blog

If You Want to Attract Advisors to Your Web Site, Be More Experimental

by Lindsay

In a recent survey for an upcoming report, What Advisors Do Online, kasina asked over 500 advisors to name Web sites they currently use, that they weren't using a year ago. We were surprised by both the quantity and breadth of responses, both expected and unexpected, including:

• Seeking Alpha: A financial news and opinion site.
• Minyanville: A self-described "financial infotainment" site.
• YouTube: A site that allows users to post and view embedded video online.
• Zillow: A real estate market mashup.
• Facebook: An online social network.

What distinguishes the above sites, and others that advisors listed, was that they all incorporate innovative design and interactive functionality with ever-changing content. According to the same survey, advisors expect that the amount of time they spend online will either increase or remain the same both at home (96%) and at work (93%) over the next two years. Advisors clearly like to explore new sites, and in all likelihood, they are going to be spending more time doing it, rather than less.

So how can asset management Web sites, whose content is largely static, capture the attention of these advisors? The answer is simple: by being more experimental. While asset managers may never have the dynamic content that the above listed sites do, they do have the option to make content more interesting by trying out new formats and functionalities and seeing what sticks. Why not try out comment functionality, like Seeking Alpha, introduce a little humor to otherwise boring content, like Minyanville, or present data in a visually interesting format? What's the worst that could happen?