On April 21st of this year, Google will roll out changes to their search algorithm which will mean mobile-friendliness will become a ranking factor in their search results. Many of you will have already noticed the mobile-friendly labels in Google’s search result pages that appeared last November for mobile devices, which look like this:
Pages are labeled mobile-friendly if they meet Googlebot’s criteria which includes: avoiding software that is not mobile friendly such as Flash and pages that are automatically sized to small screens so users don’t have to scroll or zoom in and out.
As usual Google has included a useful, yet simple tool to test web pages for mobile friendliness. Try it out. Google will rank websites on a page-by-page basis, so if you want to analyze your whole site then use the Mobile Usability Report with Webmaster Tools.
Is your asset management website ready for Mobilegeddon?!
I had a look around the web for some great examples of mobile-friendly asset management websites and this what I found (in no particular order):
1. Henderson Global Investors
The Henderson mobile site is impeccably presented with razor sharp images and icons, touch enabled carousel, clearly sized and spaced fonts and striking color scheme. The fund prices and performance pages are particularly impressive. Great job!
2. Direxion Investments
Direxion made their site fully responsive, which is one of my favorite methods. Their tile-based navigation to fund or ETF pages scales down really well on a mobile device.
3. Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Bank of America Merrill Lynch uses a mobile site to serve up key information in a clear and concise fashion. I like the case studies carousel and simple navigation. The BOA personal banking site is probably the best designed site with retina graphics and more up-to-date web design elements such as a slide-in menu.
4. Goldman Sachs
As with much of Goldman Sach’s digital marketing, their mobile site is impeccably designed. Their custom typeface works brilliantly even on a small screen, I love the most popular videos swipe carousel on the home page and all the graphics look retina ready. Awesome job.
5. Cambridge Associates
Cambridge Associates have built a fully responsive site which scales down perfectly (at least on my iPhone). Nicely spaced out content and use of white space make for a great user experience. The color-coded menu works really well too. Good typography across the site makes the information easy to read on small screens.
6. Trium Capital
Trium Capital’s fully responsive site includes animated graphics (which work across all devices), simple site navigation and clearly designed information using custom fonts.
7. Schroders
Schroders made the effort to get their key information mobile-friendly by creating responsive webpages. The navigation is simple and they’ve sensibly positioned their search field for users. The text and images are clearly spaced out and easy to read.
8. Invesco Perpetual (UK)
The UK site for Invesco Perpetual is fully responsive. Their brand is beautifully presented with retina-ready graphics and the site navigation is tucked away into a full screen slide out panel. I like the way the user types have been designed in a compact fashion and even some of the more complex features like search filters have all been designed to perfectly fit a mobile screen.
9. J.P. Morgan
I would hazard a guess that the J.P. Morgan website was designed with a mobile-first approach. It scales gracefully down to mobile screen sizes and careful consideration has been used to space content out, with a focus on images rather than being text heavy. Love the big and bold search feature.
10. Nomura
Nomura has a mobile site (with link back to full desktop version), which is still a popular alternative to a fully responsive website. Although some of the serif font and underline-style links are harder to read, navigating to key information is quick and simple and the site responds very quickly.
11. Sarasin & Partners
The Sarasin mobile site is cleanly laid out with a good text/image ratio. They have gone the extra mile to make all their fund facts and performance data fit neatly onto small screens, even using scrolling tabular data and interactive touch enabled performance charts.
12. Columbia Threadneedle
Columbia Threadneedle have opted for a fully responsive site which includes a big and bold navigation menu and a beautifully designed theme throughout. Carousels with alternating color fades, custom fonts and bold calls-to-action make for an awesome mobile user experience.
13. T.Rowe Price
T. Rowe Price’s responsive site captures their brand well with good design applied to the home page. Drilling down into further pages seems to show a mixture of non-responsive web pages, but at least they’re working towards a mobile-friendly user experience.
14. UBS
UBS has a dedicated mobile site which includes quite a complex navigation menu containing many links and options, but it works very fast and the site has clearly been optimized for mobile. The site includes some retina graphics and touch enabled carousels.
15. PIMCO
The PIMCO mobile site includes some really slick features, like a sticky header panel with expandable search function, slide out navigation menu and slideshow of latest news and updates.
16. Santander Asset Management
Santander’s site is fully responsive and uses tiles and panels to gracefully break up information. Slide-out navigation makes it easy to find information quickly.
17. Baillie Gifford
Baillie Gifford have opted for a mobile version of their site rather than fully responsive but the end goal is achieved. The information is clearly laid out from a tile-based menu screen down to fund prices which are quick to navigate to.
18. Franklin Templeton
The mobile site of US giants Franklin Templeton was built by using a popular mobile framework. Fund prices and performance pages are super quick to navigate to and display – adding funds to a watch list is simple and intuitive.
19. Ashburton Investments
Ashburton’s site is fully responsive and includes touch-enabled carousels, slide out navigation, custom fonts and well-spaced information. By going down the responsive road they are giving their users a better user experience which is agnostic of device.
If I’ve missed any of your favourites, let me know by leaving a comment below.[xyz-ihs snippet=”CTA-white-paper-FUND-WEBSITES”]
