The StoryBrand Framework For A Financial Advisor Website

Picture the guy or gal you'd most like to work with landing on your website right now.

Maybe it's a business owner getting up there in his late fifties, three years out from selling the company he’s worked hard to build, finally admitting to himself that his current advisor hasn't returned a call since March. His name is James.

Your name was brought up from a friend at dinner.

James typed said name into Google on his lunch break. There are four other advisor websites he’s looked into in four other tabs, right beside yours.

Your prospect, James, is tired: he's giving each one of them well under a minute of time to read.

He's skimming his way through five firms in the time it takes his leftovers from the other night to get cold, and he'll close the tabs that don't earn a second look.

Are you confident your website will earn that second look?

StoryBrand—Donald Miller's framework, if you haven't run into it yet—is really a messaging and structure framework that puts your prospect into the driver’s seat.

Character, problem, guide, plan, process, a little about you, call to action, and away you go.

It's a phenomenal framework, and we use it on almost every financial advisor website we build.

I want to walk you through just the homepage, the way we build it, top to bottom, one block at a time. It’ll make James—our hypothetical friend—feel you get him in a way those other four advisor sites just don’t.

The Hero: What You Do, And Who It's For

Before your prospect has read a single sentence, he's already made a judgement call on whether the website deserves a proper read at all.

Scrap the whole “well under a minute” example I gave earlier, the average viewer will give you about 2.5 seconds before bouncing.

He's sorting you into "worth a minute" or "close the tab," and he's doing it above the fold, practically based on the hero alone—that first screen before he even scrolls.

Miller's test for this is the grunt test, which is a slightly rude way of asking whether a caveman could look at your homepage for five seconds and grunt out three answers.

What do you offer? How will it make my life better? What do I do to get it?

For the heck of it, pause, go pull up your own homepage and try it.

A lot of advisor sites open with something like "Comprehensive wealth management to grow your wealth," a stock photo of a couple on a sailboat, and a button that says “Learn More.” 

The caveman is stumped, and so is the business owner, James, with his cold leftovers.

The principle underneath the grunt test is simple: the prospect is the hero of the story and you are the guide. Plenty of advisor homepages get this totally backwards. They open with the firm as the hero, with the awards and the decades of experience and the team photo on the golf course. It comes across as selfish: everything is about you. Your prospect wants to know you get him or her.

So, the hero should really say what you do and who you do it for, in words your ideal client would use him- or herself. This is where your niche does a lot of the heavy lifting.

“Financial Planning for High Income Business Owners” tells your perfect fit he's in exactly the right place, and it tells everyone else they're not. He reads that and he's in the story. He reads "Comprehensive wealth management solutions" and he's on to tab number two.

Further to that, the imagery should reflect your prospect's ideal state. The description below your heading should describe in greater detail how you specifically help those who work with you. Finally, you should frame your CTA around the primary action you want your prospect to take (typically “Book Your Free Assessment”).

The Accolades, Right Under The Fold

The second he decides your advisor website is worth a scroll, a new sequential question pops up. “Can I trust these people?” So the very next thing he should hit, right under the hero, is a strip of proof. Accolades.

Keep it fast and visual. The areas we see that tend to perform best in the advisory space are “as seen on,” “featured by,” “our clients work at” or “partnered with.” He isn't reading this too closely, he's pattern-matching for "legit," and a clean row of credentials clears that bar pretty quick.

Keep it to a strip, though. A quick band of accolades reassures him, and a full screen of every badge you've ever earned starts to look like you're compensating. Give him just enough to relax and keep moving down the page.

The Pain Points: "Does This Person Get What I'm Dealing With?"

So, he's now a little reassured and keeps scrolling, and the question he carries into this next block sets the scene for whether you understand the mess he's in.

This is the pain points section, and it's one advisors skip often. Naming problems feels like bad manners when you'd rather be talking about your process.

He buys relief from a problem, though, and he'll only believe you can fix a problem he's convinced you understand.

StoryBrand splits his problem into layers, and the layers matter here. The external problem is the practical one, the thing he'd say out loud at a dinner party. His portfolio is spread across four accounts nobody's looked at in years, he has no idea what the tax hit on the sale looks like, and his advisor's gone quiet since spring.

The internal problem is how all of that makes him feel, and it's the one he'd never say out loud. He feels behind, like everyone else his age got this sorted years ago. He feels a bit stupid for not having dealt with it already, and he's a little afraid a professional is going to make him feel altogether worse about it.

Name that second one on the page, in plain English, and there’ll be a shift.

He's been carrying that feeling around by himself, and now a stranger's website has said it back to him. That's the empathy beat, and you could see drastic improvement on your conversion rates.

The Lead Magnet: A Smaller Yes

Right after you've named the pain, he's feeling it, maybe starting to stress or an anticipation is building up that “maybe these guys know what they’re talking about.”

It’s the perfect moment to hand off a lead magnet related to the pain points you’ve identified.

The thought goes “these guys have thought about it enough that they’ve put together a free document I can read through. Huh, maybe I should give it a download.”

Something like The Business Owner's Pre-Sale Checklist, might give him exactly what he needs to position you as an authority in the space. It’s simply handed over in exchange for his name and email.

StoryBrand calls this a transitional call to action, the low-risk yes for the visitor who's interested and isn't going to pick up the phone today. It does a second job in the background too, and that's getting him onto your email list, so you stay in the conversation for the months it might take him to come around.

The Benefits: What Life Looks Like On The Other Side

Now that he's seen you understand the problem, he wants to know how you solve it. “Just cut to the chase already,” he might be thinking.

This is the benefits block, and it's what I like to call the “benefits bridge.”

Keep it about his life, not your service menu.

He doesn't want "comprehensive tax-efficient exit planning.”

James wants to sell the company knowing the tax number six months before closing, to stop lying awake doing mental math in his own head, and to hand the whole big mess to someone so he can get his weekends back.

Write the outcome, and let the service itself sit underneath said outcome (where it belongs).

This is also where all the stakes live. What his life looks like a year from now if this gets handled, set against what it costs him if he keeps putting it off. He sells the company and the tax bill lands at a number he never saw coming, or he sells it having known that number for months. Stakes are what turn a simple advisor website into a reason to move.

The About Section, Kept Short

The about us section is the spot where a bunch of advisors want to let loose. What’s crazy is it's where you need to hold back.

Even your about us section is still about him. Its job is to prove you're the guide who can get him where he wants to go, and a guide earns that with empathy and authority

Write a short paragraph that shows you understand people in his exact spot, a line on why you do this work, and the credential or track record that backs it up, and you're done.

The instinct here is to just talk all about you and display your trophy case. Resist that.

A wall of designations and a list of every association you've ever joined reads like a résumé, and a résumé is for a job application. He's looking for evidence that people like him have walked in and come out the other side. Keep it short, keep it about him, and save the details for your call.

The Prospecting Process: "What Would I Have To Do?"

He likes you well enough by now, and he's still not booking. What's running through his head is risk math. How awkward is that first call going to be? Am I going to get pitched an annuity? Do I have to hand over statements before I even know if I like these people? Am I going to feel judged for the accounts I haven't looked at in a decade?

This is what your process section is for. I always like to say “prospecting process” not “onboarding process.” Lay the thing out as a few plain steps, typically set as a free process, so he can see the shape of it before committing. Use the actual timeframes so he understands what it’s going to look like, too. Ambiguity will turn prospects off.

1. (Intro Meeting) Book a 20-minute call. You don't need to bring a thing.
2. (Discover Call) We'll map where you stand. Get a feel for the whole picture.
3. (Assessment Review) You get a written plan for the exit. Work it with us or take it and go.

Watch what those three lines do. They shrink the first move down to something tangible he can say yes to before finishing his leftovers. Plus, they tell him where it ends.

Uncertainty is the thing that keeps a hand off the button, and a clear process takes it away.

The Testimonials: Proof From People Like Him

By now he's most of the way sold, and he wants one last thing before he acts. Some proof that he wouldn't be the first.

That's what the testimonials section, sitting near the bottom, gives him.

The accolades up top told him you're legit. Testimonials do something warmer. They show him a person in his situation took the leap and was sure glad they did.

A quote from a business owner who sold and used your expert guidance to achieve superior outcomes is everything. A good story he sees himself in beats a dozen "great to work with!" one-liners.

What This Looks Like When It's Working

Now, let’s put it all together.

Walk the whole page back and notice what it's been doing. He lands, sees himself in the hero, gets a fast hit of "these people are legit," reads his own problem described a little too accurately, gets offered a hand he can take without risk, sees the life on the other side, meets you briefly, understands the process, and watches someone just like him say it worked.

So, he books the call.

If you want a second set of eyes on your homepage, or a website built on this structure from the ground up, that's what we do at Aryze, and we'd be glad to take a look at what you've got.