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.

One of things we come across regularly are problems with domain transfers, or DNS configuration. It seems all domain registrars were not created equal.

From poor customer support that is slow to respond to punitive charges when you want to make a change or move the domain away from them.  Some registrars take the proverbial.

Even if your regsitrar is one of the better ones, as an IFAPortal website user, there is good reason to transfer your domain to IFA Portals. As a client you would see no difference, you can still use your current email services if you wish, there's no need to use ours if you have a setup that works.

You might also save a few pounds as we pay the renewal fees on co.uk domains, and don't pass these costs on as we view them as covered by your monthly hosting fee. 

Should you leave IFA Portals the domain can be moved away from us to another registrar at no cost. It only takes a few minut ...

A new pensions article has been added to IFAPortal websites for IFAs titled "Reshaping Retirement".   The article has been kindly supplied by Life Trust Insurance, and presents an objective report on retirement planning given increasing life expectancy.

By default the new article is not visible on your IFAPortal website; to make visible you will need to login, visit the pensions/retirement section of your website and make the article viewable by selecting the checkbox beside it.

A new Investment calculator is available in your IFAPortal website*.  By default it is not visible on your website.

To make it visible just login to your IFAPortal website, visit the Calculators menu section, locate the investment calculator and tick it's checkbox. You can then log out again.

This has been developed in response to feedback from our users.

*This calculator is not available on PinkPortal or MortgagePortal websites

IFAPortal Platform 2.0 features an "Our People" section, where you can list your people, provide their contact details (whilst protecting their email addresses) and provide a biography for each person.  We added this as a result of feedback from Platform 1.0 users.

It's been very well received but it's not enough. Since we launched this new functionality, we've been asked on numerous occasions - "Can we add photos in the 'Our People' section?". Our normal response is "not at the moment", as you can't upload a picture when completing a biography, but we might change that at some point.

The good news is that for every problem there's always a "hack" - as programmers call them - we call them workarounds! If you want to host pictures of your people on your IFAPortal website you can do it, and within each persons biography too.

We've added this workaround to our knowledgebase. You can find  ...

We will have a stand at the Adviser 2008 exhibition in Manchester this year so if any you want to pop along to the stand and introduce yourselves in person we would be only to happy to see you.

On another note we would be interested to gauge interest as to whether you would find a mortgage sourcing tool on your website of interest- we believe we can bring you an up to the minute sourcing tool which you could either use yourselves,with clients or let clients use it themselves-the sourcing tool would be free of charge on an ongoing basis but there may be a small charge for integrating it into your site.

Please post your responses onto the Blog and let us know what you think?

Mark.

As many of you know, IFAPortal Websites provide a basic log of visitor and user activity built into the admin control panel. But, if you're the inquisitve type, as we know lots of you are, you might need to know more.

Since the launch of Platform 2.0 in April 2008 we've been able to offer 3rd party script support on our IFAPortal websites, which in english translates to - "I suggest you look no further than Google Analytics".

Probably the most useful application Google have engineered since their search tool (what search tool?), Google Analytics provides very detailed information about your website traffic and useage.  Sign up, get a tailored piece of javascript code, then follow the installation guide in our knowledgebase (Find it here).

Once installed, sit back and enjoy comprehensive useage data, with ...

We often get asked a) how a client can get their website further up the search engines and b) what do we do to "optimise" IFAPortal websites.   

Optimisation is not a word we like to use - as we don't attempt to manipulate the search engines, instead we focus on building the best websites for IFAs that we can.  We provide a vast library of current, reliable comprehensive information on a range of financial subjects, which is delivered into your websites in a form that search engines can easilly spider/crawl.

Our websites offer functionality in the form of calculators, plugins and market information , which give your visitors good reason to use your website regularly and link to your websites, and the search engines a good reason to index and rank it.

Of course we make sure your website uses metadata (keywords and description) tha ...

We are looking at adding a new calculator into the suite on Platform 2-the new addition will be a longevity calculator which we have done in conjunction with Lifetrust-there is some pretty powerful figures on there and will hopefully enhance the functionality of your site for your clients-I would welcome your feedback as to whether you feel it would be of benefit to your website?

Visit this link to see the calculator in action http://www.longevitycalculator.co.uk/

We've added a blogging application to our website - at the moment it sits outside of the Support section, but we'll see how it evolves - it might well sit better there.