Advanced members web portal for the UK investment industry
The Investment Association (IA) acts as the trade body and industry voice for UK investment managers. Its members range from small, independent UK investment firms to Europe-wide and global players. Collectively, they manage over £9.4 trillion of assets on behalf of their clients in the UK and around the world. The IA act’s as their voice and represents their interests, also helping explain to the wider world what the industry does.
THE BRIEF:
The IA wanted to create a more advanced and usable web portal for its members that incorporated the following key features:
- Responsive design
- Improved functionality, usability and site architecture
- Open source Drupal CMS
- SEO friendly set-up
- Updated search system
From the start of the project our team worked closely with the IA to gather vital information from analytics and heatmaps.
"THE PROJECT:
From the start of the project our team worked closely with the IA to gather vital information from analytics and heatmaps. A competitor analysis was also facilitated to benchmark key areas such as accessibility, responsiveness and search functionality.
Through a series of workshop sessions with users and internal stakeholder groups, we used wireframes to gain a rich understanding of the association’s needs and to test ideas around informational architecture, layout and functionality.
Once the wireframes were agreed upon, we were able to develop creative concepts that followed brand guidelines supplied by the IA.
After sign-off of the functional specification we moved into the build phase of the project, meeting the IA team fortnightly to demo and discuss functionality as it was delivered.
THE RESULTS:
- A modern, clean design with a visual emphasis on cultural diversity, trying to move the perception of the financial industry away from some of the more obvious stereotypes.
- An updated search system making it easier for members to search for relevant content.
- Protected Web Application Firewall and highly resilient hosting solution.
- Third party integrations, including Salesforce CRM and Marketing Cloud.
- The majority of the site's content can only be accessed by members, with different levels of membership dictating what content the user can see.
- Comprehensive events and training area syncing event details served by the Arlo platform.
- A new public facing area of the site.
A strategy of continuous phased improvement has been agreed to ensure the site continues to develop and evolve.
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