Making PricingDirect's Marketing Site Intuitive
Context
PricingDirect, a subsidiary of J.P. Morgan’s investment bank, provides evaluated pricing for fixed income securities (e.g., bonds) and derivatives (e.g., options), pricing millions daily via its web application.
My Role
Lead Product Designer leading a 10-month redesign of the PricingDirect marketing site and application with a small team and executive stakeholders. I improved user experience by prioritizing key daily news updates and showcasing business-published white papers, keeping users informed and reinforcing PricingDirect's position as an industry thought leader.
The Challenge
The News page had significant usability issues, making content difficult to discover and browse. Users struggled to find key information, frequently contacting PricingDirect for details already available online.
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Client Pain Points:
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Insufficient information to evaluate if PricingDirect is the right solution for purchase.
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Unclear impact of current events and market trends on their operations.
Business Pain Points:
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Content scattered across marketing emails and the News Page, hindering event promotion and timely announcements.
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No auto-publishing system for thought leadership articles, requiring manual coding.
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Limited ability to generate leads and acquire new clients.
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Desire to establish industry leadership constrained by technical limitations.
Results & Outcomes
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I redesigned the news page for improved navigation, better showcasing PricingDirect’s content. This allows the business to efficiently publish thought pieces and strengthen its thought leadership.
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I also established a sustainable practice with the tech team for implementing JPM marketing brand standards and introduced a web content management system, enabling the business team to create new content independently.
My Process
Definition:
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Collaborated with PricingDirect leadership to define redesign goals and visitor challenges.
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Prioritized the News page to align with the company’s thought leadership objectives.
Research & Discovery:
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With no direct client access, I interviewed five sales team members to understand visitor pain points, uncovering difficulties in finding timely updates.
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I analyzed web archives for best practices and conducted an Information Architecture and content audit based on insights from Sales and competitive research.
Design:
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I restructured the News page using research insights and user-tested JPM brand components to ease development.
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Addressed developer concerns about custom coding by implementing a content management system.
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Introduced CTAs and sign-up prompts to drive users toward PricingDirect trials to accomplish their goal of driving business from the news page.​
Site Audit
At the start of the project, I conducted a site audit to analyze the content and elements on each page. My initial focus was understanding the site’s information architecture.
The Information Architecture exercise proved insightful, quickly highlighting the News/Events page as a key focus. The news section used an accordion with over 95 entries (see IA details below). The video demonstrates the current user experience of the News section.
The accordion format is challenging to navigate, as it houses the most content and frequent updates but offers minimal screen space.
Pain Points:
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Element causes user to have to initiate action to read the content.
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Double scrolling caused by the embedded container.
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No indication of the total number of entries.
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Time-sensitive entries remain visible after becoming irrelevant.
Original State of the News Page:
Events Banner
Thought Pieces
News Archive
After completing the audit, I conducted a competitive analysis of the news page to overcome limitations in user contact, research, and site analytics. With no limited metrics, I explored best practices from other online archives to generate ideas and inform the redesign.
Pew Research News Archive
Discovery
Common UI elements across sites: category tabs, article previews, pagination, pill filters, date/topic filters, photos
Pfizer Press Release Archive
Apple News Archive
Design Decisions
Iterative changes:

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Used JPM brand components for easier implementation by the tech team.
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Replaced category filter pills with a title and icon approach to avoid redundancy with the existing tab mechanism at the top of the archive.
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Adopted a card format, aligning with J.P. Morgan's marketing site standards, offering a more visually appealing and editorial look.
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Reduced information overload while incorporating space for imagery.
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Replaced pagination with a "See More" CTA and a back-to-top button to improve navigation.
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Added a "Request a Trial" CTA on article pages to drive the sales funnel.
Iterations
I applied insights from the competitive analysis to the design iterations, allocating more screen space to the News Archive while maintaining emphasis on PricingDirect's thought leadership pieces.
First Iteration
Category tabs
Pill filter
Pagination
Container featuring latest entry for each news category
Date filters for years & months
Keyword search
Article preview
Final Design
