A financial advisor website is regulated content first and marketing content second. The FCA Financial Promotions Rules govern every claim, projection and incentive that appears on the site, and the Consumer Duty governs how the site treats the prospective customer journey. A site that gets these wrong exposes the firm to enforcement risk and reputational damage; a site that gets them right converts at materially higher rates than the standard professional-services template because the trust signals are doing real work.
What is different about IFA websites
Three things make financial-advisor web design distinct from generic professional-services web design. First, the marketing copy is regulated content — the FCA’s "fair, clear and not misleading" standard applies to every claim, every example, every projection, every endorsement. Templates that ignore this expose the firm to enforcement risk that the firm’s compliance officer will catch on the first review. Second, the conversion event is the discovery meeting, not a generic "request a quote" — IFA business is consultative, the first conversation is a fact-find rather than a transaction, and the booking flow needs to reflect that. Third, the trust signals are regulatory — FCA FRN, individual adviser reference numbers, professional body membership (Chartered Insurance Institute, Personal Finance Society), qualifications (QCF Level 4 Diploma, Level 6 Advanced Diploma, Level 7 Fellow status). All of it has to be visible and verifiable.
What we ship for an IFA
A bespoke financial advisor website with the FCA FRN rendered prominently and linked to the live FCA Register, the discovery-meeting booking flow as the dominant CTA, modular service-line pages (pensions and retirement, investments, protection, mortgages where the firm holds the permission), an adviser team page with Person schema and individual qualifications, a structured fee-and-charges page covering the firm’s charging model in plain language, a Consumer Duty-aligned approach to consumer understanding and support throughout, a journal or news section for regulated commentary, the standard contact block with named compliance officer where appropriate, and the full FinancialService + Person + LocalBusiness schema graph. The build window is the standard same-day Growth-tier SLA.
The Financial Promotions Rules compliance pass
Every claim, projection, example and incentive on the site is reviewed against the FCA’s fair, clear and not-misleading standard. Specifically: past-performance claims accompanied by the required wording, projections accompanied by the appropriate basis and assumptions, incentives presented with the cost basis explained, risk warnings placed with the required prominence rather than buried in small print. Where the firm offers products covered by the FCA’s 2023 Financial Promotion Gateway requirements for high-risk investments, the appropriate gateway-aligned wording is applied. We do not provide legal sign-off — that sits with the firm’s compliance officer or external compliance consultant — but the build is compliance-ready rather than compliance-debt.
The Consumer Duty alignment
The Consumer Duty came into force in July 2023 and applies to all FCA-regulated firms in the retail market. Its four outcomes — products and services, price and value, consumer understanding, consumer support — translate into specific website design choices. Consumer understanding means the copy is written at a reading age accessible to the firm’s typical retail client, jargon is defined or avoided, examples are concrete. Consumer support means the support and escalation paths are prominent and accessible, the complaints procedure is linked from every page, the FOS reference is rendered correctly. Price and value means the fee structure is clear and proportionate rather than obscured. Products and services means the service-line pages describe what the firm actually offers, not aspirational future capabilities.
The discovery-meeting flow
A prospective client lands on the site, reads enough to confirm the firm is regulated and competent, and clicks to book a 30-minute discovery conversation. The booking flow asks for the minimum information needed for the first conversation (name, email, one-line on what the client is looking to discuss) rather than a full fact-find — the fact-find belongs in the discovery meeting itself, not the website form. The booking confirmation email sets expectations clearly: the call is a no-obligation discussion to understand whether the firm can help, no advice is given on the discovery call, no fee is charged for the discovery call. This framing converts at materially higher rates than the typical "get a free consultation" CTA because it is honest about what the call is.
What we deliberately do not build
No bespoke fact-find or KYC tool — Intelliflo, Iress XPlan, Plannr and the dedicated practice management platforms handle fact-find, KYC, risk profiling and ongoing client management better than anything we would build. No retirement-projection calculator embedded in the marketing site — projections are regulated content that need to be delivered in a regulated context, not as a marketing widget. No "AI financial planning" gimmick — it does not belong on an FCA-regulated firm’s marketing site and the compliance officer will not sign it off.
Pricing for an IFA website
Most independent advisory firms with two to ten advisers land on Growth (£899) — the standard IFA architecture with FRN integration, service-line landings, adviser team, fees and charges, journal and the compliance-ready copy review. Larger firms or wealth managers with multiple service lines, separate corporate and private-client divisions, or specific institutional content needs move to Pro (£1,499). Launch tier (£499) is rarely the right fit for an FCA-regulated firm — the content depth and the compliance review push the build past what the single-scroll architecture supports.