A Look at Investment Industry Design Trends in 2019

HCR Wealth Advisors was launched in 2019 by MBC Strategic. Click here to view the full site. 

As 2019 gives way 2020, we’ve observed that several investment industry mobile and website design trends that have made an impact on our own portfolio.  These trends also represent a foreshadowing into what will shape intuitive offerings to branding for all industries.

According to Statista, “In 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones, up from 50.3% in the previous year.” While the investment industry lags a bit, mobile browsing continues to grow at a rapid pace, and for this reason alone, it’s important for financial and investment firms to pay attention and optimize user experience (UX) for mobile, especially if you’re firm is struggling with below-average web conversion activity.

Whether it’s the next big thing in tech-driven advances for innovative and responsive website design, or subtle color and font updates, here’s a quick round up of design trends we identified and implemented for financial firms over the past year.

Setting your firm apart

As the digital billboard for your organization, your website is the first opportunity to make an impactful impression and foster a strong client experience for a large percentage of your prospective investors, intermediary partners or target prospects. In order to transform your website – and mobile experience – from 0 to 100, keep in mind your primary business objectives and ensure that your development process achieves an effective representation of your core value proposition in online form.  

Financial services firms looking to attract and retain tech-savvy, app-oriented Millennials must prioritize and streamline their digital applications because simply having a website presence simply is no longer enough. Firms must have a strong online and app presence to signal to their audience that they are in touch with the current digital trends.  

MBC Strategic sought to highlight Wasmer Schroeder’s deep integrity and expertise in fixed income, crafting modern and punchy messaging to describe their processes, while developing the asset management firm’s website for its diverse intermediary and institutional audiences. The mobile design is both response and device-agnostic, and engagingly positions the firm’s range of solutions.

View our Award-Winning Responsive Website Design and Development Project

A simple way to identify what you want from an investment company rebrand or brand overhaul is to breakdown your firm’s brand identity from a 360˚ viewpoint. In other words, thinking of a brand as a circle divided into 4 parts can serve financial services brand managers and marketers well by simplifying the process and making it easier to define differentiators:

• Visual Qualities — photography, typography, logo, color palette
• Verbal Qualities — company name, tone of voice and messaging
• Sensory Qualities — sounds, light, illumination, touch, texture
• Interactive Qualities — navigation icons, social content

Asymmetrical Designs

Over the past year, designers have begun to stray away from the standard-square layout templates you find from ”out-of-the-box” providers. Now designers want to create products that are customized, unique, and alive, and by doing so, have supported the rise of asymmetrical designs.

An asymmetrical layout, whether in a design composition, an app or a website, demands attention. The user senses an innate curiosity about where the information and graphics are going to be next, which creates engagement as they scroll or scrutinize a design layout.

STRATA is a self-directed IRA custodian, giving investors and advisors the opportunity to carve their own investment path to retirement through access to alternative assets like real estate, private equity, private debt and crowdfunding. MBC continued to evolve this fresh look, including asymmetrical designs for B2B advertising, conference materials, website enhancements and campaign materials addressing the need to empower clients and remove frustrations from the administration and custody of alternative assets. 

View STRATA’s alternative asset custodian marketing case study

Custom Icons

A recent study from the Journal of Marketing Research  “analyzed the effect of logo design”—specifically whether or not a logo is descriptive—on the commercial value 597 companies. The study describes a descriptive logo as one that includes a textual or visual design feature that’s indicative of the product offered; a non-descriptive logo is made of design elements that don’t explicitly show what the company does or offers. In creating logos and icons—especially in the world of financial services—you need to say a lot with a little, so take a strategic approach and make sure this all-important branding element is aligned with your strategy.

MINIMALISM

The fewer elements and content on a website, the less your audience will have to think about and analyze what they are looking at, and what they need to do to get to the information their seeking. When a website is properly designed, it will show the user exactly what they are looking for… intuitively. Your website, and entire brand is a platform to not only sustain and drive growth but create a sense of confidence and trust with clients and prospects. When investors trust you, they are more willing to stick with you in down markets and more likely to refer assets your way.

Domos is a co-living development and investment company. During MBC’s discovery process, a key insight that was found to be integral to this real estate investment brand-building project was to educate visitors on co-living through the use of custom icons, beautiful imagery and clear and concise, minimal language, giving the user a calming sense of understanding what it is they are engaging with. An example of this being the use of a strong blue and a lighter gold to help differentiate Domos from their competitors.

View the 2019 dotCOMM Award-Winning Investment Brand Launch

MBC has been helping financial institutions and investment firms grow for over twenty years. To better understand the importance of investment industry web design for your financial institution or investment firm and learn how MBC Strategic can help, please contact us today.