Financial Mentor Website Review

The goal of these website reviews is to provide feedback, ideas and suggestions from a marketing perspective. I’m hoping they will spark some ideas of things you can improve on your own website.

As business owners, it’s often difficult to see our own websites objectively or through our customer’s eyes. We are so used to the look, the images and the words in our website, that spotting areas for improvement can become challenging.

As a general disclaimer, remember that nobody knows your business better than you. If an idea or suggestion doesn’t feel right, ignore it. And always test suggestions against what you are doing now to see what works better. You are ultimately responsible for implementing (or not) any suggested changes in your website and I am not responsible for your actions. If you don’t agree, then ignore the review and suggestions. I also can’t cover everything that I normally would in a more detailed review for a client, so these reviews are more general ideas and suggestions.

In this review, I’m going to offer feedback and suggestions for Todd Tresidder, a money coach and owner of the Financial Mentor website. Here’s a snapshot of the website at the time I wrote this review.

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You can tell from this website that Todd has been in business for a long time and clearly knows what he is doing.

Since this website serves as a good example of what to do, I want to showcase many of the things Todd is doing well, while also pointing out some potential areas for improvement.

The website has a good, clean design; it’s visually appealing and shows a clear understanding of the audience and what they need/want.

Todd also has a compelling opt-in box with two special reports and a clear call to action, which is very good.

Domain & Brand

The FinancialMentor.com domain name is clear, easy to remember and quickly says what the website is all about: financial mentoring. The logo and brand reinforce the message well.

At first, you might look at the header graphic and wonder what a nature scene has to do with financial mentoring. But I like it and think it works well because one of the core values of Todd’s audience is freedom; this graphic does a good job representing that value. It also does a good job of giving the business a “face” by introducing Todd to the audience as a financial coach and showing that you’re dealing with a real person.

Now let’s look at the tagline: “Financial Freedom For Smart People.” It’s a good tagline because it’s memorable and includes the key benefit of financial freedom.

However, I’m not sure that the “For Smart People” part adds that much value to the tagline; most people already consider themselves to be smarter than average, and I doubt that any truly dumb person would be smart enough to seek out Todd’s help.

One suggestion to improve the tagline is to try to incorporate other key benefits for the Financial Mentor audience. For example, a tagline like “Build Wealth, Invest Wisely & Become Financially Free” incorporates wealth building and smarter investing as key benefits directly into the tagline.

Navigation

Now let’s take a look at the navigation menu below the header.

The top menu looks good and covers all the key areas that you want to see.

From a usability perspective, I did notice that when you hover over some of the menu items, they open up submenus sometimes down to three nesting levels deep. For new visitors, all these submenus may provide too many options and could make them feel a bit overwhelmed and lost.

I’m guessing that these menus are auto-generated based on the page structure of the site, so a suggestion would be to switch to a custom menu that gives you more control over the layout and nesting of the items.

That way, Todd can funnel and direct visitors to his high-value pages instead of giving them so many different options.

For example, in the Top 50 Articles menu, I’m not sure that you gain much by having so many levels of nesting, showing each subtopic and each individual article using submenus (Todd may be doing this for SEO purposes, in which case some of those links could go on the sidebar or the footer area.)

If you just had the main article topics listed in the menu items (without any submenus), users could then choose the article topic they want to see and learn more about the topic and all the associated articles from the topic page itself.

Another suggestion to test is to take out the financial calculators and money wheel in the Free Stuff menu, create a separate Financial Tools top level menu and put all these tools under that menu.

In general, people find tools helpful and valuable, and this might be a good way to highlight all the valuable tools that Todd provides.

Now let’s talk about the 2^nd level navigation menu with Blog Categories, Blog Archives, Recent Comments & Recent Posts.

I’m not sure the value of this additional navigation menu outweighs the cost of the extra clutter and “choice overload” that it creates at such a prominent place in the page.

My suggestion would be to get rid of this 2^nd navigation menu, especially in the home page where you want to focus all the attention on signing up for the newsletter without getting visitors distracted with so many different options.

I would even consider getting rid of this 2^nd navigation menu entirely in other pages as well.

I’m not saying that this navigation support isn’t valuable, but it may work better on the sidebar. The Blog Categories could be on the sidebar as well as the Top Articles menu.

Home Page Layout

Now let’s talk about the home page layout.

The current layout is good, the eyes are naturally drawn to the opt-in box on the sidebar (which is good), but there is a lot of competition for attention from the rotating images in the main part of the page.

One problem with the rotating images is that while the questions and images are good, there is no call to action. I found myself saying “Yes” to several of Todd’s questions (which are very good by the way) and then I was left wondering what to do next. It’s not clear what the next action should be.

In general, the two main goals of your website’s home page are, first, to quickly and clearly communicate to your ideal prospects “you ARE in the right place… I CAN help you.”

And the second main goal is to capture your prospects email address by enticing them to opt-in and join your newsletter.

With these ideas in mind, here’s a different home page layout that Todd might want to try out and test…

First, change the layout of the home page to a single column layout (without the sidebar) to remove the extra distractions and competition between the opt-in box and rotating images.

You want a clear flow of attention from the top of the page, down to your benefit rich headline and right into your opt-in offer.

Instead of the rotating images, I would suggest starting with a strong headline. Something like “Discover Top Investment And Wealth Building Strategies That Most People Will Never Know About…”

Then start with a strong opening like: “Let me ask you some important questions about your financial future…”

Then jump right into the questions in bullet form (while I like the images that Todd is using, I think having all these questions displayed at the same time in bullet form would probably be stronger.) Something like this…

• Would you like a step-by-step wealth building blueprint to help you become financially free?
• Do you want to invest your money wisely so you can grow your net worth… while avoiding common financial mistakes that carelessly put your portfolio at risk?
• Are you looking for the freedom to choose the life you want without having to worry about financial limitations getting in the way?
• Are you serious about building enough wealth to support your ideal lifestyle?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you ARE in the right place.

My name is Todd Tresidder. I’m a financial coach and self-made millionaire. I built my wealth through entrepreneurship and investing. Now I help other entrepreneurs, business owners and serious investors use tested and proven strategies to grow their wealth, invest their money wisely and become financially free.

[Here would be a good place to put an opt-in box outlining benefits of joining the financial mentor newsletter/community with a strong call to action.]

To get started, I encourage you to subscribe to my free Financial Mentor wealth building & investment tips newsletter where you’ll discover:

[Add some compelling bullets describing key benefits and special reports]

Just enter your name and email address below and click the Free Instant Access button to continue.

You get the idea.

You can certainly keep the other boxes below this area (Free Tips & Instruction, Financial Coaching, Free Weekly Newsletter and Who Is Todd?) if you want.

Although removing these items from the home page would probably increase newsletter subscriptions since you are removing distractions and giving visitor a single, clear action to take next, which is to subscribe to the newsletter.

Opt-In Offer

Now let’s take a look at the opt-in offer itself.

Right now, it’s based mostly on Todd’s two free gifts 18 Essential Lessons From A Self-Made Millionaire and The Smart Consumer’s Guide To Money Coaching & Financial Education.

While these are good special reports to use as opt-in gifts, basing the opt-in exclusively on free reports without mentioning the benefits of the newsletter subscription could encourage “freebie seekers” who only want the reports and don’t care about the newsletter.

I would encourage Todd to also highlight some of the key benefits of subscribing. Giving the newsletter an attractive, benefit-rich name (like the Financial Mentor Wealth Building & Investment Strategies newsletter) and using a few enticing bullets highlighting some of the things people will learn would work pretty well.

Adding a few benefit-rich bullets in the sidebar opt-in offer would likely enhance newsletter subscriptions from other pages in the site as well.

Special Reports

Now let’s look at the special reports themselves.

While Todd’s reports are MUCH better than most of the special reports I’ve seen in other coaching websites, here are some suggestions that could make them even better.

“18 Essential Lessons From A Self-Made Millionaire” is a good title, but the benefit to the prospect is not immediately apparent and doesn’t really jump out at you.

The subtle implication is that by learning these essential lessons, you too may become a self-made millionaire someday. But it’s a weak link between the title and the ultimate benefit.

A stronger title could convey the benefits much more directly. For example, “7 Keys For Building Wealth & Becoming Financially Free” with a subtitle “How I Became A Self-Made Millionaire… And Why Most People Can Too!”

This type of title puts more of the focus on the prospect (their wants, needs and desires) and makes a stronger, direct connection to the benefits of building wealth and becoming financially free.

The subtitle makes a bold promise that obviously not everyone will be able to attain. For example, an 80-year old living off social security with no savings probably would not be able to become a self-made millionaire, but I’m guessing most people in Todd’s audience probably could given enough time and financial education.

The 2^nd report focuses on coaching & financial education, which is not really what prospects ultimately want. What they want are the benefits & end results that coaching and financial education can provide.

So my suggestion would be to make this report an extra bonus that Todd can give to subscribers after they signup or when they become interested in coaching, but not necessarily make it the focus of the opt-in offer.

My feeling is that focusing on a single special report with a strong title and compelling bullets describing the benefits of the newsletter subscription would lead to more newsletter subscriptions than including this 2^nd report.

For example, one of the bullets could be ‘10 Costly Investment & Financial Mistakes… And How To Avoid Them!’

Then Todd could talk about the importance of avoiding these financial mistakes as one of the Keys in the main report.

I hope this review gave you some good ideas for the kinds of things you could improve on your own website.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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I only have a limited number available each month… and who knows, I may even publish yours here