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Frankenstein's Website
By Helen Gurina
Asset management firms are largely aware of the range of features that exist among their competitors' websites. From navigation bars to content modules on product pages to handy pop-up videos there is a huge array of features that can be handy to an advisor. Asset managers have added a checkmark next to each feature on the extensive laundry list, or are working on creating the ones they are missing. However, it is easy to lose sight of the goal behind all these rich features and tools. They must all work harmoniously to represent and sell your products. They must address advisor needs in a quick and efficient manner. Often, significant streamlining is in order for websites to adequately represent the company vision as well as to provide a quick user experience. Without these streamlining efforts, a firm's website may increasingly resemble Frankenstein's monster with each passing year.
It is harder to cut features that have been painstakingly developed than to bring them to light. When significant time and resources were utilized in creating a feature, the inclination is to employee it at least somewhere. Given that features have been created over many years, and changed by internal and external forces along the way, the final product is often more of a quilt than a uniform weave. It provides headaches for advisors attempting to navigate awkward transitions and for internal teams trying to map the flow of data between back end modules. Though this is the result of a natural development process, it is not a finished result. However, firms face the pressure to keep moving forward and develop even more features in order to not fall behind. A good portion of these may be workarounds for outdated technologies or presentations, but it seems like there is no time to pause for fear of falling behind the competition.
Eventually, a firm needs to step back from their creation and figure out how to make it pretty and unified again. Few remember that Frankenstein’s monster was an eloquent and remarkably strong creature; they just remember his grotesque face. Appearances matter, for an advisor will judge the site you spent years building in a matter of minutes. Features will need to be cut and the remaining made to flow together. An advisor does not need a dozen ways to filter and select a product, if one solution can give them the desired results. They also don't care that different teams may have made pages that now live in the same section.
To make sure the advisor experience is a smooth and compelling one, streamlining the website must be made an ongoing priority. This requires a single responsible party behind the scenes to head up the initiative, but the input of all departments to accomplish and maintain. It requires metrics to assess which features are most commonly clicked on and how advisors navigated to them. It requires analytics to back up decisions to remove features which were somebody's favored brainchild or the corporate standard. It is a difficult task but ultimately one which will allow your firm's hard development efforts to shine as a whole.