What US Affluent Investors Want From Their Investment Firms' Web Sites

More than three-quarters of all US online affluent investors use their investment firms' Web sites, up from two-thirds in 2005. What site features do they value most? Balances and holdings are by far the most important. Online trading has also become relatively more important in the past three years. Moreover, investors rate the same features high on quality, with clients of Vanguard and Charles Schwab giving their sites' account information the highest quality ratings. But other features lag in quality. For example, advisor communications tools are rated high in importance but low in quality. eBusiness channel managers should heed their own sites' quality ratings: The higher the quality scores that a client assigns, the more money the client keeps with the firm, and the more likely the client is to consider the firm for more products.