Why good website design is so important

Ed Evans

I’m going to be posting a number of blogs over the coming months on website design and why it’s so important for financial planning companies in particular to get it right.

We certainly don’t profess to be great website designers here at Genovo, far from it, but we do come across a vast amount of websites in the industry on a day-to-day basis due to the nature of what we do. It surprises me that in industry where image and professionalism is so important, that poor website design is so common and content is often badly written and out-of-date. For example, I still see a number of websites that refer to the FSA as being the industry’s regulator, have links that don’t work or resources that can’t be downloaded.

Creating, publishing and managing websites has become much easier and less expensive over the past few years and there’s a huge amount of tools and support out there to help you on your way, some of which I will be detailing in this series of posts. There are also more really good industry specific website designers out there nowadays if you don’t have the time or inclination to attempt it yourself.

We created the Genovo website completely in-house and on a shoe-string budget, in fact the whole thing cost less than £150. Having said that, it did take us quite a lot of time and a little frustration if we’re honest, but we feel that we’ve learnt a great deal on the way.

Watch out for the following series of blogs on website design!

What makes a good website.
Some of our favourite website designs.
Using a design agency to help you create your website.
Getting started on creating your website in-house.
Tools and support for creating websites in-house.
Integrating social media with you website.
Using your website to generate new business leads.
Promoting your website and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Here’s an article detailing some great website design published by journalist Nicola Brittain (@NicolaBritt2) that might give you an idea of what you can achieve:

http://www.professionaladviser.com/ifaonline/feature/2284533/the-ten-best-adviser-websites

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Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net