THE BRAND INDEX ■
We scored six advisor websites the way a prospect would. The average grade was 47 percent.
Your next client runs this exact audit in the first thirty seconds on your site. They just never send you the scorecard. The Brand Index does: five axes, scored one to five, from the live site alone. No calls, no context, no benefit of the doubt. These are the numbers so far.
Scored by a former advisor. Firms never named. Updated as the Index grows.
THE SCORES ■
The scores.
Can a stranger tell who you serve in seconds
Could a competitor paste your headline onto their site
Do you show trust or just claim it
Do you sound like your clients or like your industry
Is there one obvious next step
Six firms scored to date. Average total: 11.7 of 25. Five of six scored below 60 percent. Updated as the Index grows.
WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY ■
What the numbers say.
The thing that makes you different is the thing your site says last.
Differentiation scored lowest of the five axes, and half the firms scored the minimum. Not because the firms are the same. Because the sites are. On site after site the real edge, a tax-first model, a trademarked process, two decades of one specialty, sits one scroll down or in a footnote while the hero says what every firm says. Advisors describe the problem in almost the same words every time: the vision is clear, it is putting it into words that never happens.
Five of six sites never say who they serve above the fold.
Your next client decides in seconds whether this is for them. On five of these six sites, the answer never appears where they look. Mood lines, mottos, portraits, and buildings above the fold. The audience, one scroll later. The prospect is gone before the site gets to the point.
Credentials everywhere. Clients nowhere.
Not one firm scored above 3 of 5 on Proof. The raw material is real: decades in practice, national press, offices, professional marks. What is missing is the client. Three of six sites contain no client voice at all. Not one testimonial, not one outcome, not one sentence from the people the firm serves. A prospect is not asking whether you are credentialed. They are asking who already trusts you with real money.
The one exception proves the rule.
One firm scored 19 of 25, eight points clear of the field. Not better designed. Better positioned: a filed-down niche, an explicit anti-persona, language no competitor could borrow. When a firm knows exactly who it serves, every other score rises with it. Positioning is the multiplier.
Try it on your own site.
Open your homepage and cover the logo. If what is left could belong to any firm in your category, you already know your Differentiation score. The audit tells you the other four.
THE TECHNICAL LAYER ■
The SEO boxes are checked. The message is missing.
We also ran the six homepages through the checks a machine runs.
✳ FINART STUDIO — MACHINE CHECKS
REG: F-2026 · N = 6
META DESCRIPTIONS
6 / 6
All six have meta descriptions. The plugins did their job.
FAQ SCHEMA
0 / 6
Zero of six have FAQ schema. Not one site answers a question in a form Google or an AI assistant can lift, and getting found in search and AI runs through exactly that.
SINGLE H1
2 / 6
Only two of six have a single H1. One site has no headings at all. Another has seven fighting on one page.
IMAGE ALT TEXT
9 / 20
45 percent of homepage images carry no alt text.
THE EXCEPTION
19 / 25
The firm that scored 19 of 25 on positioning also passes every technical check. Firms that know who they serve finish the details.
One advisor said the fear out loud: the website does not get us clients, it simply gets us clicks. This is how that happens. The tools grade the checklist. Your next client grades the message. These six sites pass the robot test and fail the human one.
THE METHOD ■
The method.
Five axes, one to five each, scored from the live website alone, by a former advisor who has sat on your side of the table. The test at the center is Cover Your Logo: if the page could belong to any firm in the category, it fails. Firms are never named. The Index grows as more firms are scored, and these numbers update with it.
Where does your site land?
Six firms found out. The same audit, free, for independent advisory firms: send your URL, get scored findings within a week. No call required.
