Website design for financial planners, built for clients who check before they call

Who is website design for financial planners for?

FINRA tells investors to check any investment professional’s credentials and look for red flags in their background before working with them, and its BrokerCheck tool sends a search for an SEC-registered adviser on to the SEC’s own records. A prospective client who takes that advice arrives at your website already checking. Website design for financial planners has to serve that reader: someone comparing firms, reading adviser bios and looking for the fee and conflict disclosures before they book a first meeting.

The work fits three kinds of firm:

• Fee-only and fee-based planners: the site has to show what a client pays and what the fee covers.
• Registered investment advisers and wealth managers: often several advisers and offices, each with a page of its own.
• Advisers working through a broker-dealer: pages that fall under a FINRA member firm’s supervision, its approval process and its BrokerCheck rule.

The field is crowded. The Investment Adviser Association’s 2026 snapshot counted 16,544 SEC-registered advisers in 2025, another record high, so a client searching has plenty of firms to compare. Web design for financial services in general also covers banks and credit unions, but those answer to other regulators, so this page keeps to advisers and planners. Our Web Design page covers the rest of our website work.

What do the SEC and FINRA rules mean for your website?

Financial advisor website design starts from the rules, because they decide what a page may say and what it has to carry. SEC rule 206(4)-1 covers an SEC-registered adviser’s communications to more than one person that offer its advisory services, with a few exceptions: a page can’t state an untrue material fact, or a material fact the adviser couldn’t back up if the SEC asked, or show benefits without fair and balanced treatment of the risks. At a FINRA member, Rule 2210 has a registered principal approve each retail communication before it is used, outside a few listed exceptions, and in the member’s first year, pages on a generally accessible website are filed with FINRA at least 10 business days before first use.

Our financial advisors industry page summarizes each rule with its number; state-registered advisers follow their own state’s rules, which this page leaves out. We are not lawyers: your compliance lead or counsel decides what a page may say, and we build to the wording the firm approves.

What should the site show a client who is checking you out?

FINRA describes Form CRS as a standardized way for investors to compare firms: each summary covers the firm’s services, its fees, costs and conflicts of interest, and any reportable legal or disciplinary history. A client who has read a few will look for the same answers on your site. For an advisory firm, we would build:

• How you are paid: a fees page that agrees with your Form CRS. FINRA tells investors to ask how a professional is paid, by commission or as a share of the assets managed, so readers arrive expecting a plain answer.
• The current Form CRS: linked from the footer of every page and from the services and fees pages, because rule 204-5 asks for it to be posted prominently.
• Your record, one click away: a link to the firm’s entry on the SEC’s adviser search, IAPD, and for a FINRA member the BrokerCheck reference and link where Rule 2210(d)(8) puts them.

How should adviser bios and credentials appear?

For a firm with several advisers, we would give each one a profile page with their role, designations, services and a photo. At a FINRA member, each profile of a registered person who serves retail investors also carries the BrokerCheck reference and link. Designations come from the adviser, and your compliance lead checks how each one is written.

Can the site show reviews, ratings or performance?

It can, with the disclosures SEC rule 206(4)-1 sets. A testimonial or endorsement states clearly and prominently whether the person is a current client, any cash or non-cash pay for it, and any material conflict. A third-party rating carries the date it was given, the period it covers, who created and tabulated it, and any payment the firm made to obtain or use it. Gross performance appears only with net figures at equal prominence over the same period, and no page may say or imply that the SEC approved or reviewed them. At a FINRA member, Rule 2210 adds lines of its own to any testimonial about advice or performance.

We never write a review, pick a rating or produce a performance figure. Where the firm wants one on the site, we build its place with room for the disclosure beside it, and the compliance lead supplies the words.

Who writes the words, and who signs them off?

We write them, from the research and the facts the firm confirms, unless you’d rather write them yourselves. A fact we can’t confirm comes to you as a question, never onto the page as a guess. Every page then goes to the firm’s compliance lead, and the site goes live only after the firm approves it. The firm decides what each page claims, and we take each round of comments back as one list.

How is the site planned from search data?

Web design for financial advisors starts with research, before any layout. We look at what people search when they want a planner or adviser, the results Google shows for each search and the firms already ranking. The research covers the service (a fee-only planner, retirement planning), the place (an adviser in a named city) and the life event behind the call (an inheritance, a business sale, a retirement date), and the page plan decides which of those earn a page of their own.

The search work that carries on after launch is on our SEO for financial advisors page, reported against targets. We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, or uninterrupted uptime.

What is the site built on?

Our builds run on Astro or Next.js, in our own system. We don’t build on WordPress, Shopify or Webflow; if your site runs on WordPress, Wix or Squarespace today, the new site replaces it and its pages move across. Each build carries structured data that tells search engines who the firm and its advisers are, a sitemap with IndexNow, robots rules that let AI crawlers read the pages, an llms.txt summary, and launch guards that stop a page still waiting on a fact from going live.

Speed is part of the build. Google describes Core Web Vitals as metrics of real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity and visual stability, and says good scores, along with other page experience aspects, align with what its core ranking systems seek to reward.

How do clients book a first meeting?

A client picks a time from the open slots the firm sets, or sends a short request the firm answers. The form asks only what a first meeting needs: a name, a way to reach the person and what they want to talk about. It never asks for account numbers, a Social Security number or balances. Each request reaches your inbox or goes through your CRM’s own web form, with spam protection in front of it, and records the page it started on.

What happens to your current site?

A new site replaces it, and the old addresses still matter: clients have bookmarked them and other sites link to them. Before launch we map each old address to its new page and set permanent redirects, so an old link lands in the right place.

Your compliance lead may want a copy of the old pages before they come down. SEC rule 204-2 has an adviser keep a copy of each advertisement it disseminates, for at least five years from the end of the fiscal year it was last published or disseminated. Whether old web pages fall under that, and how to keep them, is the firm’s call, so we raise it before launch. The domain stays registered where it is: we change only the DNS records that point it at the new site, and leave your email as it was.

Can AI search tools read your site?

They can, if the pages can be crawled and indexed. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page has to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. Search Console also has a Search generative AI control, which Google had rolled out to all websites as of August 31, 2026. It is on include by default, and switching a property to exclude keeps its links and content out of Search’s generative AI features. Google says the setting isn’t used as a ranking signal for the rest of Search.

The crawler rules and structured data in each build make a site easier for AI answers to find, read and cite. Whether a given AI tool names your firm is that tool’s decision, so we report what we see and promise no mention; our GEO page covers that work.

What does our web build work look like in practice?

Alvy Logistics runs on a site we rebuilt: 70 pages in our own system on Astro, which we still run with Alvy. Alvy is owned by our co-founder Noah Alvarez, and DSI is an Alvy company. It is a logistics site, so it shows how we plan, build and look after a website, and says nothing about work for advisers. On an adviser’s site, the same method would link each service page to the advisers who provide it.

What does the site need after launch?

An adviser’s site keeps changing. Advisers join and leave, designations are earned, and the Form CRS is amended and posted again, so financial services website design has to plan for change from the start. A site we build is looked after on our monthly plan, and your proposal sets that plan’s scope. Our website design cost page explains what moves the price at each level.

If your firm needs a site that a careful client can check in a few minutes, book a 15-minute call. Midnite Systems was formed in 2023, and if your firm is near Valencia, California, you can meet us at our office there during office hours.