What NOT to Do on Your Hedge Fund’s Site

Once your website is up, scan through it to ensure that it serves the purpose it should. The purpose of your website is to get prospects asking you for more information. All technologies and tactics on your website should play a role in serving this purpose.

The biggest mistakes I see on hedge funds’ websites follow. Please review your own website to see if you are making any of these mistakes.

Fund-Centric Copy

Fund-centric copy refers to the text on your website talking exclusively about your hedge fund. Almost all hedge funds like to write multiple pages dedicated to describing the details of the hedge fund. But I promise you that the average prospect doesn’t care about your fund’s “vision” or the history of how the fund got started. The average prospect wants to know how you can help him; he doesn’t want to read the biography of an abstract business.

If you want to blend in with every other boring hedge fund and make a website that screams “I’m self-important and want to brag about who I am,” then go ahead and put a huge logo on your site, a picture of your fund’s office, and another picture of the building in which your fund lies.

But if you want to stand out, replace this fund-centric copy with investor-centric copy. Write in a way that grabs a prospect’s attention. Give them the information they are likely looking for: advice on alternative investments. Imagine what the prospect is thinking before he reaching your website and continue the conversation that’s already begun in his mind.

If you really feel compelled to describe the specifics of your fund, then at least dedicate a separate, non-homepage page for that purpose. And even then, you should be thinking about what your prospects are most likely wanting to ask you – not what you want to tell them.

A Standard Contact-Us Page

The standard contact page is a form that allows readers to input their information and questions, which will be sent to an email of your choosing. The standard contact page has a major problem: It gives readers no incentive to actually use it.

Avoid the standard contact page in favor of an information-exchange. An information-exchange looks very much like a contact page but promises the reader information in exchange for his contact-form submission. When the reader sends in his information and questions/comments, he also automatically gets information in the form of a book, whitepaper, DVD, or so on sent to his physical or email address – or both.

When you avoid the standard contact form in favor of this information-exchange, you will increase the conversion rate of that contact page, which will give you a large selection of prospects with which to work.

Forgetting SEO Optimization

A great number of aspects of your website can contribute to your SEO efforts. Building and writing your website in the “correct” way, will bring your website up to the top rakings of Google. Because of the complexity and vast number of areas in which you can work to improve your website’s SEO optimization, I leave this topic to a later article.

For now, just know that everything from the structure of the website to the words used on the website will affect how Google treats your site.

Having Copy-Less Pages

When a hedge fund spends a good deal on outsourcing its website to others, it will usually get back an impressive-looking site. Some pages might just be “information request forms,” videos, or infographics. These are all great things, but without copy accompanying them, you’re missing out on both SEO juice and conversions.

Treat every page as a sales letter. Every page should have a clear headline to attract the reader to read on. It should have some copy – and it doesn’t need to be a sales letter; sometimes a paragraph with a few bullet-points is all you need. Your goal with the copy is to direct the reader to use the page in the way intended so that you can increase the conversion rate of the page.

The second reason you want copy on every page is due to SEO. Google cannot understand what your videos and infographics are talking about. Google only understands text. Thus, if you have such great multimedia tools on your website, be sure to also put some copy summarizing those videos and infographics. This way, Google can properly index those pages, allowing them to be seen.

No Chat Function

You’ve probably seen a live chat function on many of the sites you frequent. This is particularly true for ecommerce websites and service sites. But there’s no reason a hedge fund can’t also employ live chat.

Offering a live chat service to your readers allows them to get immediate help in a situation in which they would otherwise just leave the site. In other words, it keeps prospects that you would normally lose. This is also known as decreasing your website’s “bounce rate.”

Of course, if you are going to run a live chat program, you’ll need someone to man the live chat function. This won’t cost much. In comparison to spending thousands of dollars on advertising you don’t know will work, outsourcing a live chat attendant is cheap. You can easily get one from India at about $500 a month for Mondays through Fridays, eight hours a day. Get two and you’ll be able to run that chat function 24 hours a day, effectively servicing the whole world.

Another great thing about live chat is that it allows you to capture information from the reader requesting the chat. By having him put in his email address, you can later remarket to him.

All of this is about creating an opportunity to connect with your prospects. By giving them an easy way to reach out to you, you allow the conversation to start naturally.

Ignoring the Space “Above the Fold”

“Above the fold” refers to the space on a webpage that’s visible when you first open the webpage. In other words, it’s the space you see without having to scroll down.

The space above the fold is arguably the most important area on a webpage, if only because that’s what a reader sees first. So, if you’re dedicating the space above the fold to useless things, things that don’t interest the reader or grab the reader’s attention, you’re effectively wasting your virtual real estate. Putting a huge logo in this space, for instance, is a waste, as it will push everything else down, giving you less space to work with. Instead, use this space to finish the thoughts going through your reader’s head – to answer the important question he’s likely asking.