by Scott Ronalds

If you’ve visited our website lately, you may have noticed a new look to the homepage. It was time for a refresh. We’ve made it a little cleaner and condensed some text. You may also notice that the “guy” is gone. That’s right, he’s moved on to be the face of one of the banks. Only kidding.

A little background here. When we redesigned our site in 2015, a key objective was to make first-time visitors feel comfortable and make it easier – and less intimidating – for them to get in touch with us. We were advised that an effective way of doing this is to use an image (stock photo) of a friendly-looking person who is in the age demographic of many of our clients (the average age of a Steadyhand client is 56).

We were a little uneasy with the direction and look, as it felt a little too much like a bank site and took away some of our personality, but we were willing to give it a try. The initial feedback was mixed. Some clients and heavy site users liked the new look, others not so much. We got a query or two on whether the “guy” was single (no joke), but for the most part, the reaction was pretty neutral.

Our business has grown nicely over the past two years, but it’s primarily come from referrals from existing clients, not because our homepage is blowing away new visitors.

On this note, we wanted to inject a little more personality into the site so we’ve gone back to a similar design that we’ve used in the past, with a few tweaks. This is 2017 after all.

Hopefully you like the change. Or did you like the old version better? Maybe you didn’t even notice. In any event, you can rest assured that our investment process and philosophy remain unchanged – as they have since Day 1.

And for the record, the guy was taken.