Corporate Governance UX Research: Migrating to a new and improved proxy voting platform.

I began working in Client Services at a Corporate Governance firm in July 2016. During this time, the company was trying to update one of its main products, the voting platform Wiewpoint.

Wiewpoint’s main task is to receive a ballot from the distributor, vote the ballot (this can be done automatically or manually), and report on the ballot history.

Clients were using the Legacy platform, which had been around since the company was a startup back in 2005. The look and feel of the site was clearly outdated, and our competition had recently released a shiny new voting platform.

Below is a screenshot of the previous log in page. Nothing about it screams modern, and it certainly does not capture the attention of potential clients.

The landing page was not much better. It definitely did not look like something that would be coming out of San Francisco in the late 2010's.

Benchmarking

Our main competitor was Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). they held about 40% of the market share, while we held around 45% at the time. Smaller firms represented the remaining 15%.

ISS Proxy Voting Platform: ProxyExchange

Their login page had a modern design. This made you feel like the company was with the times.

The next image is a screenshot of their landing page. It is also fairly modern, but unless you were a proxy enthusiast, finding your way around all thi data could be quite a challenge.

Customer Interviews

Once I was given my client portfolio, it was time to reach out to clients and figure out what information they would like to see on the new platform. We thought about keeping the same format with 7 items on the main navigation bar, but we weren’t sure that was the best approach if we wanted to engage non-heavy users.

Each Client Service Manager interviewed their own clients, so I conducted 13 interviews. My clients ranged from Institutional Investors and Pension Funds, to Asset Managers and Hedge Funds.

We took a deep dive into how client’s interacted with the site. What tools did they use on a daily basis? What did they consider irrelevant? How could we make their proxy voting experience more seamless?

We recorded a wide range of answers, but we noticed patterns among similar clients.

User Personas

We held several brainstorming sessions and came up with 3 categories to classify our clients.

1.“Governance Enthusiast”: Mainly asset owners and large Institutional Investors. These client’s had proxy voting policies that required a case-by-case approach, which lead to the client logging into the platform almost on a daily basis.

These clients agreed that the site was very outdated, but had used it so often they were used to it. Their main complaint we received was that there were a lot of tabs that they did not use and that they could not access any of the white papers (included in their service) through this site. They mainly used the “Ballot Inbox” (where the voting happens), the reporting section, the policy management tool to view their current policy, and the Watchlist function.

2. “Aware but Inactive”: Smaller pension funds who did not have bandwidth to manually review votes, but who had an automated custom policy (ESG or Climate policy). They mainly accessed the site to download historical reports and to occasionally override a vote.

These less active clients mainly used the “Ballot Inbox” (where the voting happens) and the reporting section. They felt like the site was a bit overwhelming.

3. “Set it and Forget it”: This was mainly made up of hedge funds and other client’s who voted in line with the our standard house policy. They rarely accessed the site, had scheduled automated reports delivered and did not feel like the site was user-friendly. These client’s stated that they did not plan on monitoring proxy voting, so they did not provide much insight in regards to improvements.

Working with the Product team

We worked closely with the product managers and handed them our feedback. We broke down the problems clients faced into 3 main categories:

1. No access to other services that are included in their subscription. They would have to leave Wiewpoint and go to our main website to get white papers and listen to season previews, reviews, and podcasts.
2. Limited use of some tabs. They would much rather only see what they are interacting with on a daily basis.
3. Reporting. The current tab does not show what information is in each historial report — you must run it before you have any explanation. Not very intuitive.

With all our feedback, the product team created wireframes which they ran by us and eventually rolled out a new platform.

The new and improved Wiewpoint

The platform now included 3 main sections: Dashboard, Workflow, and Reporting.

The Workflow was where the votes were executed. A combination of the previous ballot inbox and it includes the Watchlist function on the same page. The data shown is highly customizable, and includes over 52 filter criteria.

The Dashboard was created in order to house other products that clients needed access to. It also included access to our blog, which was previously updated only via email.

The last section was the Reporting section. You could easily configure the reports and customize them. We still hadn’t found a solution to explaining what information each contained, but we continued to work on this part once the new platform was live.

The new site had launched, and we received feedback positive feedback immediately. Maintaining an online platform and maximizing the user experience is a never ending journey, so we continue to work side by side with our clients to provide the most up to date service possible.