Improving Your Financial Services Website vs. Rebuilding It

“Our site just needs a facelift.”

It’s a common refrain among financial services marketers. But take a closer look and you will realize the job is much more complex than just changing your site’s color palette.

So how do you discern the difference between making a few adjustments versus a complete website overhaul? From feature considerations and brand alignment to technology and budgetary constraints, there’s a lot to consider, and it can be challenging.

It’s worth considering your options carefully. After all, a properly built website IS your digital experience platform (DXP) and must be continually maintained, analyzed and improved iteratively over time. A website with seamless interactions for your customers, built and evolved with them in mind, will over-deliver as a marketing and lead gen tool.

Here are the key factors to consider when determining whether you need to tune up your financial services website or start from scratch.

Does your website align to your current financial service brand?

Branding should be your first consideration before committing to a tuneup or an overhaul. Branding affects more than just the visuals on a website, it sets the tone for the whole experience. Content, products and other offerings are subject to major changes if your brand is still in its early stages. This is likewise the case if you predict your company will rebrand in the near future. You don’t want to pour money and resources into features that are just going to change a few months later.

So examine everything from your visuals to your content messaging, and assess how far off your site is from your brand. You are now at a critical decision point. Sure your technology may be sound enough to deliver the functional elements of your site to your customers, but if rebranding or a new content strategy is going to stretch its capabilities, it might be time to start over. Don’t get caught up in the ‘sunk cost’ mentality; starting over so that you get to a better, more flexible solution will pay dividends in the long run.

Does your content and messaging speak to your strategy?

If your go-to-market plan doesn’t specifically include a content strategy, you are already behind your competition. Producing content may sound easy, but building a strategy around relevant and timely content to further your overall goals is totally different. Plus, your content strategy needs to tell a story that fits within your information architecture, the planned navigation and current taxonomy. Your content should feel like a natural element of the site’s overall experience.

Is your tech stack efficient?

Websites should be easy to manage, providing marketing teams with the tools they need to tell stories, market products and iterate on features. But too often the technology is limited by the selected DXP or CMS. Your tech should enable functions like creating landing pages or shifting content modules around your site easily. These tools must enable marketers to work quickly.

Another crucial feature of your tech stack is content personalization capabilities. Some systems have templates that are tricky or cumbersome to customize, which can be a nuisance if your team is trying to build a campaign.

Is your site secure?

Security is paramount in the financial services industry. Your website hosting provider needs to have the proper technology and certifications to be in compliance with federal and local financial regulations. Managing third-party and cloud computing risks, security endpoints, and data exposure need to be a priority to ensure compliance with regulations and provide your customers with a sense of security..

Is your website accessible?

Many companies overlook accessibility as a key component in the effectiveness of their website. This is especially dismaying if you’re a financial services company.

With over 15% of the world’s population living with a disability (over 1 billion people), making your site accessible from the jump is not only the right thing to do, but it also helps increase brand loyalty, ROI and SEO. An accessible site also keeps you away from potential legal action as proven in court cases Netflix, Nike, Blue Apron and more. Secondly, there are regulations and compliance requirements in the financial services industry that should make accessibility an even more natural consideration.

One common accessibility mistake? Purchasing third party plug-ins to fix accessibility gaps. In fact, these tools aren’t always able to remediate inaccessible websites (they only cover about 50% of common accessibility issues). Therefore, you may actually need a website redesign to ensure that you’re staying compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) guidelines.

Pros and cons of improving your financial services website instead of starting over

Redesigning versus rebuilding is a tough choice. It’s like trying to decide when to trade in that old car that costs you $2,000 a year in repairs for something new. It is going to come down to a cost-benefit analysis. Before making that decision, you should compile some basic information.

First, take an honest look at your current state. Is it getting you what you want in terms of ROI, flexibility, speed, compliance, etc?

Second, list out some goals of what you would hope to accomplish from either choice (rebuild or redesign). This will help you better vette the options.

Last, look at the long-term impact. Do the upfront costs now get mitigated by new a sites improved CX, ROI, etc. Or do the slower fixes make more sense?

Usually, when clients come to us, they’re hoping for a quick fix, and we understand their position — it’s easier for you to work with the website you have.

We can support them in making small adjustments to the site if it’s built on a good foundation. For instance, only some platforms offer content personalization capabilities, which data shows helps to drive return visits and higher spending. A great example of this is Acquia’s Drupal Cloud platform. This combination of backend technology and hosting services comes standard with key features, including content personalization, security and flexibility to allow your teams to quickly and easily update the site.

The question you must constantly keep in mind is, am I delaying the inevitable? Only you can decide on the risk of riding out your current platform and potentially losing customers or driving toward the future.

Think of your website as a digital experience platform (DXP)

Evaluating your website as a digital experience platform is enterprise-level maturity. Think about your needs for this website in the long term. Do you need automation, content personalization, flexibility and behavioral analytics? There are platforms that enable personalization, marketing automation, digital asset management tools, and content delivery networks (CDN). These systems provide a lot more touch points in the customer journey than one website could on its own. With more touch points, you can increase your customer reach and ROI.