Case study
A long-established stockbroker and investment manager was quietly falling behind more modern rivals, and its own staff knew it. Asked to describe the website, 60% of its own staff reached for "frustrating". I audited the whole digital operation, from the analytics to the branch network to the clients themselves, and built the strategy and roadmap for a rebuild, including the big call on whether to finally offer online share dealing.
The firm was established, trusted and run through a network of branches, but the website had fallen behind and everyone could feel it. Internally the mood was blunt. Branches valued the site but felt it was built for the head office in Leeds, and there was a quiet "them and us" between the branches and the centre. Clients still rated the firm, but they were increasingly asking for things it did not offer: online share dealing, better portfolio tools, a mobile-friendly account area. Meanwhile more modern competitors were pulling away. And underneath all of it, there was no conversion or goal tracking on the website at all, so the firm's real online performance was a black box. Before committing to a rebuild, it needed to see itself honestly.
I ran a full audit, and I went well beyond the analytics, because a firm like this lives through its people and its clients as much as its traffic.
I interviewed staff, and the language was telling. Asked to describe the website, 60% reached for "frustrating", with "confused" and "disorganised" close behind, against "professional" as the main positive. I surveyed the branches and found genuine loyalty, but also that sense of a Leeds-centric site and the distrust of head office. I surveyed clients directly, and they were clear about what they wanted: online share dealing, self-select ISAs, access to IPOs, better reporting on their portfolios and a mobile version of the account area. Then the hard data. Over six months the site had 368,822 sessions from 133,869 users at a 43% bounce rate, still heavily desktop, and with no goal tracking in place to measure any of it. I benchmarked the firm against the field, Hargreaves Lansdown, Brewin Dolphin, Charles Stanley and a dozen others, which laid bare how far the leaders were ahead on reach, search and social. I went through the SEO, where the firm ranked well for niche terms but sat at position 42 for "share dealing", one of the biggest commercial phrases in its market. And I looked at the social presence, where the main Facebook page had damagingly been set up as a personal profile, and at the compliance risk of staff posting with no policy to follow.
From all of that I built the strategy. SMART objectives and KPIs, three customer personas, mapped user journeys, a branches strategy so every office could contribute content and be found locally, and a social media policy every member of staff would sign up to. I set out the technical path, from user journeys through a content and functional strategy to a design brief, a CMS and a build. And I put the biggest question on the table with the evidence to settle it: whether to offer online share dealing, which the clients had made plain they wanted.
The firm went from a website nobody could measure, and its own staff called frustrating, to a clear, evidence-based plan it could act on, built on what the staff, the branches, the clients and the data all actually said rather than on anyone's opinion. It set the direction for a full rebuild and answered the online-trading question with client demand instead of guesswork. I went on to lead the agency search and project-manage the build, which are separate stories, so the post-launch numbers belong with them.
An established firm with a loyal client base can coast on trust while the digital experience quietly falls behind, and by the time your clients are asking rivals for what you don't offer, it is already late. The way back is not a redesign someone likes the look of. It is listening properly, to staff, to the branches, to clients and to the data, and letting that evidence decide what to build and what to offer. Get the evidence right and even the big, nervous decisions, like whether to move into online trading, start to answer themselves.
Because it gets you past the polite answer. Asked to describe the site, 60% of staff reached for “frustrating”, with “confused” and “disorganised” close behind. That one exercise said more about what to build than any amount of looking at the site itself.
Because the boardroom had been circling the online share dealing question for years, and the clients answered it in one pass. They were clear: online dealing, self-select ISAs, access to IPOs, better portfolio reporting and a mobile account area. Evidence settles the nervous decisions that opinion cannot.
Treat the absence as the first finding. Over six months the site had 368,822 sessions from 133,869 users at a 43% bounce rate, with no goal tracking to measure any of it, so the firm's real online performance was a black box. Fixing the measurement comes before setting targets against it.
The review behind this is a digital health analysis. On what staff and clients reveal that a redesign never will, see when your own staff call the website frustrating.
A foreign exchange firm that believed its site converted at 2%. The audit found 0.4%, and set the brief for a responsive rebuild.
Read the case study →The audit behind this strategy, run across staff, clients, analytics, search and the competitor set.
See how it works →Most clients begin with a conversation. No pitch, no hard sell.
Just a straightforward discussion about where you are and whether I can help.
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