We continue our collection of free resources for website owners in the financial service industry and today focus on various resources that offer free forex markets data and tools. We noticed that all or most top FX clearing firms are starting to provide free content as a way to attract IBs to clear through them. Content that used to cost a fortune via providers such as QuoteMedia and others now is free with link to clearing firms website. Any FX IB brokerage firm that is designing a website can take advantage of these places to enrich their users experience.

Following free FX content providers are popular and available to be used on your forex trading website:

CMS Forex
http://www.forexwebtools.com
Great collection of all kinds of tools at no cost
Charts, quotes, PIP, Currency, Notional Value Calculators, Calendar

Forex4You
http://www.forexpros.com/webmaster-tools/
Economic calendar, Rates, News, Live Quotes, Exchange Rates, Charts, Indexes, Commodities, Converter

AC-Markets
http://www.ac-markets.com/webmaster-resources/free-forex-tools.aspx
Live exchange rates, converter, news

FXDD
http://www.fxdd.com/en/webmaster-tools.html
Calculator generator, ticker, vertical currency ticker, news and commentary widget

Forex Factory
http://www.forexfactory.com/excal.php
Calendar

Finotec
http://www.finotec.com/trading-tools.php
Converter, Quotes, Calendar, Support/resistance, signals, news

Are you interested in forex website design? Contact LightMix to receive a proposal. LightMix provided design for FX and trading companies for over 10 years, we’ll be glad to work with your organization.

When designing a website for introducing brokers, we suggest to foloow following basic guidelines to create effective web presence that converts website visitors into leads and accounts.

Basic rules for website creation for introducing broker:

1. Do not try to copy other IB websites. All introducing brokers are in similar position and often we see that many want a site like somebody else. Each project has to be done custom to your firms objectives, be built around your strengths, so you can capitalize on that.

2. Try to take advantage of the content you are provided by your clearing firm, but do not base your site content exclusively on that. Often clearing firms will offer educational website content or any other marketing content at no cost. Use that, but only as supporting content. There is limited value in that, it does help you build up credibility, but also same to content on other brokers websites.

3. Always go with custom website design, never try to use templated websites. We wrote an article hereon why templated sites are not be used, make sure you read it.

4. Pay special attention to branding. In tight competition with other brokers, generic name and branding will mean customers won’t remember you.

5. Build your own lead generation section to store all leads in multiple forms in your database. Do now rely exclusively on provided open account section provided by your clearing form. Create generic lead gen forms that allow you to capture customers leads. Use that later to extract leads for email marketing.

6. Create full scale campaign, do not try to limit eforts to website only. Banners, ads in print, media all will help to promote your brand.

7. Most importantly, do not expect that a site can be designed with all of the conditions above for $1,000. Money you put into your branding and website design turns back multiple times as it helps you to close more accounts. When we suggest website design we stress VALUE above all, and in case with introducing brokers website design, value is perceived partially by how the site looks, how serious it is, effective marketing message is. Think about price of a website as investment in your own property’s equity. 100% of the cost is going toward your equity.

Contact LightMix to receive a proposal for your website for your introducing broker site for commodities, futures, equities, forex brokerage business

http://thefinancialbrand.com/2009/11/09/branson-launches-virgin-bank/

Financial services companies are going through tough times this year. Not only different financial institutions received really bad rep, many one man operations such as brokers, advisers etc have suffered significantly. Many firms however take advantage of low business activity to reformulate their branding, redesign their visual and marketing materials to be prepared to reversal and gain market share.

Some consultants will answer that in fact it is not important to find a creative design firm that has extensive experience and understanding of the industry and its better to get someone with outside perspective. True, many companies have tendency to shift toward product-oriented approach to be able to survive and after .com boom product development was critical to many investor-supported businesses. This resulted in range of companies that provide packaged services, packaged sites for $30, $50, $100 per month, package hosting, data and other elements and claim custom design. The end result is such that clients are facing account managers, rarely designers, need to live with little flexibility and don’t feel that their money is well spent.

The alternative solution to packaged sites is engaging custom design company, a real creative services company that will help to redesign and prepare your visual materials for successful marketing campaign. Marketing for financial services companies rarely done by creative companies and organizations should stay away from firms that claim they do both – marketing and design unless it is a significant advertising agency. Small or medium size firms will likely sacrifice quality over result as highest margins of their profits lay in one or the other category.

Most importantly, the custom design creative services firm with relevant industry experience will in fact be beneficial to your organization. In the financial services industry, creative and marketing services can be powerful weapon when used wisely. Right consultants will help navigate design strategy and maintain close relationship with inside knowledge of the field. Inappropriate usage of color, text, format and style in the more conservative and function-oriented field can significantly reduce businesses ability to operate and convert leads to customers.

Click here for free estimate for your financial creative or marketing task

Cover design
Last 5 years online publications are one of primary methods of delivering frequent updated reports to users. Custom cover design for newsletters, reports, books and online publications is a good way to expand your branding, make your publication unique and memorable.

Regardless of how simple the inside of the report is, the cover in this case is what attracts the user.

Don’t judge the book by its cover, but use it to sell it.
Yes, this is absolutely true that judgment about content should not be done by the design of the cover. The truth however is also in the fact that marketing statistics are way better for products that are effective in communicating, attracting and stimulating users to perform action. So, from publishers perspective, newsletter cover or a report cover may in fact need to be vibrant, so the product stands out from the crowd.

Custom cover design
There are many options with covers. Many in fact go and do DIY covers. The drawback is that professional design of the cover will  help to create professional packaging of the product and that in its turn will increase sales. Leave DIY for the inside, don’t try to save few hundred dollars and let professionals design a cover for your book, report, publication or digital newsletter.
Below you will find a compilation of 100 cover designs produced by LightMix over the past year in the financial services industry. Specifically financial newsletter cover design, financial reports covers, corporate report covers, book covers and more.

 Click on the image below to view full size version

Cover design for books, reports, newsletters

Selected Financial Logo design work by LightMix. Contact us for an estimate for your project here.

Importance of branding for financial services companies

How critical is it to have well-developed branding for companies in the Financial Services industry? This all depends on the area of specialization of course, yet all companies share similar benefits and downsides of having and not having professionally developed brand identity.

Lets first of all discuss what we mean by branding and brand identity. Brand as defined by Wikipedia is a collection of experiences and associations connected with a service, a person or any other entity and brand identity is how the owner wants customer to perceive the brand. A fundamental component of recognition of the brand by consumers and how it differentiates from competitors. Brand identity often is mistakenly associated with logo design, and while it is most important component, identity in technical terms includes all aspects of your organization’s communication system and Identity Guide is a specific set of rules of how to and how not to treat your identity.

What’s so special about Logo and Brand Identity in the Financial Services Industry?

In the Financial Services industry there are many levels of organizations and each practices very different approach to brand identity due to consumer demand, popularity, marketing methods and so on. In other words what large bank does, small advisory firm can’t and should not try to do. It’s important to put your organization into context of your competition to do due analysis of identity on the market and take into consideration latest events which have influenced consumer view of many brands.

Main test of good brand identity is if the user can remember it and if it alters or supports his decision to use your organizations services or products. Not having a professional branding essentially puts your company outside of ones that do and any shortcuts directly influence your bottom line as your marketing expenses are not effective.

Logo Design and Brand Identity for Banks and Banking Industry

Logos for banks over long time were focused on solid, serious and conservative message stressing their stability. This key concept started gradually to deteriorate over past 10 years into more modern visual message which stresses how personal banking can be.Personal aspect vs stability is an obvious challenge and smaller banks and institutions try to appeal to local markets maintaining conservative branding as opposed to more aggressive and personal logos you can see from top nation’s banks

Lets look at few examples:

Regional and National brands

Local Brands

Time to rebrand financial institutions?

Not without exception, but we can identify certain trends in the examples above. Specifically local small banks rely heavily in textual treatment and more conservative use of color and in our view lack personal appeal which large national banks are able to create due to more friendly use of colors and design. While its important to maintain message of stability during these tough times, banking industry may be better served if the brands weren’t depreciated even further by appearing not friendly. Perhaps now is a good time to change the approach to banking branding and re-brand some local and regional financial institutions. Not that it will help to change the image, at least may present banks more friendly.

Best Online Trading and Online Brokers Web sites

Best web sites for brokers and online trading companies take advantage of combination of typical clear and logical corporate web site design with elements of informational design, which often includes financial data, performance, statistics and so on. While financial data is important, it should not be made a primary focus and only downplayed as a supportive element. It is important to keep in mind while developing an effective financial web site for an introducing broker specializing in equities, derivatives (futures, commodities) or foreign exchange (forex), that account opening process should still be a primary focus of the web site. Success of the web site for online trading depends on how effectively marketing message can be communicated to a prospect and how easy it will be reach sufficient comfort level to proceed to open an account.

How efficient account opening process can be distracted or prevented from being taken depending on different design and layout practices.

Unprofessional design
Inconsistent design and messages
Lack of winning proposition and unclear offering
Lack of overall trust in brand
Negative messages
Lack of contact and support information

How web site design for online trading companies can help in decision making process

Positive message
Professional and consistent graphic design and website design
Key relationships, associations with familiar brands
Testimonials
Clear account open process with no external distractions
Ability to contact company
Availability of support
Availability of standard industry web components ? Demos, screenshots
Availability of in-depth educational content
Availability of research and overall ?package?
Best Financial Advisory sites

A good advisory site is built with consideration of all aspects of marketing via ppc campaigns and traditional site conversion. Today, advisory site success depends not only on quality of the content, rather more on how smartly the content is presented ans sold to the user. Many organizations develop very sophisticated conversion mechanisms that lead user through variety of conversion steps to the final sale and then upsell to other products. Advisory sites are volume business and should be treated as such. A thorough A/B testing (to determine best working content and design) should be conducted continuously to eliminate low performing material. Constant refinement of actual marketing copy and creative marketing, list rentals, swaps, cross promotion and lead resale should drive profits of well-run financial advisory firm.

Best Financial Data Sites

A good financial data provider is a site dedicated to advertising. All of the content and data is delivered via technical channels wrapped around with advertising. Since the ad revenues are directly related to volume of traffic, free data components and syndication models are necessary to facilitate large traffic growth, which will drive sales. Often, data providers can coordinate efforts with educational material providers and create variety of subscription options as aditional revenue generators. In all cases, special attention should be paid to usability, technical aspects and ability to package and syndicate data to other entities.

http://www.cnbc.com
http://money.cnn.com
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com
http://www.google.com/finance?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=we
http://finance.yahoo.com

Best Financial Social Networking Sites

Social networking in the financial industry started with message boards in mid 90′s. This evolved over past 10 years into sites that come up with ever more creative mechanisms to engage user and make them come back. A good social networking site is costly and difficult to create. What seems to be simple in reality will either be too common or not developed enough to make it as solid business. From our experience in designing and building these sites, a very thorough planning and appropriate funding is needed to support social networking site through the first development period until more investors are able to fund advertising and more elaborate technical solution as well as costly market data.

http://www.stocktwits.com
http://www.tickerspy.com

Best corporate sites for investment clients

Corporate site design for financial services companies is no different then any other industry, yet with few elements that make it quite different. There are no conversion schemes, no open account, its all about corporate image and solid and trustworthy feel of the organization. Unless the company is well known and has extensive recognition in the field, same challenges apply as with any other corporate site. How do you create a face of the company, which is serious, trusted, yet informative enough and effective in getting prospects to enquire. Corporate sites in the financial industry normally follow simple design scheme, appropriate choice of directly related or “feel-good” images and well crafted marketing message which makes key marketing offer. Well-structured design, no-nonsense layout, logical and at times boring approach is very appropriate and provides for appropriate tone for many clients.

http://www.jpmorgan.com
http://www2.goldmansachs.com
http://www.morganstanley.com

Of course all of the aspects described above should be closely coordinated with existing company branding and style guide to ensure consistency in all visual marketing materials.

To view examples of our financial website design work please visit lightmix.com

http://tinyurl.com/ctotb9

Note introduction of more aggressive organe color in contrast to previous safe corporate blue.  It is interesting that with time, it seems, corporate clients are becoming more aware of public expanding tolerance for color and old stereotypes of typical color associations may no longer be true. We will be tracking any color use changes with  other corporations in the financial services, investments and IT fields.

Free Financial Data Providers by Markets

1. Stocks and Equities

2. Futures and Commodities

3. Fixed income

4. Foreign Markets

5. Forex

1. Stocks and Equities

One of the latest finds is http://www.wikinvest.com/special/BloggerCentral - a free great toolset that allows you to include inline quotes and great looking charts that can be customized with your own notes into any page of a site or a blog. WikiInvest also allows to participate and share your content by syndicating your own content via WikWire, a service that shares your own posts and articles with other sites and generates traffic back to you. Great this about this is that this works with most popular blogging tools such as Typepad, Blogger Moveble Type, Joomla and of course WordPress, most popular blog publishing platform.

Stock chart provided by WikiInvest looks excellent, their brand isn”t overpowering and can be customized to fit size you need. The flash chart also interactive which Will stand out from the rest of the data providers offering same dull graphical charts.

Those interested in generating more traffic to their blogs in equities as well as any other markets should definitely check out the WikiWire platform as this is just another way to present your content to the public.