In this post we discuss our recent survey looking at the digital effectiveness of a selection of 60 fund manager websites.
While a number of surveys are regularly undertaken focussing on the financial performance of fund managers, we were interested in developing a snapshot of how well these fund managers’ websites and social media channels performed.
The survey proceeds from the view that a company’s online property is also its key marketing and communications tool.
As ROI in social media and other online channels becomes increasingly more quantifiable, it remains the case that the cost of ignoring (COI) these considerations is high.
The survey provides an indication of how well a company’s online property is performing across a range of standardised metrics. Included among these are analyses of page speed, accessibility, mobile friendliness, readability, as well as social media integration.
Many people make the mistake of dismissing the importance to SEO of accessibility and social channel engagement. To skimp on these aspects of a website is to lower your visibility and reach. To ignore even seemingly minor elements of your webpages - such as alt tags - can lower overall search effectiveness.
Dismissing metrics like page speed may also have an effect on SEO and user experience. A poor performing website results in a poor user experience, and Google rates sites with poor user experience as deserving less promotion in search results.
Even a small enterprise with modest resources can make use of best-practice methods to enhance its online properties.
The upper quartile of the survey’s results represents those companies that have proactively sought to maximise their website for search engine optimisation (SEO) and user experience (UX). As a company moves toward this quartile it is more likely to increase its search engine result page (SERP) rankings and, in turn, its online visibility and reach.
One notable finding of the survey suggests that even a small enterprise with modest resources can make use of best-practice methods to enhance its online properties to reach wider audiences.
In addition, the survey suggests that scoring well in one or more metric does not guarantee a high overall ranking; rather, a company’s digital effectiveness lies in its willingness to take a multi-channel approach to its online properties.
We approached the survey as a snapshot, employing a small set of front-end evaluation tools which we continue to revise. The methods we employed do not replace the use of data analytics or keyword building tools available with account access, or the Moz Domain Authority (DA) evaluation tool.
ConclusionCompanies ranking in the top quartile – ie, those who focus on their users’ needs and put in place the foundations to meet Google’s search engine results requirements – are also those who pay attention to their customers.
Download the most recent survey results.
The survey comprises four metric areas of interest from which we tally an overall score as a percentage. These are:
Content This metric uses a sample analysis of the website’s content. The Flesch Reading Ease index uses a simple but effective formula to measure the reading ease-difficulty of text. It does not account for specialised language, buzzwords, jargon etc, but gives a general score on readability. We included this metric because intelligible, readable copy is vital for brand messaging and cut-through.
Social This metric looks at the company’s reach across social media platforms. It is the only non-machine-read metric in the survey. We looked firstly at each website’s integration with social channels and then whether those channels are being actively utilised and maintained. If a company is active on Twitter and LinkedIn, its core social is considered to be in good shape. Also being active on other platforms such as Google+ will add search ranking value.
Design Here we are interested in a website’s compliance with a number of important web standards. We look at (1) how well a site performs across mobile and other devices and (2) its compliance with accessibility guidelines.
Speed This metric looks at a range of factors concerned with the technical performance of a webpage. It analyses pages using Google and Yahoo! evaluation tools and provides a score based on best-practice in areas such as image optimisation, page optimisation, compression and caching.
A note on processing errors Values marked with * or ^ indicate an error in processing that website or webpage. The data are not given a mean or imputed value but a zero value. Values marked with ¡ indicate a specific error in analysing that website: "The SSL certificate for this site is not trusted in all web browsers. You may have an incorrectly installed SSL certificate. - HTTPS error: certificate verify failed."
Note. The selection of funds, which was provided to us, may be characterised broadly as a purposive sample.
Snapshot: October 2017. Published: 22 Nov 2017. Updated: 20 Feb 2018