We launched a new responsive website for Thornburg Asset Management last year, the result of our extensive process that includes research, strategic direction, design and development.
The company, noted for its long-term, generalist investment approach, partnered with us to better communicate with its increasingly global audiences. Employees at the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based financial services company, with more than $60 billion in assets under management, say the new site reflects their brand and meets their goals.
“Leibowitz researched our business, interviewed employees, listened to our needs and incorporated everything into a design that is structured yet fluid, adaptable and expandable,” says Ray Nunno, Internet Marketing Manager at Thornburg. “The final product was a well-designed, well-organized, modern, responsive site that meets the needs of our clients.”
At Leibowitz, research is at the core of everything we do. We started this project with an onsite kickoff meeting at the Thornburg campus, during which we conducted interviews with key players to uncover their goals for the revised site and begin brand exploration. Additionally, we conducted a peer website review that further informed best practices and potential functionality for the new Thornburg.com.
During initial meetings with the company, interviewees said: “Santa Fe is a reflection of the way we do work, away from the noise of Wall Street, encouraging independent thinking.” Our design and imagery sought to match that self-reliant attitude. Many of the images show local flora up close, a call to Thornburg’s detail-oriented approach to investing. Our photos, some of which were shot by the Leibowitz team on Thornburg’s campus, set the style for all imagery to be used on the website. The result is a website that accurately portrays the company’s personality: a smart confidence away from the noise of traditional financial centers.
One of the core challenges in restructuring Thornburg’s web presence was combining five websites into one easy-to-use hub for all of the company’s fund and separately managed account information. The goal: to make it easier for Thornburg’s audiences to find what they’re looking for. We accomplished this by first creating a detailed sitemap and recommendations document that organized complex fund and company information. Throughout the subsequent interface design phase, our team also color coded Thornburg’s fund types (domestic equity, international equity, global equity, taxable bond, tax-exempt bond) and created nearly 30 icons for use throughout the website. The icons and colors helped display the company’s information in a logical way, clearly outlining the information a user could find on the site with each click.
From there, we created wireframes to confirm the functionality of the website prior to development. Once approved, we created two design directions. After completing revision cycles, we designed 20 template pages in three screen sizes: desktop, mobile phone and tablet. Thornburg had an in-house team of developers who took our front-end templates and plugged them seamlessly into a functional back end that worked with the company’s proprietary content management system.
After all 60 page designs were approved, we developed the front-end templates (CSS, Javascript) of the website to assure all functionality was in-line with what was detailed in the wireframes. We then worked with Thornburg’s in-house development team to finalize the templates.
The new website serves Thornburg’s diverse audiences, and better portrays the company’s powerful reputation and brand. We hope you enjoy the site as much as we do!
To view more of the work we conducted for Thornburg, please read our case study.