A bold, future-facing digital presence for Hong Kong IFA

The Hong Kong Investment Funds Association (HKIFA) is a non-profit organisation representing the fund management industry. It exists to cultivate the development of the fund industry in Hong Kong; enhance the industry’s professional standards, in line with international best practices; and maintain the region’s status as the major fund management centre in Asia.

Its website no longer reflected its position in the industry. The organisation wanted a bespoke new digital presence that better presents the expertise, services and knowledge base it offers to its members. It had to be brought up to date in how it looks and how it functions, have an easy-to-access resource library for members, talk to broad audience groups and be a tool for communication within the organisation. 

What we did

We built an improved, user-led digital environment using our proven steps, from initial strategy through to design, prototyping, user journey and website build that functioned across multiple languages. We began by refining the messaging, and crafted a core narrative that presents HKIFA’s market advantage and positions it as an authoritative knowledge base, with an easy-to-access resource library for members. 

With the client located in Hong Kong, we ran remote, interactive workshops to manage and lead product development from concept through the development process. This will continue with review and performance monitoring post-launch.

Design and build

We redefined the digital structure, considering how content will sit and how each audience will navigate around it. We designed a creative look and feel – with a clear UI and UX –  to uplift the brand, with a user-focused and human-led approach (as we do for all digital product creation).

There were a number of specific requirements. It had to be secure, GDPR compliant, scalable, follow W3C content accessibility guidelines, integrate with existing data, have multi-language functionality, be easy for HKIFA’s teams to use and update, and able to manage CRM database integrations and future portal additions. It also had to offer English, Formal and Simplified Chinese translations.

Crafting a bespoke Wordpress environment allowed us to meet all these requirements. The platform is a safe GDPR-compliant infrastructure that accommodates existing information and can integrate with any other existing data that HKIFA holds. We built in rich, organic-focused SEO as well as data analytics and reporting, so that results can be easily measured. We employed WPML translations allowing HKIFA complete control over all language input.

Automated display of data

A unique element of our digital delivery is the automation and display of data pulled directly from third-party vendors linked to HKIFA. This includes organisations such as Morningstar, FTSE Group and Lipper. Our team wrote a number of individual automation scripts, which run at set times to retrieve new data from multiple sources, and adds latest versions directly to the HKIFA website.

For daily MPF figures (Hong Kong’s mandatory provident fund for retirement savings) we retrieve an updated file every morning, extracting figures and adding these to our own database, which is then displayed on the HKIFA website. This has removed significant manual input that previously had to be done by the HKIFA team, and gives visitors a lot of added value through real-time data.

Digital infrastructure

The website is hosted on Kinsta, a Google Cloud hosting environment that utilises a tech stack optimised for WordPress. It can handle high traffic spikes easily and is secure, with two-factor authentication, GeoIP blocking, hardware firewalls, many advanced features and active and passive security measures. In the future we can plan and develop prioritised integrations where necessary with custom APIs as required.

Content management system

To empower HKIFA’s internal team we developed a digital platform that they can independently control and manage, with a Wordpress CMS that’s simple, functional and easy to use at launch and in future. It’s able to handle the future content additions and database integrations that have been part of our project requirement planning.

The outcome

We built a bespoke, strong, scalable digital platform and brand presence that meets multiple client needs around functionality, data automation, language translations and accessibility. It positions HKIFA as the authority it is, improves the way members can engage and access knowledge and insights, and is set up to easily adapt to data-led future needs.