As you know at IFAPortals we are constantly looking at ways in which we can help our users and with this in mind, I am pleased to announce the launch of a new virtual PA service developed with one of the country's leading Virtual PA companies, alldayPA. The new service, named ifaPA, is directly tailored towards the needs of IFAs and Mortgage Brokers.

IFAPortals has used a virtual office for nearly 5 years with great success both in terms of productivity and cost savings and we have managed to secure rates for financial services professionals that cannot be achieved anywhere else, even by going direct to alldayPA!

Using ifaPA, you can have your calls answered 24/7 365 days a year by a human being, getting messages relayed to you via SMS and e-mail.  Make a great first impression with potential clients (even when you're not in work), by handling thei ...

2009 is history; the IFAs and mortgage brokers we're  talking to are generally speaking, "glad to see the back of it". 

We're already into our second full week of 2010 - markets have rallyed, the property market is showing continued signs of life, but no doubt 2010 will present challenges for many, not least those set by the FSA, two of which are TCF and RDR.

In 2010 IFA Portals' sole business objective is to deliver websites to new and existing clients that make their lives as intermediaries easier, more manageable and more profitable - at a price that makes them a sensible business decision rather than a risky one.

Following on from 2009, when we added new calculators, a TCF feedback form, Orbiter mortgage sourcing and new commission earning plugins,  in 2010 we want to ensure not only that we pack even more value into the websites& ...

As many of you will be aware, there is a social bookmarking facility on the article pages of your IFAPortal website. The aim of this is to allow your visitors a convenient way to share or bookmark the content on your website. Such links in social bookmarking tools like Digg can result in more physical traffic from those websites but perhaps more importantly, search engines like Google place value on links from social bookmarking sites, which are effectively votes for your content.

We've had numerous requests to expand the range of social bookmarking tools that can be accessed from your IFAPortal website, and we've recently received a request from a network compliance team to add a "you are exiting our site" style disclaimer to the social bookmarking facility.

With this in mind, today we've totally revamped the facility; it has a much wider range of social bookmarking sites, now links to sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and o ...

We're really pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Orbiter the online sourcing and mortgage trading platform.

As of today all our current and future clients will be able to provide mortgage sourcing best buys information and product search via their own IFAPortal website at NO additional monthly cost.

There'll be a small one time setup fee that's all, and we'll be emailing our client base with further details this week.

A couple of weeks ago Mark and I presented at Intrinsic's North West regional meeting.  Our session was about leveraging your website as a communication tool.

There's a lot of focus on social media at present, and rightly so; the world's population is more connected than ever, real world relationships are being taken online and nurtured there too, and new relationships are being forged by the second, all through social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

With TCF upon us and RDR just around the corner, cementing your relationship with your clients via regular communication is more important than ever and, amidst all the focus on social media it's easy to overlook the opportunities to use a simple website to enable two-way communication with your clients.

I'm not saying don't use social media, not for one second, but I am saying that like traditional offline marketing, you need a varied or mixed approach to ensure y ...

We are currently looking into a making a mortgage sourcing system available through the websites in conjunction with a market leading provider, we have negotiated substantial discounts which we will be passing on 100% to our users, in addition we have secured a 30 day free trial for all our users so you can try it out!!

We need your feedback so that we can tailor the product to our users satisfaction so the more feedback the better-could you please take a few minutes to make comment on the following questions.

1. Would you pay for a B2C sourcing application to plug into your site that would drive email leads straight back to you?
2. Would you be happy to include direct only deals in the results?
3. Would you want to show best buy tables with products by category e.g. “Top 5 fixed rates” or just have a short fact find and results?

But you already know this!  You'll have had a few letters from us by now, informing you of how we are handling it.  In the main this means converting all our clients from standing order to direct debit - so we can manage future changes and you don't have to worry about amending standing orders.

It's only a few quid off your monthly subscription, not something that will break a business, but with times as hard as they are, and the financial services sector feeling it more than most, acting on the rate change quickly and, making sure we passed all of the rate change on to our clients (who in the main aren't VAT registered), from 1st Dec, was a top priority for us.

We've been housekeeping on the servers in the last few days.  We've noticed some of our clients using very large image files on their websites - some are as large as 5Mb!! 

It's only a problem if you include these images on your pages - you're forcing your website visitors to download them - this will take a long long time even with a reasonable connection speed. Many people won't wait for the page to load.

Image files used in a page should really be no bigger than 50kb.  Read our knowledgebase article for more information on how to use images on your website.

IFAPortal websites for IFAs now include a Longevity Calculator which will provide your clients with some interesting food for thought!

Based on statistics and research the calculator can assess both the chances of an individual reaching a certain age and what things will cost in years to come.  The calculator has been kindly provided by Lifetrust Insurance.  It's a generic calculation so it doesn't take account of individual circumstances but it's quite an eye opener.

By default it is not visible on your IFAPortal website, you need to login visit the Calculators section of your website and enable it by checking the checkbox to the right hand side of the calculator.