Changes at This is Money

As you may have noticed, we've given the lefthand navigation a bit of a spring clean today. We wanted to make the site easier to use - and to make it easier to find the various levels of content and tools.

You may find areas of the site with the old navigation, but the new style should have washed through to all parts by Thursday.

We're also made some changes to our market data and Power Portfolio tool. Portfolio users will see a new strip of links across the top. These will allow you to view each portfolio not just as a list or performance table, but as a heatmap and performance chart. You'll also be able to see a breakdown of asset allocation of your portfolio and more. Here are five things we've changed...

ONE: virtual portfolio building made easy
Add shares, funds and other securities to your portfolio directly from search results
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/company-search

TWO: more easy ways to build your portfolio
Add shares and funds to your portfolio from company and funds summary pages
eg.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bp.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/funds

THREE: monitor and maintain your investments as charts
Set up comparison charts for your 'favourite' shares, funds and indices - and save your settings
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/charts

FOUR: compare and contrast your investments as heatmaps
Set up heatmaps for your 'favourite' shares and funds - and save your settings
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/heatmaps

FIVE: new portfolio tools
Compare your investments and assess your wealth with a range of new portfolio tools
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/portfolio

You can find out more and full details of the changes here...

We haven't removed anything but you may find it takes a few minutes to become accustomed. Once you are logged in to the site / portfolio you will also see Add to portfolio buttons next to companies and funds on their summary pages and on the search results page.

There are new personalisation features to help you get the best out of our charting and heatmap tools and new funds performance tables to allow you to view sensible comparisons of these key investments.

We'd love to hear your feedback on the changes so far, especially given there's more to come. We want your ideas to help steer This is Money's future.

Please leave comments here (no URL required) or email me at editor@thisismoney.co.uk

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

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Comments

[Jan C]

I am amazed that there are no 'Money' or 'Business' links on the HOMEPAGE of the newly designed Daily Mail wesbite. You have to drill down to find the 'Money' link and I suspect many will not bother.

Didn't any of the web designers bother to ask the Financial Team for their input? Gee, dropping 'Money' from the Daily Mail's Homepage shows how little you guys must be thought of in Daily Mail towers - are you all about to be handed your P45s and no one has told you?

Design over substance in my personal opinion

[Andrew Oxlade, Editor]

Jan,
Thanks for the comment. The Mail Online have added a Money button on the secondary navigation on every page that comes through to our Homepage so I'm hoping the P45s are on hold!

As the generator of online business and financial content across the group, we'll be working towards developing a tailored financial content solution for Mail Online very soon. Watch this space!

[Sue]

There used to be a link to the TIM Home page on every page of TIM. Now the only place I have seen it is on this Editor's Blog page. Otherwise you have to click on the TIM logo at the top of the page to find it. Is this an oversight in the revamp?

[Robert, London]

I welcome the company/symbol search on the left side, rather than hidden under the top-of-page search box 'All Stories' but the Portfolio seems to be using Digital Look which I gave up after using DL because it's chronically slow. Also the info shown by the portfolio is extremely sparce eg no purchase price, number of shares.

[Richard, This is Money]

Hi Sue,

Thanks for your comment about the Home button. Every website should have a home button on every page, right? And we will.

The trouble was, because of a bug caused by well-meaning techie meddling some time ago, ours only ever appeared on about half the pages and being a stickler for consistency I've taken it off for the time being.

There are some new features that you can only see if you log in first such as Add to portfolio links on company search results, company and funds summary pages, and a personalisation feature on the charting and heatmap tools that allow you to save your settings to better monitor your virtual investments. For this reason I wanted to keep the Log in prominent and worry about the Home later.
Like you say, you can use the This is Money logo for now while we work on the final stages of the tidy-up.

Robert,

There's no doubt that Digital Look has been guilty of a less-than perfect technical solution but your accusation that the portfolio is sparce does add up. If anything there's too much info to deal with. Of course you can add your purchase price and number of shares, it wouldn't be a portfolio without that facility. Where it's slightly illogical at first glance is that you have to add the stock, then go back to it and add the price and number.

Cheers,

Richard.

[Pat]

I notice that some page seem to be quite a bit out of date which in the world of finance can be quite a problem!