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Why aren't there steezy mutual fund tools?

By Mike Ma

After 2 years of converting from skiing to snowboarding, I am in the market for a snowboard of my own. For those who fear snow, fresh air, or gravity, the benevolent brand giant is Burton. Like most newbies to riding, I just found it too confusing to find the gear I needed, so I used their product selector.

It was a thorougly enjoyable experience throughout, but the kicker for me was the final question:

I fancy myself someone who is relatively hip, but I admit that I didn't know what steezy meant before this, (for a fuller discussion try wikipedia). I guess this is what you get when the third question you are asked is structured with the following choices:

In any case, it did a great job of e-Commerce Marketing 101 ... take the user from implicit needs to explicit products. In fact, Burton does that doesn't just filter, it actually will educate you along the process. (I think that I dabble in steez, but many may disagree)

So I googled "Fund selector" and the top legitimate hit looks like this (no links to protect the innocent):

We leave the investor to do all the work. Even if you look at one of the best sites on the market, you will find something that looks like this:

Which still leaves a lot of knowledge and work to the investor.

I realize that there are a number of regulatory issues in issuing advice to investors, there are simple things that can be employed on sites today.

1. Explain if you use jargon: -- Take the first example, what do the "volatility" levels mean? Could youp place antecdotal descriptors to describe what the levels might correspond to, even if it is a septile if volatility ... at least give us something! Look at the choices in the steezy question.

2. Dump the stock photos -- If you look in the Burton site or the graphics in the screenshots above, every graphic and photo adds meaning to the message at hand. Not a pixel is wasted. Even the driver license is a Vermont driver license, as they were founded in Burlington, VT.

Look around at your site, how much stock photography are you using? Is it really communicating anything? We know this is a weak point at kasina and we are taking steps to fix that in our next site release.

3. Make the process fun -- Don't roll your eyes, Mr. or Ms. Asset Management e-Biz exec (I am talking to you, Lawrence) -- it can be done. Perhaps explaining what alpha and beta, or benchmarks and why they are important. There are some examples that came to mind. For instance, Analytic Investors did a free piece on predicting alpha of NFL teams to explain their quant approach (no link anymore) which I loved. A bit nerdy for an individual investor, but it was funny and connected with the instituional audience in an authentic, brand-positive way.

I really believe that this stuff works ... I have a new Custom board and Hail boots to prove it.

This was originally posted on Mike's personal blog, i got so much trouble on my mind