Pathfinder Helps Leading Online Brokerage optionsXpress Maximize Customer Adoption

Company:

optionsXpress (NASDAQ: OXPS), is a top-ranked Chicago-based online brokerage providing individual investors with powerful tools for stock and options trading education, evaluation and execution.

Challenge:

Integral to the company’s success is its commitment to continually enhance the overall customer experience with a philosophy it calls ‘iterative innovation’. The company partnered with Pathfinder to further maximize customer adoption.

Solution:

During a three-month period, Pathfinder conducted an intensive usability study of the optionsXpress brokerage platform. At the conclusion of this project phase, we delivered a comprehensive User Experience Design strategy that addressed immediate customer needs and provided a detailed roadmap that would enable optionsXpress to make improvements over time, in keeping with the company’s philosophy of iterative innovation.

Impact:

Multiple minor trading products were combined and content was reorganized, which helped customers trade more efficiently with fewer mistakes. As a result, more customers are taking advantage of the full breadth of features available on the site, including Virtual Trading, Xecute (auto-trade) and Watch Lists.

In the first post redesign survey conducted by Barron’s, optionsXpress received an unprecedented 4 and a half stars as the top online brokerage, and has remained Barron’s top internet brokerage ever since. As a result of the redesign, more customers began using the site’s rich features, and account signup and retention have increased dramatically. The company, which went public in 2005, has a current market capitalization of over $2 billion and more than 200,000 customer accounts, with options trades representing almost 80% of all trading activity.