Website rebuild and upgrading the online presence
SPF Private Clients provide mortgage advice, wealth management and insurance broking services to high-net-worth clients. Formed in 2011 after a management buyout of Savills Private Finance, the financial arm of Savills plc, in 2018, Cabot Square Capital acquired a majority stake in the business. Howden, the London-based international insurance broker, announced in 2022 the signing of the acquisition of SPF Private Clients.
For their expert brokers, no situation is too complicated – and their market knowledge means they find solutions where others can’t. They have excellent lender relationships across the UK and globally, enabling them to negotiate the best mortgage rates for each client’s situation.
The goal was to improve user engagement and create a more powerful reflection of the SPF Private Clients’ brand, services and product offerings. The web development team at Revolution Agency had to balance clean functionality with design aesthetics.
Challenge
As part of a larger rebranding initiative, the brief to Revolution Agency was to redesign and rebuild a new SPF Private Clients’ website. The project was a massive undertaking, not to mention an important one to get right considering the critical role the website needed to play in SPF Private Clients’ marketing and brand image.
The goal was to improve user engagement and create a more powerful reflection of the SPF Private Clients’ brand, services and product offerings. The web development team at Revolution Agency had to balance clean functionality with design aesthetics.
For SPF Private Clients, delivering a best-in-class client experience required creating a new user journey based on qualitative and quantitative data. Additionally, we had to develop new content and shape the design around it to support this. As part of the previous rebranding exercise, the website also had to have a fresh look and upgraded user experience (UX).
Process
Our website development team focused on eight critical elements during the planning and redesign completion process:
- Benchmarking current performance metrics.
- Determining the website redesign goals.
- Defining branding and messaging.
- Defining buyer personas.
- Protecting search engine optimised pages.
- Competition analysis.
- Redesigning the high-performing assets inventory.
Applied colour psychology to deepen the connection on a subconscious level.
We set out to “humanise” the website experience by listening to and learning from website visitors and providing them with timely and relevant information via integrated API sources to research their requirements.
Solution
SPF Private Clients is unique. From our research, we knew that their consumers liked dealing with people when making financial decisions, but at the same time, some clients preferred a self-service approach.
Therefore, we set out to “humanise” the website experience by listening to and learning from website visitors and providing them with timely and relevant information via integrated API sources to research their requirements.
We delivered a responsive website design and messaging that emotionally connects with users, working well across all devices and specifically optimised for mobile users. The build included user-centric Information Architecture (IA) and intuitive navigation.
The inclusion of mortgage calculators enables users to assess their options based on their situation, allowing them to try out different scenarios to get a good idea of costs before making contact.
Users can also compare mortgage deals and see their interest rates and monthly payments, enabling them to obtain the best daily mortgage rates.
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