Every RIA needs a website. Here's how to do it right

This is the 20th installment in a Financial Planning series by Chief Correspondent Tobias Salinger on how to build a successful RIA. See the previous stories here, or find them by following Salinger on LinkedIn.

Registered investment advisory firms' websites could draw ideal prospective clients, or they could leave visitors wondering whether the company is viable — or just burn a lot of money without results.

Achieving the first of those three options entails significant work. It requires careful focus on the website's role in an RIA's marketing plan and lead conversion funnel, as well as an understanding of how to maintain a frequently updated online home that shows up in Google results — or how to select a vendor to manage those tasks, five experts told Financial Planning. But the costs, which can add up to tens of thousands of dollars at launch, can easily surpass their return on investment.

Spending more than that is likely unnecessary; RIA website experts described gasping or feeling heart palpitations when hearing of smaller firms spending $25,000 to $40,000 or more to create a website. Other website-related pitfalls they point to include using those stock images of a handshake or a retired couple on a sailboat, making a website so generic that target customers wonder whether they would be a good fit and listing so many bona fides in a curriculum vitae that it causes visitors' eyes to glaze.

READ MORE: Online search interest in advisors sets record, reveals investor fear

Keep it simple and personal

Many firms' websites fall into those traps "instead of making it about the end clients and prospects and the problems that you're going to solve for them," said Samantha Russell, the chief evangelist of wealth management marketing technology firm FMG Suite and co-founder of financial advisor website firm Twenty Over Ten, which FMG acquired in December 2020. 

More valuable than any fancy features, she said, are frequent and consistent website updates and clear explanations of "who you are" and what pain points an advisor can solve, and for whom. Banners or videos that take forever to load or immediate requests to join the email list can turn visitors away immediately.

"A lot of times, people are thinking, 'More is more.' Less is more," Russell said. "You have a very limited amount of time. … You are wasting valuable space at the top where you could be delivering your value proposition."

The conversation around websites has shifted significantly from roughly a decade ago, when many RIAs treated them as simply "something folks needed to have in the basic course of business," said Graham Turner, the president of advisor marketing technology firm Snappy Kraken and former CEO of Advisor Websites, which Snappy Kraken acquired in 2022. 

Now, they're "part of an omni-channel strategy" that encapsulates an advisor's branding approach and marketing funnel. Today's successful sites target ideal customers, converting a prospective client "from a website visitor into actively having a conversation" through newsletters and follow-up meetings, Turner said. Ignoring the website for months or years, failing to provide any differentiating characteristics and not laying out the specific questions a firm can help clients answer are no longer an option.

"Unkowningly, there are thousands of financial advisor websites out there with, probably, the exact same image," Turner said. "People want to invest with somebody that they can understand and relate to, and I think advisors do themselves a disservice by not placing themselves front and center."

READ MORE: Crafting the right message to win new clients starts by looking inside

Getting online

Some advisors aren't even placing themselves online, though. At least 8% of RIAs registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed no website or social media presence in 2024 — although nearly double that share, 15%, had no online footprint in 2014 — according to the annual RIA snapshot report from the Investment Adviser Association, an industry research and advocacy organization, and compliance firm COMPLY. On the other hand, 67% said they had more than one website or social media account last year, which is a healthy jump from 44% that were online in more than one place in 2016.

That increasing adoption reflects the simple truth that the vast majority of wealth management consumers perform online research these days, said Susan Theder, FMG's chief marketing and experience officer. To put the prices above in context, FMG charges $2,995 to set up a website and $149 per month for ongoing assistance and access to a library of content at its "premium" level and $795 for setup and $79 a month for service and content at its "essential" tier. A firm's website amounts to its "reception area" after the pandemic altered any lingering holdout advisors' grasp of digital engagement with clients and prospects, Theder said. 

"Prior to that, no matter how much we coached, there was always that little bit of a naysayer," Theder said. "It used to be just an office thing. Everyone came to visit. Now it's a virtual world."

She and other experts point out the importance of RIAs being able to integrate their other technology tools into the website and perform basic operations on it, whether they are using Wordpress, Wix, Weebly or another template, design or hosting service. 

READ MORE: How much time is AI saving advisors? And how do they spend it?

All kinds of engine optimization

Besides the high prices, some external design agencies pose the risk that an RIA will become dependent on them for support or get locked into the service without the ability to move the website and its content to another service, noted Marie Swift, founder and CEO of wealth management marketing firm Impact Communications. And those sleek designs may be detracting from the need for easy navigation and the point of the website itself.

"When we build a website, we start with the message. We start with who you want to serve and why you're the best person to serve them," Swift said. "That needs to be above the fold, so to speak."  

While "every firm is going to have their own needs and desires," many advisors find Wordpress to be unwieldy and Wix or Weebly "just a little bit easier to manage," especially if they've hired or assigned an internal marketing manager to oversee the website, said Jonny Swift, Impact's president and senior relationship manager. And every firm needs someone to take on that task.

Search engine optimization and, now, artificial intelligence-powered "answer engine optimization" or "generative engine optimization" takes users to websites that pertain to a particular query or target audience, use multimedia content and get updated regularly, Jonny Swift said. So RIA owners should keep in mind that terms like "independent wealth management" or "family offices" read as pretty broad when compared to say, "medical professionals" or another type of client group.

"You want to have pages built out specifically speaking to those niches," he said. "Google and AI reward pages that are text rich and content rich and give a really good description of what people are going to find when they visit this website."