Your website reflects who you are, what your firm stands for, and what your work is like. If they believe you can provide nothing more than the advice from a basic formula, they will drop you. If prospects connect the financial calculator on your website with the work you do, you will lose business. They expect a personal experience and personal feedback. People want an advisor to analyze all the puzzle pieces of their life for holistic advice. There is a demand for custom financial plans from advisors. By ridding your site of financial calculators, it will be much easier to exhibit your expertise and experience. You have to leave the low-end resources to reflect your high-end advice. By implementing a financial calculator on your website, visitors think that you’re relying on it to plan their future and your work will be nothing more than their own personal calculations. Prospective clients desire advice from advisors for professional, comprehensive financial plans. When they see that same technology on your website, you have a problem. They find consumer grade technology they can use to get a basic understanding of their finances, but nothing more. When someone looks for a financial calculator, they are usually uneducated about finance. They are uneducated about their finances (which is why they seek you out in the first place) and this can make talking to you intimidating too! In the end, prospects can defer them from contacting you and may even search for a more approachable firm. Put yourself in their shoes – these calculators can be intimidating. They seem harmless and easy to use as an advisor, but your average prospective client doesn’t have the knowledge to understand what they are calculating. Financial calculators create a sense of responsibility for clients, as if it is their job to find the numbers and results. You may just think its a handy tool to have for prospects and visitors, but it only gets in the way.
#Financial calculators for your website how to#
We don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but shouldn’t you be the client’s financial calculator? We’ve learned time and time again that it’s already hard enough for prospects to put their entire wealth, and their entire life, in your hands. Related: Four Reasons Why a Brochure Website Doesn’t Work Anymore 3. There are many SEO factors that are much more powerful (and less expensive) than financial calculators. The chances of you out ranking huge national companies like Bank of America and CNN Money are slim and likely impossible. You would have to click through pages upon pages of results before you found your own website. However, if you head over to the search box and type in “mortgage calculator” you won’t be happy with the results. Some of those numbers were very promising! We took at look at Google Keyword Planner and found monthly searches for a few financial calculators.
Now, we’re not saying it doesn’t play a role in Google’s algorithm at all, we’re just saying it doesn’t make a difference for you. When financial calculators first hit the scene, one of the biggest selling points was their positive affects on SEO. If anything, they may be hurting your business!
Most likely, these calculators are NOT increasing your website traffic or your conversion rate. You look at ROI for your clients daily, but are you doing the same for your marketing initiatives? Think about the arm and leg you are paying for these calculators. They may be marketed as an add-on, but they can cost just as much as your entire website does. What we’re trying to say is, get rid of them. If you don’t believe me, check your Google Analytics. That is, no added value for your client or you. Advisors typically bought in, but they’ve added absolutely no value. Website manufacturers used to sell these as “cool” add-ons that were supposed to enhance your business. However, unless you have a very specific financial calculator for a very specific audience and very specific reason, calculators are completely useless. Your intentions are good to consider adding some financial calculators to your website during the design process. We’re sorry to do this to you but here’s the cold hard truth about having financial calculators on your website: Reasons to Get Rid of Your Financial Calculators It sounds pretty good on paper – you can exhibit your expertise and build trust with prospects that will soon be clients, right? With this technology, prospects could receive financial estimates, predictions, and even advice before they reached out to you for financial services. At one point in time, embedding financial calculators into your financial planning website was state-of-the-art and all the rage.