McDougall Financial · Financial Services
Making the first call easier to make
Financial planning is a decision people put off, and McDougall Financial's site gave them every reason to keep putting it off — no way to book time, no answers to the obvious first questions. We built the site to do the part of the job that happens before the first meeting.
The problem
McDougall Financial had built genuine trust over fifteen years of client relationships, the kind that comes from actually returning calls and remembering birthdays. None of that showed up online. The site was a single page: a photo, a tagline, and a phone number.
For a prospective client, the barrier to a financial planner is rarely the planner — it's the fear of asking a question that sounds naive, or not knowing what a first meeting even involves. A site that answers none of that and just says “call us” loses the person who was on the fence.
The firm also had no way to segment what people wanted help with. Someone asking about retirement and someone asking about estate planning got routed to the same inbox with no context, so the first call was often spent figuring out why the person was calling at all.
The approach
Three moves, in order.
01
Name the three things they actually do
Financial Planning, Wealth Management and Retirement Planning became their own pages instead of one paragraph, so a visitor can tell in ten seconds whether this firm handles their situation.
02
Let people book a specific conversation
The consultation form asks what topic the visitor wants to discuss, so the advisor walks into the first call already knowing whether it's about a 401k rollover or a family trust.
03
Answer the questions people are afraid to ask out loud
A short FAQ covers what a first meeting costs, what to bring, and what “fee-only” actually means — the questions that keep someone from calling in the first place.
The work
What we built.
The new homepage
Also delivered
A private client portal login was added to the header for existing clients, separating “current client checking a statement” traffic from “prospect deciding whether to call” traffic — two very different visitors who'd been sharing one homepage.
Results
First two quarters on the new site.
+64%
Consultation requests booked online
3×
FAQ page views before first contact
−19%
First calls spent re-explaining the topic
41%
Of new clients cite the site's clarity as a factor
“People used to call and I could tell they'd been putting it off for months. Now they book online already knowing what they want to talk about, and that changes the whole first meeting.”
Fiona McDougallFounder, McDougall Financial
Figures are illustrative of the outcomes this engagement was designed to produce and are shown here for portfolio purposes.