Case Study: Lind-Waldock Financial Website Design & RIA Integration
Webability™ Statement
In addition to organizing massive amounts of data on the Lind-Waldock website, Azavar built a Rich Internet Application that increased visitorship and improved usability.
Lind-Waldock Financial leads the industry as a premier futures brokerage firm. Azavar's progressive Rich Internet Application dramatically increased Lind-Waldock's ability to generate qualified leads and positioned them as a single-stop location for critical industry news.
“The thing I like the most about Azavar is the follow through. They have been wonderful about making sure we got everything we wanted and felt comfortable with the end result.”
Tom Carr, Advertising Manager at Lind-Waldock Financial
Lind-Waldock Financial
Located in the heart of Chicago's financial district, Lind-Waldock Financial facilitates top-tier futures trades for clients across the globe. Lind-Waldock has been providing comprehensive, quality futures brokerage service to individual and institutional traders worldwide for more than four decades.
At the forefront of their industry, Lind-Waldock lays claim to several advancements in the futures brokerage arena:
- First futures brokerage firm to offer trading at discounted commissions
- First to develop their own order-routing system to U.S. exchange trading floors
- First to offer clients an online order-entry platform
With so many innovations in their industry, tens of thousands of investors have made Lind-Waldock their futures broker of choice. However, Lind-Waldock did face some challenges, especially regarding the Webability of their website.
Lind-Waldock’s Challenges
Although Lind-Waldock was a strong leader in the financial industry, their old website did not reinforce that fact: it lacked Webability.
“The main hurdle was that clients had trouble finding things on their old website,” said Darren Callahan, Azavar’s Project Manager for Lind-Waldock’s redesign. “They had so much content spread out so far that it was ‘information overload’ for website visitors. Every page was packed with banner ads and other distractions.”
Not only did their website lack a simple, user-friendly architecture, the design was also starting to look dated. Most of their competitors had re-launched trendy, progressive websites and Lind-Waldock’s website was largely unchanged.
Most importantly, Lind-Waldock had been using their website as a significant qualified lead generator for almost five years. However, Lind-Waldock’s online tools that should have been attracting new clients were hardly being utilized.
The website was designed in such a way that quotes were in one section of the website, charts were in another, and news was in yet a third place. “All three types of data are absolutely crucial to have before making a futures trade,” said Callahan, “but that information wasn’t in front of the users the way it should have been.”
As a result, many clients would keep their money with Lind-Waldock, but would use the tools of other websites to get important information they needed to make informed trades.
“Even our own staff would often use our competitors’ websites to track down essential quotes, charts, and news.”
--Susan Abbott-Gidel, Director of Marketing at Lind-Waldock
Lind-Waldock started to search for a professional website development company that would help them with the following:
- Establish them as a one-stop location for proprietary industry data through intuitive information architecture
- Set them apart from competitors with cutting-edge design
- Increase the impact of their website as a lead generation tool
Azavar’s Expertise in the Financial Industry
To assist with their website’s redesign, the futures brokerage firm vetted several website design and development firms with no success. Lind-Waldock needed a company with extensive experience in the financial sector that would offer targeted insight for dramatically improving their website.
Azavar had the financial industry expertise that Lind-Waldock was looking for. Over the past decade, Azavar has demonstrated wide-ranging financial proficiency by their consulting, design, and development work with Credit Suisse, Marathon Capital, Brethren Benefit Trust, and countless other financial institutions.
“My first impression of Azavar was that they had really done their homework in terms of what we needed, what we were looking for, and the kinds of solutions they could provide us.”
--Susan Abbott-Gidel, Director of Marketing at Lind-Waldock
Azavar drew from their own experience and in-depth knowledge of integrated website solutions to create fresh ideas for adding Webability to Lind-Waldock’s website – ideas they had not heard from any other development firm.
Azavar’s Solutions
Azavar went beyond intuitive information architecture; they rounded out the redesign with clean, professional graphics that reflected Lind-Waldock’s position as a leader in their industry.
“Azavar’s creative design work separated us from the competition because it eliminates a lot of the clutter you see on so many other sites.”
--Jose Escobedo, Internet Marketing Manager at Lind-Waldock
Azavar’s most innovative contribution to the Lind-Waldock website was their development of a Quotes, Charts, and News application. Azavar knew that such an application would place all essential information one convenient location for website visitors to find and use, thus becoming a major lead generator for Lind-Waldock.
Using advanced Flex technology to seamlessly integrate with streaming financial and news data, Azavar developed a Rich Internet Application (RIA) that combines Lind-Waldock’s quotes, charts, and news information into one easy-to-use, cutting-edge application.
Through Azavar’s sophisticated RIA, Lind-Waldock was able to deepen their relationships with long-term clients and new website visitors. Before Azavar’s RIA solution, Lind-Waldock lost client business to competitors who offered more advanced trading tools. Now, Lind-Waldock’s website visitors can interact with an intuitive RIA that delivers all the information they need to make their trades, solidifying Lind-Waldock’s leadership in the futures trading industry.
“It looks great,” said Callahan. “The new Quotes, Charts, and News section is really well organized, it functions as intended, and it’s a great qualified lead generator for Lind-Waldock."
“We now have a rich application that is – I believe – the best out there in our competitive space. The level of detail and usability is light-years ahead of our competitors.”
--Susan Abbott-Gidel, Director of Marketing at Lind-Waldock
Azavar Delivered Results
Azavar’s combination of technological expertise and thorough understanding of the unique challenges of the financial industry led to quantifiably increased Webability for Lind-Waldock.
“We’ve seen a marked uptick not only in terms of how many people visit our site, but also in how long they stay there,”
--Tom Carr, Advertising Manager at Lind-Waldock
Azavar’s cutting-edge Flex capabilities made a major impact on Lind-Waldock’s online statistics. In the first financial quarter alone, the Quotes, Charts, and News visitorship increased by 3.8% from last year – a significant amount for a website that handles millions of visitors a year.
In addition to increasing the overall number of visitors, Azavar’s web solutions also encouraged massive repeat visits. The number of people who visited Lind-Waldock’s website multiple times increased by 3.6% from last year, reflecting the addition of thousands of repeat visitors.
After adding Azavar’s Quotes, Charts, and News application, people are now spending considerably more time on the website. Last year, the average visit duration was 9 minutes 46 seconds. Since the first quarter of this year, the average length of a visit now lasts 14 minutes 12 – an impressive 56% increase since last year.
In addition to achieving the quantifiable results Lind-Waldock was after, the new website also caught the attention of the Web Marketing Association, earning a Standard of Excellence Award.
“It’s been an incredible investment and we’ve received nothing but compliments.”
--Jose Escobedo, Internet Marketing Manager at Lind-Waldock
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