* 22 YEARS *

Financial Firm Increases Lead Generation By 70% With Responsive Web Design | Digital Marketing Pittsburgh PA

About Financial Synergies:


Located in Houston, TX

Helps individuals, families, and businesses

Provides total wealth management for more than 30 years

Combines investment management and holistic planning

A fee-only fiduciary that is holistic and boutique

An independent Registered Investment Advisor

Quick Facts:

Top of the search engine ranking

An increase of over 70% of lead generation from the website

Provides total wealth management for more than 30 years

Average session duration 00:1:18

Average page load time of 4.6s

Featured on the Fee-Only Network – a professional association of highly-trained professionals that work to protect the best interests of clients.

Featured in Angie’s List Best 9 Financial Advisors in Houston, TX

How Financial Synergies Went From No Ranking To The Top Of The Search Page With Responsive Web Design

The World’s Switch To A Mobile Web

In 2015, Houston financial advisory firm Financial Synergies found their website on page 4 or 5 of a Google search. Their inbound traffic was minimal as visibility was nearly non-existent. As a result, their lead conversions were also minimal.

What changed?

That same year, Google saw over 60% of searches coming from a mobile device. So they changed their search algorithms, which meant that any site that wasn’t mobile-friendly dropped from the top rankings. Today, accessing the mobile web accounts for 60% of time spent on digital media consumption. Currently, in total, 80% of all internet users own a smartphone and use it to access the internet. Our increasingly mobile world has left businesses needing to redesign their websites for responsiveness and rethink digital marketing efforts to remain competitive.

The Need To Adapt To A Mobile World

Access to online via mobile devices is more important than ever. A website’s mobile usability can be the difference between visitors that convert to customers and visitors that simply move on. In 2014, conversion rates were up to 64% for those sites that were mobile-friendly and responsive. Furthermore, 57% of users said they would not recommend a business that didn’t have a mobile-friendly site. (CMS Report)

With increased mobile usage since 2014, those rates have steadily climbed for many businesses. As more users view those websites with a responsive design, businesses find that their conversion rates are also rising. With a responsive web design, users can easily view and access a website from any device, which means longer viewing times as well as more clicks. Responsive web designs have a layout that adjusts according to screen size, which means potential customers can access the website from anywhere at any time and have a seamless and beautiful experience. When businesses are able to offer better usability and a better experience, they see better outcomes with their visitor and conversion rates.

However, when a business lacks a responsive website, they also find that it affects more than the customer experience. A website that is not user-friendly, responsive or visually appealing also affects SEO. A mobile-friendly site has increased visibility on the SERP, while unresponsive websites and poor usability see decreased SERP visibility.  These factors directly affect conversion rates – a website with poor usability and experience has lower conversion rates. Financial Synergies was experiencing this with their current website. Not only did it have a poor design, but it also lacked visibility and an SEO strategy.

With an unsatisfying website, Financial Synergies was searching for a real solution to their problem – a website that would be at the top of search engines and that would convert visitors into long-term clients. With high expectations and steep goals, they found their answer in Midstream Marketing.

A Website With The LeadGen Formula ™

After working closely with Financial Synergies, Midstream Marketing was able to create a website that was the total package – that embodied the LeadGen Formula ™ . The LeadGen Formula ™ consists of three foundations: design and technology, inbound marketing, and conversion optimization.

responsive web design

Above and below are pictured site audits of Financial Synergies website performance before and after implementing the Lead Gen Formula. Template-driven sites often have bloated code that slows down the overall performance and load-time of the site, as is seen in the top screenshot. Immediately after making the change, substantial increases in load time and performance of Financial Synergies’ new site can be seen.

A website’s design is not only back-end coding, but also front-end technologies that follow the latest design trends. For Financial Synergies, we used design trends that would last, including the adoption of current trends such as content panels, long scrolling pages, and current popular fonts.

Using the Materialize CSS framework, we designed an aesthetically beautiful website that was fast and mobile-friendly. Since Materialize is a Google product, the success of the SEO strategy was increased. Furthermore, it replaced the need for other SEO plugins, which causes slow-downs in load time.

With this framework, the site was able to scale seamlessly and beautifully to any device. We followed an approach that has proven to help attract and convert visitors. This approach is based on traditional aesthetic principles like contrast, proportionality, color complementarity, balance, and symmetry. With this approach, the eye of the site user was directed to the most important part of the site – the calls-to-actions.

Financial Synergies’ website was also custom-built, not template-driven. By building a customized website, we were able to cut down on bloated code that slowed down the overall performance and load-time of the site. Furthermore, through Custom Mobile Presentation, the site could be customized for any device without having to redesign the entire site.

Now, not only did Financial Synergies have control of the messaging, content, and placement of the content on the site, but they had a beautifully designed website that loaded fast and received a high SEO ranking on Google.

With keeping Financial Synergies’ goals in mind – to have a higher SEO ranking and better online experience for their clients – Midstream Marketing created a strategy for a complete redesign incorporating the three foundations of the LeadGen Formula ™ . With the blueprint that the LeadGen Formula ™ lays out, we were able to design and customize a website specifically to help Financial Synergies achieve their goal.

1. Design
With a mobile-friendly website, we ensured that the design was not only visually appealing, but also free of coding errors and following the latest design trends that will last. We built a completely customizable website that was not template-driven, which allowed Financial Synergies to remain in control of everything from messaging to aesthetics.

responsive web design

2. Inbound Marketing
Financial Synergies was able to increase website visitors by bringing more traffic to the site through organic SEO.

3. Conversion optimization
With a strong responsive web design and an effective SEO strategy, Financial Synergies was able to generate potential leads and convert them into paying customers. Through strong calls-to-action on simply-designed landing pages, website visitors converted to paying clients at a higher rate.

Usability Matters

For Financial Synergies, and many other businesses, they experienced results of the hard switch to an increasing online mobile world. Without a mobile-friendly site, their search ranking dropped, which meant the number of site visitors plummeted as well. They realized that without a mobile-friendly site, they would be passed over by other financial firms that adapted to mobile usability.

However, with a responsive design created by Midstream Marketing, along with an aggressive and comprehensive SEO and social media strategy, Financial Synergies experienced a direct increase in visitors and lead generation.

Throughout the entire time, our experience has been fantastic. Midstream Marketing has been very responsive. They understand what we are trying to accomplish, and they helped us achieve our objectives in only a matter of months.

Midstream Marketing vastly exceeded all of our expectations. They had a good understanding of the financial advisory industry – what are goals were, what we needed to do, and what we were trying to accomplish.

We were not satisfied at all with our website, and we had no SEO strategy or ranking. Everything changed after engaging with Midstream. We were instantly impressed with what they could create for financial advisory firms.

Midstream Marketing created a fantastic website for us. With a strong SEO strategy, and our new website, they got us to the top search ranking. This completely transformed our business and now over 70% of our leads come from our website!

Our objective was to have a great website and digital marketing strategy to drive traffic to the site and generate good leads. Midstream helped us achieve that in just a matter of months. Over 70% of our leads come from the web, which is unheard of in the financial industry.

Mike Minter, CFP®, CFS®

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