The financial services industry is undergoing a transformation, and like most transformations it will move slowly and insidiously, until one day we all wake up to a new way of doing business. Those that don't change their technology will sink.

It’s no secret that the robo-advisor model has been pushing along the digital movement.  After all, at the core many people are looking for investing advice to prepare for retirement.  And if we’re all using the same technology to analyze the markets, and accepting that even t...

One of the questions we’re often asked is “how do I make my business website unique?”  It begins with looking at it from your customer’s point of view.  After all, with tens or hundreds of opportunities available in a Google search (I pulled up dozens of financial planners searching a very small radius around my office), how do you answer the question “why should I work with you?”  If you don’t answer the question quickly, while creating interest, it’s likely your potential customer will just move on...

I am constantly reminded how far behind the independent financial advisory industry is, compared to many other retail operations, in the use of technology to assist in engaging prospects.  Having been in the industry for decades, an obvious reason is the nature of the advisor - most are male baby boomers that are very good sales people - who built a practice of people generally 5 to 10 years older and before the technology revolution. For these businesses to continue to the next generation, much has to change.

Many o...

Is your website responsive?  And I don’t mean that it ‘talks back!’ 

Beginning back in April 2015 Google started driving the industry to responsive design by using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal in search results.  Most mods to the all-important Google Search algorithm have only a low-weight impact on search results, however this change is an important one. With this change, Google started really focusing on mobile friendly sites, and placing those easily viewed on mobile devices higher in the rankings.

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Live chat has been around for some time, especially in the technology industry.  Companies that use it have a single point of contact to manage customer service and online sales activity in real time. I'm sure many of us have encountered it when trying to figure out a problem with our computer, or our cable provider.  

This however, is a killer application for the financial services industry!  In one implementation we had over 600 interactions with visitors to a firm's website over 2 years, many of which turned...