How Advisors Can Use UX to Delight Clients

What You Need to Know

To improve your UX, try making a list of the three most important factors in your client relationships, and how those factors play out.
Anticipating client needs can help them feel understood, and can help you save time by preventing calls asking for additional information or context.
It’s always a good idea to ask when meeting with a client if they visit your website or client portal and why.

“UX” is a term most commonly associated with website design. The actual applications of user experience, though, extend beyond your website. At its core, UX is the same as client experience, with slightly more specific applications.

If your firm has physical offices, chances are you designed your office space with your customers in mind. You may have walked through the front door with your clients’ eyes and asked, “What would I want to see right away? How would I want to be greeted?”

Maybe your office is in a somewhat remote location; you may have decided to offer clients water, coffee, snacks and so forth as soon as they arrive, assuming they might be a bit thirsty or fatigued from the drive over.

UX takes the same approach. It asks what a client will see — and most quickly want to find — when they visit your website. Can you anticipate their needs and create the technological equivalent of offering them a glass of water or a freshly baked cookie?

Using UX to Your Advantage

The deep understanding financial advisors have of their clients can be a huge advantage for designing a great UX. Other businesses often spend a significant amount of time and money learning about their (potential) customers’ priorities. You, on the other hand, know what’s important to your clients.

Think about why a client might be heading to your website. The three biggest reasons might be to book an appointment, log in to their account, or access one of your resources (like a video library, a calculator or a blog). If you know this in advance, you can make it as easy as possible for clients to book a meeting, log in or find educational resources.

For instance, we know the main reasons that advisors come to our website is to log in to their Advyzon account or to find out more about the services we offer. Because of this, the Login button is prominently displayed in the navigation at the top of the page, while Request a demo and Free trial options are featured prominently on the right-hand side of the page.

Similarly, we know that it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks of client meetings, so we make it easy for advisors, once they become subscribers, to find key client information within our platform.

For example, when the advisor selects a client, the header contains key relationship and portfolio data, quick access buttons to run reports, and a menu to easily access additional features such as notes, workflows or emails directly from the client’s page. The goal is to make it convenient and to improve the advisor experience.