FMG Suite (case study) - Chris Blum

FMG Suite Locator

"Find an advisor" product - part of an all-in-one marketing platform for financial advisors

Timeframe

2017-2018

Company

FMG Suite

Scope

Product Design, Visual Design, User Research

Deliverables

UX Design (web/mobile), design system

The Company

FMGSuite is a marketing platform for financial advisors, providing tools to build a dynamic website and allowing them to easily share content with their audience on social media, all while complying with the various financial regulations that exist.

While working at FMGSuite, the company was beginning to expand into the enterprise market, serving larger firms with many advisors under one roof, instead of just focusing on independent financial advisors.

Problem to Solve

One common requirement that these larger companies had was a “find an advisor” feature that would allow a potential client to find an advisor in their area that fit their criteria.

For this feature to be a success, users would need the ability to embed the locator into their existing website and customize the look and feel to match. In addition, mobile and desktop responsiveness was a must.

This case study includes the design process for a generic FMGSuite-branded version of the feature, as well as, examples of “skinned” versions for different firms that we worked with leading up to the feature launch.

Quick to Use

The goal of this feature was for potential clients to find a financial advisor.

We’d need a way to quickly and cleanly surface relevant information about the advisors in a person’s area that would help them find someone that met their criteria.

Customization

Since this feature would be embedded into a financial firm’s website that already existed and each of these had a different look and feel, we’d need the ability to adjust how the feature looked to match.

In addition, some companies would want to control what advisor information was shared — a few examples of things that could be toggled on/off: financial certifications, contact information, social media profiles, personal website URL’s.

Accessibility

Our feature would need to work just as well on a smartphone as on a computer screen, and every device size in between.

There are also financial regulations that stipulate a minimum level of accessibility that your site needs to comply with to avoid committing a violation. Therefore, designing for WCAG standards was a top level concern.

Process

Research

Since many different types of businesses would be utilizing this feature, it was important to get an understanding of how we’d need to serve each main user group.

For instance, businesses might have a single person at each of their locations, while some might have 100’s of advisors at one location.

Figuring out the best way to dynamically modify the UI to satisfy these use cases meant not only understanding our customers (the people hosting the product), but also the customers of our customers (the people who would ultimately be using the product to find the advisor that was right for them).

Wireframes

We explored many different directions during our initial design sprint.

One area that we spent a lot of time on was the search box. We wanted it to be superpowered to help searchers hone in on the advisor that was perfect for them.

Embeddable Widgets

We found that many clients didn't want a full width widget taking up space on their website, but didn't just want a link to the feature either. They wanted something interactive, but smaller.

The team settled on a solution that would be an embeddable search widget that was customizable — search fields, colors, and layout. An example of a customized widget can be seen here.

Whitelabel Ready

This product needed to be designed and built in a modular way. On the surface, this could be as simple as matching color schemes, fonts, icons, etc to the look & feel of the target customer.

Our team took it a step further and allowed complete customization of the different data points available, how the search box worked to rank different searches, and much more.

Final Designs

Final Designs — desktop

Our first customer for this new product was the firm Waddell&Reed, so we set up a customized version of the locator specifically for them as a proof-of-concept.

Final Designs — mobile

In an increasingly mobile-only world, we made sure that the locator was responsive for mobile and tried to adhere to the design patterns that were expected from a modern native mobile app, despite being a webview.

Launch & Beyond

Launch

Since launch, this feature has been integrated into hundreds of FMGSuite’s clients’ websites.

A live example of the locator can be seen here: https://www.locatebaird.com/

Future

Due to the success of the initial rollout, there have been several follow up projects to build more bespoke customized versions for larger firms.

The example shown here is Hilliard Lyons.

Impact

Entrance into enterprise market

This feature was a must-have for the company to move into the enterprise market — which included much larger contracts for 100's of seats at a time, rather than our typical 1-10 seats.

Additional subscription value

A version of this feature was added to our SaaS product that allowed smaller, independent advisors to embed locator widgets in their websites quickly, and without paying anything extra.

Enhanced advisor placement

Our direct customers are financial advisors, but downstream are the people who are looking for a financial advisor. This feature enabled these folks to find someone who more closely matched what they were looking for.