The Website of a Startup Hedge Fund

Now that your hedge fund has a website (you do have a website, right?), the next question is what it should contain. If you’re like most hedge funds, your website is nothing more than a fancy business card. That’s exactly the type of website you should avoid creating. Don’t look to your peers for marketing advice!

The below 10 sections contain necessary aspects of a successful website for your hedge fund business. Should you succeed in implementing these 10 features, your website will be automatically marketing for you.

1.     A Purposeful Homepage

Too many businesses think the homepage of a website should literally be the website. That is, they try to squeeze in everything about their business on this one page. What are they thinking?

The biggest failure I see on companies’ websites is the homepage. In most cases it’s clear that the business is not thinking about what the prospect is thinking. Generally, when you go to a website, you’re looking for information. If I look up your hedge fund on Google, I don’t want to see a mess of text and pictures when I land on your site. I’m looking for something in particular, most likely.

That’s where a homepage comes in. The goal of the homepage is to direct your prospects to that information they are seeking. Your homepage should be like a map to your site, directing prospects to the area they need to go. A good homepage should have the following:

1. Clear directions as to where to go to get what information.
2. A minimal amount of text.
3. If you have text, it should be introducing prospects to the site, not the fund.
4. A prominent menu.
5. A strong headline summarizing the site/fund.

For the average hedge fund, the homepage should be directing prospects to one of the following:

1. Information about the fund’s investment strategies.
2. Information about the fund itself.
3. How to schedule a meeting with the fund.
4. A contact form.

Remember that none of the above should appear on the homepage itself. The homepage is like the table of contents for your site. It’s not a brochure for your fund.

2.     Your Hedge Fund’s USP

I will get into the details of how to create your fund’s USP in a later post. But for now, let’s assume you have a USP. You need to make that USP clear and should have a page dedicated to explaining it to potential investors.

Where most businesses put their “about me” page with a picture of their office, you’ll be showing investors why your fund is different from the rest, and therefore worth investing in. Avoid falling into the trap of writing a biography of your fund and its history. Most investors don’t care. Of course, if you’ve been around for decades and have a record of positive growth, mention that. But as a general rule, stay away from talking about your company.

Skip the picture of your company’s building in favor of something eye-catching. Good pictures in the form of stock art are cheap and better looking than a picture of your office taken with an iPhone from the street outside.

3.     Testimonials

In an industry in which you cannot promise results, you have to let your investors do the talking for you. The finance industry seems to have an aversion toward testimonials. Perhaps it’s due to the mental connection they make with cheesy fitness program testimonials that play on late-night infomercials. Put your past notions aside and focus on what really works. The testimonial is one of them.

The average testimonial should have three things:

1. A picture.
2. A name.
3. A comment with a positive result.

The picture and name allow readers to connect their situations with that of your client. They make the potential results of your fund seem all the more real. The comment with a positive result should be something you’d like to say about your fund but, often for legal reasons, cannot. Avoid general statements in favor of tangible results and numbers – imperative in the financial industry. For example, a good comment is “XYZ Hedge Fund increased my investment by 30%.” A bad one is “XYZ Hedge Fund has helped me make more money than I ever dreamed.”

4.     Multiple Contact Methods

The more contact methods you have on your website, the better. A hedge fund should have at least the following four contact methods:

1. Email.
2. Phone.
3. Address.
4. Contact form.

While this seems like a no-brainer, putting your contact information in visible and accessible places raises the number of people who reach out to you! The keyword is accessibility. You get accessibility in two ways: ease and variety (which is why you need multiple forms of contact).

Ease comes in part from having all your contact information on one page, the contact page. All four methods of contact should appear on this page.

But ease also comes from having the contact info available in other places, not just the contact page. Put your phone number in the header. Put your email in the footer. Have a way to reach you on every page.

5.     A Mobile Version

With nearly one-third of Internet users browsing with their phones, it would be stupid not to have a mobile version of your website. The equivalent would be ignoring 30% of your prospects. In the hedge fund industry, when one prospect can be worth millions of dollars, the cost of making a mobile version of your website is miniscule.

Many wordpress themes and plugins can help you automatically convert your desktop website into a mobile website. With this in mind, what’s your excuse not to have a mobile site?

6.     Social Media

There are two reasons why every hedge fund should be connected to social media. The first is about maintaining relationships with investors. The second is about SEO.

More than ever, hedge funds need to engage with their investors. The paradox of choice puts investors in a situation in which buyer’s remorse is more common than ever. You can alleviate buyer’s remorse and worries by keeping in contact with them. Much like how long-distance relationships fail, the relationship between a fund and investor can fail when the connection between them grows in distance (psychologically).

Social media can also help your hedge fund’s online presence. By allowing your visitors to share your pages and posts, you promote your website for free. Not only that, but your mere existence on social media platforms can boost your website’s SEO efforts. This is especially true for Google Plus.

7.     A Guarantee of Confidentiality

One area in which other businesses can get away with going without but hedge funds cannot is confidentiality. Your investors will be high-rollers and sophisticated institutions. They will be more hesitant than the average netizen about sending their details and information to you via the web.

This is especially important once you put up your “snare” (I’ll get to this later). Whenever you ask a prospect for his information, make it absolutely clear that this exchange of information is safe and secure.

8.     A Snare

This feature alone can make you rich. Every hedge fund should have a “snare” on its website. The snare does several important things:

1. Allows you to recognize interested prospects.
2. Gives you the contact info of those prospects.
3. Lets you segment your visitors into different types of investors.

A snare, in essence, both pulls in prospects and keeps ambivalent prospects from never exposing themselves to you again.

So how do you set up a snare? Setting up a snare is both an art and a science, but in short it goes like this:

1. Present the readers with a tempting offer (e.g., free investment advice, a book, an invitation to a webinar).
2. Hide the offer behind a wall.
3. Give readers access to the offer only after entering their contact information.

A snare can be as simple as a one-step process in which the reader enters his email and receives free information. It can also be as complicated as having a funnel system to separate investors into different categories and offer each category a different reward for exceedingly detailed information.

The snare that works for your hedge fund might not work for your competitor’s, especially if you are dealing with different demographics.

Every hedge fund is different. Yours might have needs not on this list. What are they? Let us know below.