How to Create an Engaging Financial Website That Won’t Bore Readers

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This is a guest post by Cathy of Australian Credit Cards.

Running a blog is tough enough, but if you are tackling a topic that is perceived by many as dry and not even half interesting, you’re in for a real challenge.

Not only do you have to come up with creating fresh and accurate content regularly, you also have to grapple with the task of trying to make your blog as engaging and relevant as possible.

Take finance, for example. If your reader is not an entrepreneur, broker, financial advisor, banker, economist or any other professional who deals with money matters on a regular basis, he or she won’t bother reading finance websites.

This is understandable because the topic is highly specific and calls for generous amounts of current knowledge. Not everyone can make heads and tails of the financial statistics and technical terms that you use on your blog, so you have a limited audience.

Talking about a highly specialized topic like finance doesn’t mean that you can’t expand your boundaries and reach out to non-finance readers.

All it takes for you to create an engaging, relevant and even fun financial website is lots of creativity. You have to think outside the box and offer your readers something new and innovative—something that they won’t expect from a supposedly boring financial website.

To get started on crafting a financial website that will make even non-finance readers love it, take a look at these four suggestions:

Find an angle to work on and build your website from it.

When you have a topic as seemingly dull as finance, you have to go all out when it comes to packaging your content in such a way that readers will get curious enough to read it.

Your finance website should discuss a particular niche that’s relevant and informative at the same time. Don’t just talk about finance in an abstract, haphazard way—the topic is incredibly abstract as it is, so you should find a way to bring it down to a practical level. Adopting a perspective is one good method for you to tackle the topic without boring your readers.

For instance, you can talk finance from the point of view of work-at-home moms or unemployed individuals or newlyweds or even teenagers who want to build their nest egg early.

These different perspectives can bring out the practical side of finance and make your readers see how applicable it is in their daily life. Now that you have something solid to discuss, they will listen to you.

Avoid complicated charts and graphs unless absolutely necessary.

Finance folks love statistics, pie charts, tables and graphs that show a visual depiction of how a particular market, economy or industry is behaving.

But, no matter how colorful or artful it may be, the average Joe wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of some technicalities in the illustration.

Your task as a financial blogger is to take these numbers and translate them into something that your readers can understand and appreciate. So what if the Dow Jones went down a couple of points? How does the poor foreign investment rate in Bangladesh affect my dinner tonight?

Does the cost of creating a spacecraft have anything to do with my school project tomorrow? These are the realities that your readers are facing. Make the numbers count by letting them know exactly how these numbers figure in their world (pun intended).

Don’t talk in jargon.

Another way for you to get cozy with your readers is to use their everyday language in all your posts, even if you are talking about something as technical as mutual funds and annuities.

Don’t use jargon as much as possible, but if you need to, make sure that you can explain it in a way that they can understand.

It’s not that you are trying to treat your reader like kids—you just want to be absolutely sure that you get your point across without confusing or boring them in the process.

Remember that while finance is highly technical in nature, you can still use your creativity to explain certain concepts in simpler terms. You’re trying to help your readers, not brag about your finance wizardry.

Involve your readers

Every good website is built on an open and stable communication channel between the blogger and his readers. You can’t be a successful blogger if you can’t encourage your readers, peers in the industry and competitors to engage in a discussion with you.

You have to encourage your readers to interact with you, ask you questions, suggest topics for new posts and provide feedback on your performance. All these things will help you adjust your writing and cater to their needs better.

And if you’ve been following all the suggestions made so far in this post, you should have no problem communicating with your readers because they will want to get in touch with you at their own initiative.

Cathy is part of the team that maintains Australian Credit Cards, a complimentary credit card comparison service and a personal finance blog based in Sydney, Australia. Before she joined ACC, she was a staff nurse at Clark Airbase Hospital and conducted lectures on First Aid, Bio-terrorism and Disaster Management.Related PostsDo You Struggle With Creativity?Tagged as:create a blog, financial blog, writing tips

{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }

doug_eikeMay 5, 2011 at 9:58 am
Follow on Twitter: @doug_eike

Avoiding the use of jargon is important, even if your blog is not so narrowly focused as a financial one might be. Having sensitivity to such subtleties is part of the writing process and is one of the things that sets good blogs apart from bad ones. Thanks for the tips!
doug_eike´s last blog … Some Questions and Answers About Writing

AndreMay 8, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Follow on Twitter: @australiancc

Hi Doug,

You’re absolutely right. We actually did a bit of testing in regards to jargon and you wouldn’t believe the effect it has on our engagement metrics.
Andre´s last blog … A Frugalist’s Guide to Thriving In University

BrankicaMay 5, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Follow on Twitter: @liveurlove

Hey Cathy, seems like this finance can be an interesting thing to read. I learned at the very beginning that it is very hard to write about stuff you are not passionate about. People sometimes choose to do that, to make more money by building profitable blogs based on good keywords and not their passion. I am yet to do this, because I get bored easy even with topics I love.

Great way of explaining all this, love it
Brankica´s last blog … 3 Reasons I Sometimes Skip Commenting on Your Blog

AndreMay 8, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Follow on Twitter: @australiancc

Hi Brankica, the same is true for me. If there’s anything I learned from the past 5 years of being online is to always follow your passion. I’ve started – and ended – close to a dozen major projects now. All because I got bored.
Andre´s last blog … A Frugalist’s Guide to Thriving In University

Geoff MerrittMay 5, 2011 at 5:03 pm
Follow on Twitter: @geoffmerritt

I have one of those financial sites…. and yes there is translation that happens from the source (Australian Taxation Office) to the reader. However the facts need to stay the same, and not get lost in that translation.
I have also found that keeping the information short and sweet also helps and if there is to much information, I then split over a couple of posts.
Thanks Cathy for your tips

Geoff
Geoff Merritt´s last blog … 20 Net Medical Expenses Tax Offset – 2011

AndreMay 8, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Follow on Twitter: @australiancc

Thanks for the tips Geoff! It’s a unique challenge being in our industry – making boring content engaging!
Andre´s last blog … A Frugalist’s Guide to Thriving In University

Ti RobertsMay 6, 2011 at 1:43 am
Follow on Twitter: @TiRoberts

Great post

Thx, It’s given me some great ideas for my website, even though my site isn’t a financial site this post will help me tremendously.

Ti Roberts

Forex Trading AustraliaMay 6, 2011 at 5:39 am

I agree with you that running blog is a tough work but it can be make easy with our efforts. If the topic of our blog is so much common then maximum people will visit your site…but keep in mind the topic should be simple but not boring…

SunilMay 6, 2011 at 10:16 am
Follow on Twitter: @extramoneyblog

good stuff – as someone who blogs about money in all aspects (entrepreneurship, personal finance, et all) i can relate to this post. what has helped me is a plain and simple no jargon approach

MarkMay 7, 2011 at 5:40 am

It’s not enough to share statistics or numbers on such a blog. They will soon bore your readers. Maybe sharing experiences or telling a story will make people come back for more on such a blog
Mark´s last blog … Sony MHS-FS3 Bloggie 3D camera

Andy@StorehouseBuilder.comMay 7, 2011 at 12:55 pm

Nice post!

I also think being real is a great way to engage readers. To say, “This is what I tried”, and then be real about your successes and failures is tremedously engaging – and useful.

EvanMay 8, 2011 at 10:17 pm

These tips are very relevant with the financial market as it is pretty boring to many people, but I think these tips are great for just about any topic. Thinking outside of the box is always helpful.
Evan´s last blog … How To Lose Weight – Simple Video Tutorial

SiddharthMay 9, 2011 at 10:47 pm

Yes, i agree. In my website investmentbazar, i always try to write in simple words and try to explain the finance/investment jargons in a simple way.

MoneySavingEnthusiastMay 11, 2011 at 8:57 pm
Follow on Twitter: @MSEnthusiast

This was a perfect article for me to read. I just happened to stumble upon this. Articles about money can sound the same or boring. It’s a must to put a creative spin on a topic that can sound mundane to others. Great advice.

donna sheridanMay 16, 2011 at 5:30 am

Finance can be an interesting thing to engage to. So you have to be creative in all your strategy in order not bore your readers. You need try different ways but you have to focus that fact will still be intact.

Shella merckMay 16, 2011 at 7:40 pm

There are a number of elements that a website needs to have to appear interesting and engaging.To make it more interesting, you can have a related action suggester that may comprise of you can always include a video, image or text with voice that optionally educates and directs a user.
Shella merck´s last blog … Lip plumper

AtlantaMay 20, 2011 at 8:06 pm

Excellent view on “Find an angle to work on and build your website from it” you have to make your site relevant to the readers and don’t complicate things. Thumbs up to this post.
Atlanta´s last blog … How to become a Psychiatrist in Atlanta

Mac PMay 25, 2011 at 7:21 am
Follow on Twitter: @atozsmartphone

No one has enough time to pay all the attention to your website even if it is harder to make out of the things you have put on the site. Therefore, web design of financial website plays a crucial role in making the site success.
Mac P´s last blog … ASUS unveiled new tablet on Computex 2011

Melbourne Pest ControlMay 28, 2011 at 3:43 am

I gotta learn to get my readers to interact with my blog thanks for the tips..
Melbourne Pest Control´s last blog … Narre Warren Pest Control