One of Canada’s largest discount brokerages continues to chip away at improving its website for investors. TD Direct Investing has quietly rolled out the long awaited improvements to their investor education seminar section. As far back as August of last year, we mentioned that something was in the works to improve the delivery of investor education resources however it wasn’t until this summer that the roll out officially took place.
This past year has seen a number of significant changes for TD’s discount brokerage division. In December 2012, TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage changed its name to TD Direct Investing and the website got a substantial overhaul in the process. One of the laggards, however, was the investor education area, specifically the investor education seminars section. In terms of the new upgrades, the focus appears to have been on improving the user interface and the organization of the content, both of which should enhance the accessibility of this section for self-directed investors.
Improved Content Structure
One of the first noticeable improvements is the structure they’ve provided to their seminar types. Previously, seminars and special events lacked descriptions as well as information on what investor experience level the events were appropriate for. Not having this information made it difficult for investors to determine what a particular seminar was about and whether it was worth attending.
In keeping with the categories they rolled out in December, TD Direct Investing has decided to use the following 3 categories when referring to types of self-directed investors:
- New to Online Investing
- Experienced Investor
- Advanced Trader
Sessions have now been grouped around the anticipated needs of each of these categories of investor (see table below). For example, for those new to online investing, TD Direct Investing has bundled their platform orientation seminars along with their “Introduction to Investing” seminar to allow users to familiarize themselves with the platform.
From a user experience perspective, the combination of the grouping seminars by experience level and providing seminar descriptions will definitely cut down on time spent evaluating and deciding which seminars to attend. As a bonus, it is now also possible to register online for an event as well as see the availability of spots for the session.
| New to Online Investing | Experienced Investor | Advanced Trader |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Investing | Introduction to Options Trading | Active Trader Platform |
| Introduction to WebBroker | Introduction to Technical Analysis | Advanced Options |
| WebBroker: Markets & Research | Understanding Margin & Short Selling | Options as an Income Strategy |