Background
Leading SaaS provider Investortools has created fixed-income investing software solutions since 1983. Regarded by the industry as a prerequisite for investment management, Colorado-based Investortools is trusted by over 200 firms—with over $1 trillion total in assets. Its workflows provide asset managers powerful efficiencies and growth built on precise, data-driven decisions.
Yet, the brand and online representation of Investortools wasn’t keeping up with its big name clients and massive portfolios. After hiring a new marketing team, it became clear that Investortools’ website and brand was in need of a boost. In order to better represent the prominent systems and tools Investortools provided and generate leads, they went to Solid Digital for a rebrand, website design and redevelopment.
Approach
Investortools recently acquired Merritt Research, and needed to consolidate that website into Investortools to complement their current offerings—soon starting the search for a branding and development partner instead of going it alone.
Initially, Solid Digital summarized the needs this way: the current site and visuals did not accurately reflect Investortools, and their dominance in their space. Investortools offers sophisticated solutions that make investment management easier—so the website needed to portray the ease of the solutions and the options available to their clients, especially with its family of product brands.
So, both teams set out to achieve the following with the rebrand and redeveloped website:
- Update the Investortools digital brand
- Improve overall aesthetic and UX of the website
- Give the marketing team a CMS they could update to leverage digital marketing and drive opportunities
Process
During the learn and discover phase, the sales director and marketing lead at Investortools worked hand-in-hand for several weeks to ensure Solid Digital had an excellent grasp of the current brand and culture of the company. With plenty of collaboration, including input and opinions from both sides, interviews, and competitive research, Solid Digital was able to see where Investortools fit into the fintech landscape, and translated that into a brand identity that would resonate with their audience.
Jessica, the marketing lead at Investortools, paved the way with subject matter experts, helping communicate technical product details and deep understanding of product features to enable comprehensive website copy.
Strategy
Solid Digital worked with Investortools to showcase the brand and culture throughout to set them apart from competition, ensure consistent voice and tone, and relay the company’s values through messaging. By providing multiple design directions, Investortools chose “financial software with a human approach”, which helped unite the look and gave them the flexibility of adding to and pivoting their offerings as time goes on.
Also in helping build the foundation for future growth, Solid organized the site architecture to allow for new pages and content, news, and blogs, and leveraged site building blocks to make updates easy. Solid Digital’s SEO team also set to work on keywords and providing meta descriptions for most pages, in order to boost the website’s rankings.
By showing experience and thought leadership through statistics and partner logos, Solid Digital helped Investortools highlight the expertise and partnerships that would show value to future clientele.
Additionally, Solid Digital carved out clear journey paths for the user with clear CTAs and a revamped menu. By placing the solutions and products in the drop down navigation, Investortools could focus more on their solutions, and less on product-specific branding.
Challenges
Investortools contains a family of brands (eight separate products) including the Perform™ product, which allows for real time updates and helps automate and streamline the investing process—but the names didn’t necessarily clarify the services for customers. Solid Digital’s brand architecture helped Investortools contextualize the 8 complex products within a product naming system that worked with the new logo and represented the brand well.
The copywriting process for the new site took an enormous effort, especially after Investortools’ acquisition of Merritt. With coordination of subject matter experts writing copy, Solid Digital helped keep things on track with edits and streamlining all the information migrated from the previous site.\
Results
Solid Digital’s efforts and Investortools collaboration were key in making the brand stand out and the website work.
In partnership with Solid Digital, Investortools was able to hit their internal deadlines and:
- Tell the right brand story;
- Refresh the look and feel of the website;
- Improve the user journey and engagement; and
- Easily update the site with accessible data and analytics
Investortools was so excited about the website and logo launch, they had a party (complete with cake)! They were proud to show off their new look, and ordered merch with the new logo for the whole office.
As for continuing the good work, they’ve kept the door open with a support package so Solid Digital’s crew can help with anything else they need for the website.
