Websites; a fresh approach
For the last ten years, it has been fashionable for many IFA websites to try and sport as many ‘third party plugins’ as they could onto their site. Even today, services pander to this perceived need by offering ‘plugins’ for just about everything, even pet insurance! And in virtually every case when, or rather if, a visitor clicks on one of these third-party powered plugins, the site pops open a new window, virtually screaming at todays Googler ‘this is a small company!’.
The cruel reality is these types of site are an anachronism today, an irrelevance because if today’s Googlers are seeking anything related to a best-buy, they will turn to the names they see on TV. They may want to strangle that irritating TV opera character, but they’ll still type ‘GoCompare’ into their browser because they believe, rightly or wrongly, it’ll deliver the best deal.
So where does this leave your website? Surely we need to get back to basics and put ourselves in our prospects’ heads.
When customers approach an IFA, it’s for one thing; advice.
Advice is the reason you have all of the clients you have. Prospects searching for advice will, without question, turn to the web; they’ll do a search and they’ll want reassurance from any site they visit that the firm in question can deliver the advice they want at a cost they perceive as delivering value. If the site can also provide reassurance around the quality of service, the likelihood of contact skyrockets.
So how does your site provide that critical, and usually absent, reassurance? By far the most effective and sought after method is for the user to view independent reviews. How many times have you used Trip Advisor when planning a holiday or read a product review on Amazon?
Independent peer reviews are an incredibly powerful influencer with online service choice. It follows that the ideal site should focus on a reassuringly transparent advice proposition backed by independent customer reviews.
Sammedia is committed to delivering this next generation, RDR savvy, website service through the new IFA-Netsite 2 service. This service will focus on the following core elements:
1. A new design ethic focusing on delivering designs that deliver genuine impact around your core proposition.
2. New real-time ‘what our customers say’ peer feedback via the UK’s first fully automated client feedback service.
3. Propositions built-in for you to edit and customise to your needs.
4. Reducing plugin clutter to relevant and fully integrated core services such as mortgage tables for brokers and newsfeed for all sites.