Challenge

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is one of the best known and most trusted brands in the financial sector, for both consumer (private investor) and business (brokers, analysts, fund managers) audiences alike. In 2004 it was recognised that this brand value was not being fully exploited in the online arena, despite an already substantial user-base at www.londonstockexchange.com.

As a result, the LSE embarked on an extensive redevelopment of www.londonstockexchange.com, with the following objectives:

• Develop content and services that would meet users’ expectations of the brand and so extend to the online medium the LSE’s position as a leading brand in the financial sector.
• Develop best of breed online products and services for consumers (private investors).
• Develop best of breed online business-to-business products and services by leveraging both the LSE’s position as a market data provider, and its close relationships with listed companies and the financial community.
• Develop a marketing and sales platform for the LSE’s offline products and services.
• Become the leading online media owner in the financial sector and in turn grow online advertising revenues.
• Implement an “all new” web technology platform that would support all future strategic web initiatives.
• In February 2005 the London Stock Exchange completed a 9 month website redevelopment programme that represented the first phase in meeting the above objectives. The LSE’s suppliers included Priocept, who were appointed to support the programme both as a technology advisor and as the lead developer on a number of specific product developments.

Solution

An initial launch of the redesigned London Stock Exchange website took place in June 2004 and by February 2005 all new products and services were online.

The changes included:

• A complete redesign of the website in line with a revised LSE corporate identity.
• Restructuring of the website to support both B2C (private investor) and B2B (financial community) audiences.
• Development of a “Single-Sign On” framework that allows LSE customers to access a wide range of different products and subscription services, using a single user profile.
• Development of a market leading Prices & News service that provides both consumer and business audiences with the most comprehensive range of share price, market news, investment content and other tools available on the web. This includes a leading portfolio management product, a share price alerting service, e-commerce functionality for purchase of value-added services such as real-time
  prices and company reports, and a wealth of additional content including expert industry commentary, investment news, famous quotes and investing rules of the day.
• Development of e-Learning modules to provide private investors with step-by-step guides to investing in different markets and security types.
• Development of InvestaQuest, a fantasy share dealing competition that was launched in partnership with Barclays Stockbrokers to promote private share dealing.
• InvestaQuest subscribers numbered 10,000, with the winning fantasy investor receiving a £40,000 prize in November 2005.
• Development of a Training and Consultancy service that includes e-commerce functionality to allow users to select and purchase from a range of investment and financial seminars and training courses that are operated by the LSE.
• Development of Investor Relations Web Modules (IRWM), a subscription based product aimed at investor relations departments within listed companies, which provides a fully managed and hosted investor relations website. IRWM allows companies to quickly set up a sophisticated investor relations website, including share price and market news data, financial reports and company fundamentals, without having to develop their own website and without having to perform complex integration with external data feeds.
• Development of the Corporate Responsibility Exchange (CRE), a corporate governance and corporate social responsibility reporting service for listed companies. The first product of its kind, CRE provides public companies both in Europe and the US with a single channel through which they can report on corporate governance, social and environmental impact, human rights policies and track record, and other critical information that ethical investors find difficult to source when making investment decisions based on a company’s social responsibility record.

Results

During the course of 2005, as www.londonstockexchange.com has become fully developed and adopted by any increasingly broad user base, monthly unique users of the site have increased to 1.1 million.  There are 80,000 subscribed (registered) users of the site, with 45,000 of these actively using the portfolio service to manage their investments including equities, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), investment trusts, cash, funds and covered warrants.

The rapid growth in private investor usage of the site has allowed advertising revenues to grow 700% during the last 12 months, and this is combined with significant new revenue from subscription based services.

The advertising and sale of LSE training courses and seminars, now conducted through the website, has seen significant revenue growth since launch.  Use of the website by the B2B audience has also seen rapid growth. The CRE product has now been adopted by over 175 listed companies in the UK as their preferred method of corporate social responsibility reporting, including more than 50 within the FTSE 100.  The Media & Business Centre section of the website drives over 25 enquires per month for venue and studio hire which has translated into over 80 bookings this financial year.

The website has also attracted very positive customer feedback:

The new features are great and make information gathering, comparison and evaluation much easier.

The new portfolio is a great improvement on the previous service, and, of course, offers a clearer presentation and much more information and choice.

It’s much easier to move around and find the stuff that I need.

Congrats on the new look – much better and far more informative – faster too!!!

A substantial programme of further development of www.londonstockexchange.com is planned during 2006. This will include further development of private investor content and services, development of new B2B products to support the financial community, and ongoing improvements in overall website content and usability.