Value Line

Founded in 1931, Value Line, Inc. is an independent multidimensional investment research and financial publishing firm based in New York, best known for its analysis newsletters—the most highly regarded independent investment research resource in global investment and trading markets.  

Value Line’s previous public-facing website was built on the Ektron CMS platform several years ago. Not only was the platform no longer supported by the vendor in a way that was helpful to the company, but it was also no longer supporting its needs.

 Value Line partnered with Wakefly to develop their new website, which they chose to build on Kentico. This would give them the technical support they desired and cover all their needs for the foreseeable future. Additionally, Kentico would address all the issues content editors were experiencing. It would also improve the experience provided and impression given to prospects and customers.

Challenges

The project requirements were uncovered in the initial phase, including major upgrades in navigation, UX and many other functional points.

• Value Line wanted to increase sign-ups for free trials and newsletters, subscription purchases, and product downloads (free and paid).  
• Being too reliant on existing customers, they needed to reach a younger demographic and increase the number of new customers while retaining their existing customer base.
• The existing Value Line website navigation needed an overhaul and the company wanted to present teasers to its gated content (a vast majority), allowing prospects to interact with enough useful information to encourage them to sign up.  

Solution

In order to attract a younger demographic, special attention was paid to the design and layout of pages, all while taking Value Line’s existing, more senior-in-age, customer base into account. Content was reorganized in a thoughtful way that would enhance the user experience, but the change wasn’t so drastic as to make for a confusing experience for those accustomed to the old site. Carefully placed CTAs combined with clear marketing messages were used to guide prospects toward subscription.

Making the navigation clearer to the user was a challenge. Value Line has several websites to which the marketing website needs to link (e.g., for subscription registration and for access to member-only content and tools). The original site would confuse users, as a click on the marketing site might send them over to another site without any context as to why. Wakefly focused on structuring the layout of pages to be informative and clear in terms of when a call to action would send a user to another site.

Value Line wanted to be self-sufficient in creating their pages. But rather than creating rigid page templates, Wakefly leveraged the Kentico tools and flexibility to create a set of Page Builder components that content editors could choose from to build pages based on their specific content needs.  

Results

The new Value Line website was launched in November 2021. Affording much more flexibility than their old, outdated website, Value Line’s new Kentico site gives them the tools that enable them to build out pages according to their content needs, and the ability to update the layout of pages as those needs change.  

The new website, with its enhanced navigation, better UX, and carefully crafted design has already garnered impressive results, showing a healthy uptick in visitors and a significant increase in customers upgrading from free to paid subscriptions. One of the key performance metrics, sign-ups for its various offerings, is through the roof.