Within financial services, stellar web design is often undervalued as a differentiator and overlooked as a key trust-building factor.
Aesthetically, most websites in the industry take a conservative, play-it-safe approach that helps keep their owners from standing out in a negative way – too bold, too loud, too edgy – while also preventing them from standing apart from the competition.
But while most firms at least consider the aesthetics of their website, far too few pay attention to the other key component of website design, UX/UI (user experience and user interface), which not only guides how visitors use your site but has an outsized impact on their brand experience and whether they trust you or not.
Together, these two aspects of site design impact how prospects and clients engage with, remember, and view your brand.
The Risk of Being Safe is Being Forgettable
Visit any number of financial services websites, and you’ll undoubtedly encounter repeating patterns across imagery, language, and layouts. There will surely be many sites with calming shades of blue and green. Perhaps a few will lean darker in an effort to lend their brand a semblance of legacy and gravitas. You will surely find many pictures of people in suits and in offices, possibly shaking hands with a client.
This is not to imply that there’s anything wrong with those colors or images. It’s to point out how prevalent and expected these tropes have become. In an industry that must toe the line of compliance and constantly build and earn the faith of clients who are often entrusting their lives to a firm, it’s better to be safe than sorry. But in an effort to ensure they fit in with the accepted norms as followed by everyone else, they inadvertently end up looking like everyone else.
The result? Nobody remembers you. You’re just another faceless name in a sea of sameness.
It’s often what I refer to as the khaki pants approach. They are boring and lack personality, but nobody has ever gone wrong showing up to work in khaki pants. That guy in the neon-striped bellbottoms? People noticed, and maybe not in the right way.
But website design, like sartorial decisions, is not binary. It’s not just safe or sorry. There’s a lot of middle ground that allows you to build a memorable brand with its own distinct personality.
- Explore colors: blues, greens, greys, whites, and, yes, khakis, are always going to be a good choice in financial services. They are neutral and calming. But there are a lot of different shades of those colors that you can play with to create your own unique palette. And while bold colors may not be the best choice for a primary brand color, they can be very effective as secondary and tertiary colors that add a judicious splash of vibrance, personality, and impact to an otherwise neutral site.
- Introduce novel design elements: Many websites default to the same block layout. But sites can introduce eye-catching design elements like soft curves and interesting angles that elevate the visual experience and help give you a more distinct identity. You should also consider interactive and animating elements that increase engagement and draw attention to content.
- Break up copy: Website visitors don’t read websites in full. They skim them. Good websites break up copy using subheadlines, bullets, and lists so readers can quickly glean the key points, allowing them to stop and read where they want to. Great websites substitute bullets for icons or graphics, design numbered lists to make them stand out, and make use of visual callouts to highlight important information like statistics or testimonials.
- Use typography to create hierarchy. As mentioned, people skim pages. Not all of the information on a page is equal. Use H1s, H2s, H3s, bold, and italics to create a hierarchy that shows how all your copy and content relates to one another. Your page should only have one H1, and it should be at the top. Your subheadings should be H2s with headings under those going down to H3. This helps visitors easily understand how each section relates to the others.
Being safe with your branding doesn’t preclude you from making savvy decisions that will make your website more aesthetically engaging and memorable. Being different doesn’t necessarily mean being gaudy. Sometimes it’s knowing where to add subtle but meaningful embellishments. A great tie or blouse can take those khaki pants in new directions.
UX/UI: The Overlooked Part of Website Design
UX/UI is the most overlooked part of website design, and it’s gaining increasing importance. Websites need to be more than just pretty brand reflections. They need to be functional. Ultimately, it should exist to help visitors take the next step and the one after that, until they convert. Pretty websites might win awards, but UX-optimized sites earn customers.
UX/UI is a specialized discipline within design. While most designers know UX basics, they are not all specialists, which is why so many websites aren’t optimized for user experience. And that may be me being kind, because most websites outright ignore user experience.
When we talk about UX/UI, we’re really talking about the way sites are designed and laid out to provide users with a seamless experience that gets them everywhere they want to go easily and intuitively. No friction points or barriers. It includes how your navigation is laid out, page flow, conversion points, information architecture and hierarchy, button design and placement, site speed, mobile experience, accessibility, and more. Most, if not all, of these elements have nothing to do with how visually appealing your site is.
Why is UX important?
- It’s an extension of your customer/brand experience: It’s right in the name – the user experience on your website needs to be as great as the experience with your team. It may even need to be better since most prospects will visit your site before speaking to you. It’s the first impression and sets their expectations for what the client experience will be like.
- UX builds or breaks trust: Sites that are easy to navigate and limit friction and frustrations earn more engagement and increase the odds of conversion. Those sites that are difficult to navigate or slow to load quickly erode trust and are more likely to end in a visitor bouncing to a competitor’s site. Pretty but useless: concrete failure example.
- It’s how search engines and LLMs understand and rank your site: Good UX is good SEO/AEO. If a human visitor can’t make sense of your navigation or the content on your pages, the robots won’t fare much better. Additionally, Google scores every site based on mobile-first performance that looks at:
- Page load speeds
- Whether content shifts,
- If buttons can be easily clicked
- Alignment with accessibility best practices.
Strong Website Design Is an Opportunity
Aesthetics and UX/UI aren’t separate website conversations. They are two sides of the design coin. Each plays a part and has a purpose, and there is overlap. It’s often said that beautiful sites get clicks and UX-optimized sites get customers. The truth is that they work in harmony to engage clients and build affinity and trust for your brand.
When designed well, your website design can be an impactful brand asset and competitive advantage. The fact that many financial service websites default to the same safe aesthetics and overlook UX design is an opportunity for any firm that wants to differentiate itself from a brand and experience standpoint.
If you’re interested in talking about how a new website design can help your firm, let’s talk.