on VouchedFor, I think I saw some Google reviews while I was doing a little bit of research into this prior to the webinar. And again, embedding those onto the site would work really nicely as well. Any thoughts on what I said on the team page there, sorry, on the homepage before I go to the team page?

Alefa Bwalya

Yeah. I mean, a lot of this stuff that I’ve heard before or read before. It’s just the website’s been neglected. I think it’s not something we focused on, which is perhaps a mistake.

Phil Bray

Think you’ve got some easy wins, though, I think you’ve got some easy wins. Then on the team page, and this will be probably the second most popular page on the site. The order of popularity on pages on websites is generally, not always, generally the homepage, and then in second or third place, and they alternate between the two. Would be a team page, and if it’s there, a fees page, because people are interested. So if you’re looking for quicker wins and to be able to prioritise, I would be looking at home page, fees page and team page fees page, if you’ve got one, clearly, if you don’t, then you can’t. But for me, what I would be doing here, because it’s a really important page, I would improve the consistency of the imagery. So a new photo shoot, let’s get you guys out together, smiling at the camera, out and about, with a new photo shoot, I think that would work really, really well. And then potentially could get you some shots of you guys together, and they could be used elsewhere in the website. So if anybody wants to go and look at a website that we built and launched maybe six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, perhaps Abi can look for the link. Cesta, C, E, S, T, A, Cesta Financial Planning, three guys in the business, and they got some lovely photography on their website, so go and have a look at that. I don’t know if this is the entire team of the business, or is there other people in the business that aren’t on here?

Alefa Bwalya

Yeah, there’s like another four to add.

Phil Bray

Was that a conscious decision not to put other people on?

Alefa Bwalya

No, it’s just they came on board after the website was last updated, not going around to putting them on.

Phil Bray

Yeah, fair enough. So I would, again, I would put those on there. Yeah. I’d showcase all the guides in your business. I would also give everybody, Simon and yourself and others, I give them their own sub page as well, so everybody has their own individual page on the site, helps your SEO. It allows you to get more information onto the page than just what we got four or five paras there. It allows you to put things like contact details on, social proof, so Simon might have some VouchedFor reviews that we can share. And so again, I would be really focusing on the team section here, and trying to build that up, then a couple of other little, reasonably quick wins. Chartered Financial Planner feels like a good thing, but let’s explain to visitors what it means and why it sets Simon apart. So there’s a couple of ways of doing that. One of the really nice ways of doing it is if someone hovers over “Chartered” little box comes up that explains how being chartered separates Simon apart and how it benefits, perhaps more importantly, even how it benefits the people he works with. So “Team Page” I’d focus on. I’d also focus on the Services page, personally, I would take the services down and change it with the type of people that you work with. And then I would take the testimonials page down for the reasons I’ve spoken about before, and then I would scatter social proof throughout the website. So advisor driven social proof that we talked about before that would say, be things like awards, accreditations, press mentions, etc. And then client driven social proof videos, Google reviews, virtual reviews, client survey results, that sort of stuff, and I would scatter those around the website. And then finally, I would just simplify the navigation a bit. This is the template Alefa, causing this problem, but “news media, content and insights”, I just put all those into one place if I could. So thank you for being such a good sport, and just give us a bit of feedback on what I’ve said there.

Alefa Bwalya

Yeah, I think most of this is stuff that I’ve heard before or read or watched a video saying I should be doing things. It’s just the case that we’ve not given the website the attention that it probably deserves.

Phil Bray

Yeah, and that’s why I made the point at the start of the webinar about why this is important. And you don’t know, the clients or financial advisors planners, don’t know the clients they never had, because the prospect has looked at the website and decided to look elsewhere. So hopefully that’s given you a few ideas and everybody else of things that maybe you should change. And then if other people are making the same mistakes on their website, they can change those as well. Thank you for being such a good sport. I really appreciate that. Paul, last, but definitely not least, tell us a bit about this website, Paul.

Paul Bradley

So it was first built four and a half years ago, which is when Chiltern Hills was founded, and we’ve updated it once, which was after getting a lot of video content done, it was built by my brother in law, who is mainly actually like an animation specialist and graphic designer, but we helped pull together the copy, and he pulled together the website.

Phil Bray

And did he do these graphics, kind of on the bottom right hand corner of the website?

Paul Bradley

The graphics, so we’re actually piggybacking on a piece of work that was from a previous business, and the previous business, we spent quite a lot of time in kind of articulating our value. And there were two different routes. So one was live differently, and the other was see the road ahead. So they came up with two different colour schemes, it was like a brand personality, yeah. So I used the work from that. And the idea behind the line drawings was, I mean, you see them all the time. Now, I feel like I was duped. But the story goes, as soon as pampers got rid of photos of babies and just put an outline, their sales went hugely up because people imagine their own babies in the outline, whereas you see a photo, it’s someone else’s baby. So the idea with the line drawings is that you can fill in the blanks yourself.

Phil Bray

Clever, clever. Right, so I sat again reviewing this on Saturday, and what did I think was good? So I thought above the fold, that you explain your ethos really well, Paul, I do think, though it might be worth reviewing the text. It feels a little bit “we centric”. So each of the four sentences above the fold start with the word “we” just feels a little bit about you. Let’s make it a little bit more about the people that are on the website, and then, as you scroll down, love the videos, you clearly have invested a considerable amount of time, effort, possibly blood, sweat and tears on the videos. And I love that. I think that works really well. And for me, separates the site out from most other advisor and planner websites that we see, because not only have you got videos about you and the team, you’ve also got your client videos on there as well. So I love that. Love the fact that you’ve got this plan, you talk about the plan here and how you work with people. You show that you have a plan for them and that’s going to give them confidence. As I scroll down you then talk about who you serve again, putting people before products. Think that works brilliantly. And then I love this. Click on this, and then we’ve got a video, not sure that lady’s name, we’ve got a video. And then I click on that, and I love that really personal call to action. “Sounds like me”. I thought that was fabulous, Paul. So the videos are great, I would potentially put those a bit further up the page. Yeah, I think they deserve more prominence on the page. And likewise, I think your team deserve more prominence on the page. So I might be inclined to jig the order and just lead with real people and then put the plan below it. For me, it’s maybe all the right, what’s that Morecambe and Wise thing? “All the right, notes, just in the wrong order”, or something along those lines. But I thought that the homepage was great, and this is fabulous. “A higher level of expertise”. Again, I’ve never seen that before. I think that’s a little bit of genius and will appeal to people who they’re looking for that, now, not everybody is, and those people who aren’t, the videos will appeal to them, but I thought that was a little bit of genius. I love that. So was that your idea, Paul?

Paul Bradley

The pyramid was yeah, it’s great visual, I mean we’ve got master’s degrees, CFP, so it is the level seven.

Phil Bray

Yeah, really like that. And then you’ve got the direct call to action. You’ve got the direct call to action there. Again, people can book straight into your diary. I clicked it. I didn’t book a meeting with you, Paul, but I clicked it. It all worked. Lovely. It looks great.

Paul Bradley

Well, you mean Mickey Mouse is not a real person?

Phil Bray

No, I was Donald Duck at the weekend. So that’s somebody else, mate. And then things that I would change. I’m not entirely convinced about the three levels of navigation. So we’ve got a line there of navigation, we’ve got a line there, and then we’ve got a line there, some of it’s duplicated, like “Our Team”. And I get that this is taking me down the page. I get that’s taking me down the page. I’m just not entirely convinced, but I could absolutely be wrong. So what I would do here, you might have already done it, but I would add a tool called Hotjar onto your website, and Hotjar records people’s visits, or more accurately, it records their mouse as people are moving the mouse around the website, and you can actually watch a recording. If you’ve got Hotjar on here right now, you could watch a recording of me moving the mouse around and navigating the site. And it’s quite interesting watching individual videos. But what’s really interesting with Hotjar is when those videos are overlaid onto each other, and create heat maps that show where people click around the website. And for me, those heat maps will be invaluable in understanding how people interact with these three levels of navigation. So I’d add Hotjar on here, or get your developers to do that. Personally, again it’s a tiny little point, but your logo, when I scroll down, can we see how the logo changes?

Paul Bradley

Yeah, it changes to CHF, yeah.

Phil Bray

I would keep the same logo on. I’d just make it a bit smaller, yeah, I’d keep the whole logo on there. So, we remind people where they are. Just felt we got a little bit lost when we did that, and again here, this is on me, but I would be consistent between capital case and sentence case. There was couple of examples of where we where we switched. I’d add a transitional call to action into the site. So making that a little bit more obvious. And then there was somewhere on the site. I forget exactly where it was, but you talked about booking a consultation, yeah. So this call to action here, where’s it gone? Here we go, “Who We Serve”. “That sounds like me”. That feels like a really warm, welcoming call to action. I’m not sure consultation is necessarily equally warm and fuzzy. So I would think about that. Then where do I find your client videos or client stories, they’re there, aren’t they? So hopefully we can see the stories starting up. And I think there’s more that can be done here. I love the fact that you’ve got these. Looked a nice, sunny day. Where were you, Paul, when these were filmed?

Paul Bradley

Ashridge House. It’s not a castle, but it’s the most castle- like non castle you can possibly imagine. It’s an old Henry the Eighth, one of his old houses.

Phil Bray

Very nice. Well, I love the videos, like a really nice, sunny day, but I think if it was me, I would suggest making more of the videos. I would have and I don’t think you’ve got this, a sub page for each video. So video one gets a page, video two gets a page, video three gets a page, etc. And if you do that, there’s a few benefits. The first is you can put a transcript of the video and what they’re saying onto the page, and that will help with your SEO. I’d also consider adding subtitles, and if you have your own individual page for each video, it makes it easier to link to Paul from social media, etc, but I would make sure each of those has their own individual page. I would also add, because again, I think it will help your SEO. I think it will help people learn more about how they can work with you, on these pages here, so “Ambitious Business Owners”, that text is quite small. I would link that through to a page that explains how you work with ambitious business owners, how you work with motivated professionals, and how you work with people about becoming financially free, that means you can get more information on the page. You can show them Paul the problems that you help people in those categories solve, the aspirations that they have, show how you help with them, show the proof that you help with them, which is the video, and then give them the calls to action. So I would add a couple more pages in there, but for me, you’re building on a seven, eight out of ten to take this website even higher. You’ve looked as though you’ve really spent a lot of time investing in this website, and you’ve taken it really seriously. I think there’s a lot of really good stuff on that.

Paul Bradley

Thank you. I mean the video content we’ve got professionally done, like we spent money on that. But I think the main thing in the videos is the ones where the client’s got a story to tell. So they are transformational stories. I think the first ones that we did, we tried to focus on our ideal client, which is someone who’s approaching retirement, who’s generally been successful. So has liquid wealth, or he’s likely to have very soon. But then the later ones, we focused on maximum emotional impact. So it was just trying to focus on getting people to tell their story where something horrendous has happened, or it’s more kind of helping tell this, there’s a stronger emotional story. That’s what we focused on in the later ones.

Phil Bray

Yeah, I love them. I thought they were great. I think the website’s excellent, and as I say, shows how much you’ve invested in it. So before we wrap up, question time for everybody, hopefully you can see the PowerPoint again. Dan’s going to give me the thumbs up or the thumbs down to say that you can see the PowerPoint? Yeah. Thank you. Dan, right in the chat, everybody, do you feel better or worse about your website after this session? Do you feel better or worse about your website after this session? And I’ll be really interested to see how people feel about that. I’m going to come back to the answers in a second. Abi, would you talk about the next webinar that we’ve got.

Abi Robinson

I can do that. And top communication there, Phil, which I believe will be a topic of conversation next month. So yes, next month, we are back to guests. I appreciate we’ve had some bonus guests this month, but in terms of the schedule we’re following this year, it’s Phil plus guest in June, and it’ll be Ed Darling next month, who is co-founder of Project Charisma. So if the name doesn’t give you any clues, he has spent a decade coaching business owners, execs and wider the teams to present with clarity, with more authority, and, of course, with more charisma. So we all spend a massive amount of time communicating. And Ed’s going to explain how we can do it more effectively. Hopefully the QR code works. I did check it this morning, but I will include a link in the follow up email this afternoon as well. But yeah, looking forward to that one. Hope to see you all there. And yes, thank you, Phil, that was very good timing. If you would like to pay us, as it were, for today’s session, because we don’t charge, of course, for any of our webinars, we would massively appreciate a Google review. Should only take you a couple of minutes, if that, depending on how much detail you want to give us. But yeah, we’ve got quite an ambitious target this year, and it’s just really nice practice what we preach and get some public appreciation and feedback on what we do, so we can make the session better in the future. But I’ll put the link in the follow up email. I won’t put it in the chat, so we’ll say there’s a lot going on in there at the minute, but yeah, if you would be kind enough to leave us a review, we would really, really appreciate it.

Phil Bray

Thank you. Abi. Right, so what did people put then in the chat about and answer the question you feel better or worse about your website? “Better”, “better”, “better”, that’s good. “Worse”, “better”, “better”, “worse”, “much worse”, sorry, “worse”, “worse”, “better, a little maybe a six now, but can also see lots of areas to focus on improving”. Pleased about that, because that’s what we want people to come out with today, areas where they can improve. “Feel inspired. You can see what changes I need to make”. I like that. Thank you for that. Laura, “slightly better”, “worse”, “interesting”, so I won’t do a commercial break, but if anybody does want to talk to us about their website, give us a shout. Get in touch with me or Abi. Dan, shall we finish up with any final questions before we take our leave?

Dan Campbell

Yes, please. So we have a few, couple of our own videos. Let’s do those. So a while ago, Phil asked “when introducing who you are and how you work, what are your thoughts around doing short video clips, as opposed to just text and photos or a combination? Is it similar to testimonials in that videos are more powerful?”

Phil Bray

I think it’s very difficult to know whether videos are more powerful than text, because you don’t necessarily know how the person watching or reading it likes to receive the communication. So for me, if you can, I would try and touch more vases and turn written text into videos, videos into written text, and then see what works, see what gets more engagement and follow the evidence.

Dan Campbell

Brilliant. Thanks. A quick question from Ben, who says apologies I came in late. Will you upload the recording somewhere? I can answer that one. Ben, yes, we will. So an email follow up with the recording of this session will be making its way to you later today, so you’ll be able to catch up in your own time. Still on the subject of videos, an anonymous attendee, oh mysterious, asks “for videos on websites what are your views on professionally shot Ie expensive, time consuming, but look great, as opposed to self made Ie authentic, more can be made, but the quality is not guaranteed?

Phil Bray

I’m not sure it’s a binary choice between the two. I put something in the middle. So there are pros and cons for different ways of doing it. We offer two ways of doing it, one, where we will come out and do a face to face shoot, and it’s more expensive, but you get more professionally shot footage. The second option, which we introduced during COVID, for obvious reasons, is where we will record the footage and you’re asking the same questions, but we record the footage remotely, so we’re in our office, the client’s in their home, and we record using a combination of their phone and Zoom, and that works really well. And one of the great things about that is it reduces the price point. We do those for £349, plus VAT per video, and it reduces the price point, which makes client testimonial videos more accessible. So for me, I would go with one of those two, and he kind of pays your money, takes your choice. To give you an example, probably 90% of our videos, client testimonial videos are recorded in that way, remotely. Maybe 10% face to face.

Dan Campbell

Brilliant. Thanks. Penultimate question from Ian, and this is panelist Ian, not Ian in the audience, how many transitional calls to actions would you have, as you could do a scorecard, newsletter, webinars, etc?

Phil Bray

So I would always put them side by side, yeah. So you’ve got direct call to action and a transitional call to action, and then I try different things. Yeah, I try and see what works. So for example, in my Yardstick website, we get many more people completing our scorecards than we do signing up to the newsletter. So for me, I think transitional call to action are about how you can deliver value. And if you’re delivering value with a guide, a white paper or scorecard, you’re delivering value almost immediately because someone can get it straight away. With a newsletter, there is delayed gratification there because the next newsletter won’t come out until a week later, two weeks, a month later. So for me, it’s not necessarily about the number, it’s about the type. But I wouldn’t have too many, because you might confuse people, and I play around with different types, but I would probably focus more on the transitional call to action, where they get immediate value.

Dan Campbell

Brilliant. Thanks, Phil. And then final question from Louis, nice, easy one, what is SEO?

Phil Bray

SEO is search engine optimisation. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have assumed everyone knows what SEO is. Apologies. So search engine optimisation is basically making sure that you rank as high as possible on the Google search results for given search terms. So in this case, it might be “financial advisor near me”, “financial planner Nottingham”, for example for some firms, it’s really important. For other firms, much, much less so. But that’s what search engine optimisation is, and we will as we move through this year, next year and in future years, we will have AIO, AI optimisation, yeah, and that’s where, again, hoping that things like ChatGPT and others, when people type questions in there, again, it’s about optimising the answers and making sure that you’re mentioned there. Right, are we good for questions Dan?

Dan Campbell

Yeah, we certainly are. That’s your lot.

Phil Bray

Cool. Ian, Alefa, Paul, thank you again for being good sports. We couldn’t have done this without you. Abi, thank you for organising it and getting our willing volunteers along. I hope you guys have had some value out of it and some ideas. I’ll ping you my notes through so you can see them. Dan, thank you, Abi, thank you everybody else, thank you. We’ll see you again next time for a great session with Ed. I saw him speak at the PFS. He’s fabulous. Go and sign up for that. Cheers everybody.

Ian Richards

Thanks Phil.

Dan Campbell

Take care, guys. Bye.