Canoe Financial Website Casestudy

How to deliver and support a secure in demand investor resource against a rapidly growing and evolving brand narrative.

Canoe Financial is one of Canada's fastest-growing independent mutual fund companies managing $13 billion in assets across a diversified range of award-winning investment solutions.

Since its launch in 2008 in Calgary, Alberta, Canoe Financial has undergone exponential growth, multiple brand evolutions, product expansions and now has a significant presence across Canada, including offices in Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. In 2020, Canoe Financial came to Soci to rebuild the website with a completely new design and brand guidelines to align with the growth of the brand and the long-term needs of the website.

Project Objectives / Tasks:

Improve navigation and design
Fix overall experience, compliance, and optimization issues
Responsive integration of external data elements and feeds
Integrate with Salesforce & Pardot to improve lead generation
Migration content out of original website
Custom Data Feed Integration with Modern Responsive Charts

Unique Challenges / Requirements:

Time to Market
Rapidly evolving Brand Identity
Complex 3rd Party Integrations
Accessibility Requirements

Here's an overview of the products/ solutions we created and the services we provided to help them achieve their goals.

Products

Mobile First Responsive Website:

Our team designed and developed a mobile-first, responsive website showcased Canoe Financial's wide array of investment funds and helped them integrate live data, in WCAG 2.0 AA compliant manner to support the broad need of their audience. In late 2020, the website was launched with zero downtime.

Modern Cloud Based Approach:

By leveraging AgilityCMS Pro and a headless architecture, Canoe Financial was able to shutdown their original internal web and data hosting environment without stress. AgilityCMS now secures and backs up their data in the cloud, Github stores, manages, and backs up their codebase and Vercel hosts their website via Content Distribution Network which is super fast, redundant, autoscaling, and much cheaper than servers. Having undergone a full cloud environment transformation, Canoe Financial hasn't looked back.

2023 Creative Refresh:

To highlight the benefits of the headless solution SOCi provided, we need look no further than early 2023 where the Canoe went through yet another major identity overhaul that affected every design element of the site. Every single page was updated visually to incorporate the new brand identity, with zero downtime, zero modifications to the CMS content or environment, and a minimal spend for a creative integration of this scale.

How We Helped

1 /

Creative Design
| UI/UX:

SOCi's creative design experts collaborated closely with Canoe Financial to understand their brand identity and target audience. By combining aesthetics and functionality, they delivered a visually appealing and user-friendly design that aligned with Canoe Financial's vision and mission.

2 /

Front-End
Web Development:

The front-end web development team at SOCI skillfully transformed the approved designs into a functional website. Leveraging Next.js (A React framework) they created an interactive interface with smooth animations and intuitive navigation, enhancing user engagement.

3 /

Strategy
& Approach:

SOCi's strategic approach involved in-depth market research and analysis to gain insights into Canoe Financial's industry landscape and its target customers. This enabled the team to create a website that not only met business goals but also exceeded user expectations.

4 /

CMS Integration
& Development:

Canoe Financial required a content management system (CMS) that allowed easy updates and streamlined content publishing. SOCi integrated AgilityCMS, a headless and robust user-friendly platform, customized to Canoe Financial's specific requirements.

5 /

Compliance
& Certification:

Given the financial nature of Canoe Financial's services, adherence to compliance standards was paramount. SOCi ensured that the website met the stringent accessibility level WCAG 2.0 AA - Level AA compliance, making it inclusive and accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.