Every Tuesday, Corporate Insight releases recommendations to help financial services firms improve a key aspect of the online user experience. Recommendations are taken directly from our Monitor Reports and Consulting Services research, which cover the banking, brokerage, credit card, asset management and insurance industries.

This week’s recommendations come from our e-Monitor report titled Rich Media: Engaging Investors With Sight & Sound and focus on ways firms can use rich media to enhance the user experience on their websites:

Provide an archive of webinars and webcasts – Firms that do offer in-house or externally-sponsored webcasts or webinars should also archive this content. Often, webcasts and webinars are available free of cost so providing some, even a handful, of past presentations could spur some interest in prospective clients. An archive of webinars and webcasts helps firms to document and highlight their commentaries and educational resources. Charles Schwab offers an interesting way of coupling future and archived webinars by providing them within a dedicated sitelet.

Offer complementary downloadable materials – Firms that offer interactive tutorials or webinars should equip the presentation with takeaway materials. Naturally, offering these resources would work best with educational content, which could include downloadable slides or quizzes for investors to review later. Offering a downloadable transcript of the presentation itself can also be helpful to users wanting to review the presentation later.

Utilize rich media to promote the firm – Rich media encompasses a variety of formats, and utilizing some type of medium is a great way to promote firm products and services. Certainly, not every firm has the resources or incentive to sponsor more complex resources, such as webinars or webcasts. However, streaming videos that provide a general overview of a specific product or offer are one way to reach out to prospective clients with minimal costs to the firm.

Provide sharing capabilities to distribute content – On today’s social web, users have the expectation that they will be able to share information quickly and easily. To satisfy these users, and to help promote their materials, firms should allow users to email a video or presentation, or preferably, to share on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. TradeKing supplements each of its on-demand videos with several options to share the content.

For more information on our Monitor and Consulting services, contact Bob Burlin at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 212-832-2002 x115.