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Getting Advisors to Use Your Web Site

By Lee Kowarski

I spent Sunday afternoon watching the ugly Jets game with a high school buddy who is a wholesaler in Chicago. I was pleasantly surprised to hear how important he thinks his company's Web site is in supporting sales and to learn that he regularly guides advisors to the Web site. This is certainly not the norm, as we found through research for our 2010 "Top 10 Web Sites for Financial Intermediaries" report. During that study, we gathered data from a number of large, intermediary-distributed asset managers about their Web site traffic and the behavior of their Web site users, along with e-Business budget, staffing, and other related information. In Q1 2010, an average of only 28% of the advisors that were registered for a given firm's Web site actually visited the site. Perhaps more surprisingly, only 40% as many advisors visited the site as dropped a ticket with a given firm. In other words, even advisors that are doing business with a firm aren't using the firm's site much. If you consider advisors that are actively doing business with a firm have the most reason to use the firm's Web site, firms should view this 40% figure as quite low, especially considering that 92% of financial advisors visit asset managers' Web sites for financial professionals, according to our "What Advisors Do Online" report.

Not all firms saw equal traffic patterns - the range in usage was quite wide. Over the years, we have identified a few steps that firms can take to drive site traffic, including:

• Pushing content - many firms take a "Field of Dreams" approach to their Web site ("If you build it, he will come.") In reality, advisors will often forget to visit a firm's site, and e-mail notifications of updates- such as commentary- can serve as a valuable reminder.
• Wholesaler support - it is critical to have wholesalers - particularly internal wholesalers - in support of the Web site. If they see the site as a threat, they can kill usage - if they see the site as a valuable tool to support their efforts, they can do more to drive traffic than anything else.
• New and valuable content - as they say, "content is king." If firms do not update material on their Web site, nor offer anything that isn't available on Morningstar or elsewhere, there is little reason for advisors to visit a firm's Web site.