This is Money
- Interface design and
- XHTML/CSS
This is Money is the UK's leading financial news and advice website. The site was first launched in 1999 and very quickly built up both a large following and reputation. In 2003 work started on improving the user experience, underlying architecture and to explore the commercial potential This is Money had to offer.
"This is Money won: Best Digital Product 2003 (AOP), Best Financial Website 2004 (API) & Financial Website of the Year in 2004 (ABI)"
- Finance & publishing
- Launched Spring 2004
- Visit the This is Money site
Back in 2003 This is Money really had become a victim of its own success and the commercial potential from having such a large audience simply couldn't be realised under its existing design and architecture.
As a team we worked very hard to achieve two main goals: firstly to satisfying the requirements of the commercial team and secondly to create a superior user experience. By making the user experience a positive one we knew it would naturally lead to more traffic, more advocacy, which in turn would lead to more commercial revenue and so on and so on.
One important consideration was not to 'switch off' the current user base that had been so loyal since 1999; we were conscious not to change the dynamic of the site too much. The safeguard against this was to be diligent with designing the experience. Typical activities included the running of focus groups, shadowing several users and spending considerable amounts on prototyping usability sessions with a sample of our users to ensure things were well received.
As a testament to the popularity and success of This is Money the site now regularly attracts unique users of over 1 million every month! This is Money has also enjoyed critical acclaim; it won the following awards in my time there: Best Digital Product/Service 2003 (AOP), Best Financial Website 2004 (API) and Financial Website of the Year in 2004 (ABI).
