Financial Services industry For Sale

Business description

Web portal offering the most comprehensive and easily accessible UK finance information on the web and generating significant volumes of leads for the Financial Services industry

Online since 1999 and comprising six websites in all, this portal is an independent, consumer-friendly, information guide to all aspects of UK personal finance. Written and developed by non finance professionals, this site is aimed at normal people trying to make sense of all the jargon in attempting to get the best finance products available at the best possible price.

Having identified the confusion experienced by most people in buying financial products in the UK this business has researched the information available, turning it into a website by simply recording personal experiences any time a financial product was required by the Owners of the business - be it a will, life insurance or a mortgage. This website offers some of the most comprehensive and easily accessible UK finance information on the web - and if the subject isn’t covered on the site itself then prominent links direct a user to the very best alternatives.

This website is particularly strong in the subject area of mortgages. As one of the longest running information sites on UK mortgages on the web, this portal ranks highly on Google and other search engines for many key phrases entered by people looking for a mortgage – a position underpinned by strong incoming links, from sites also highly regarded by Google.

This site generates approximately 10,000 unique visitors a week of which between 1.5% and 2.5% fill out an enquiry form requesting to be contacted by a mortgage broker. These 250 mortgage leads are augmented with a further 10 to 20 phone calls and several email enquiries each week together with other enquiries for bridging loans, pensions, annuities, loans, wills, endowment sales, conveyancing enquiries and various insurance products. With an average market value for a mortgage lead in excess of £30 and the value per sale to a broker of the mortgage procuration fee and other commissions of £1,000 this site is a veritable goldmine not only for the Owners of the site but also for anyone working in the Financial Services sector.
Key strengths:

This site has been online for nearly eight years and has received strong word of mouth recommendation including from BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright in the Afternoon "Website of the Day". As one of the longest running information sites on UK mortgages on the internet, the site has a tremendous advantage in that Google gives much more weight to already established "authority websites" to direct its users to. The website is very well positioned in this regard with strong incoming links, from sites also highly regarded by Google e.g. the UK government’s consumer information site http://www.direct.gov.uk and crucially, DMOZ the Open Directory Project.

This site ranks highly on Google and other search engines for many key phrases entered by people looking for a mortgage leading to approx 10,000 unique visitors a week. It also produces other enquiries for all personal finance subjects including bridging loans, conveyancing enquiries, various insurance products, pensions, annuities, loans, wills, endowment sales etc. To get equivalent results from the usual Pay Per Click advertising campaigns - on Google and Overture etc - a new entrant would have to spend many thousands of pounds a week.

With its combination of longevity on the Internet, its meta tags, content and incoming links and having never indulged in any of the short sighted search engine optimisation techniques adopted by many of its competitors, the high standing of this site with Google and all the other major search engines is set to continue. This site has approximately 400 longstanding pages – with many links - across a full range of financial content, regularly accessed by a good cross section of browers with a further 800 pages of news type articles – linked into from independent blogs – content which is very highly regarded by search engines.

By far the greatest strength of this business however, is its revenue raising capability for mortgage brokers. For mortgages alone this site currently produces approx 250 plus leads per week with a further 10 to 20 phone calls and several email enquiries. The average sale price per lead currently achieved by the website is £17 – lower than the average market value for a normal middle man for mortgage leads which is £30 plus. With a reasonably effective broker easily achieving a 25% conversion of leads to mortgages (a rate of 40% is more realistic) and with the value per sale to a broker of the mortgage procuration fee and other commissions of £1000, each lead is arguably worth at least £250.
Key opportunities:

Few experts doubt that the Internet will continue to grow as the source of choice for mortgage and personal finance searchers. The major direction the site could be taken would be to become a Price/Product Comparison website which would be relatively simple to do with the required ‘screen scraping’ relatively easy to purchase. This would turn the site into more of a purchasing comparison portal e.g. best car insurance, mortgages and so on. Moneysupermarket.com, the market leader in this regard has done this over the past 2 years and is now reportedly worth £700m to £1bn. This site currently outperforms moneysupermarket on many mortgage search terms.

A range of other domain names including sites relating to travel, hotels and investments also belong to the owners of this business. The addition of other websites like these to the portal would have the invaluable advantage of being linked to by authority sites (i.e. the other sites within this portal) thus gaining traffic from them.

As far as the linking structure and navigation of the site is concerned there is very little required to be done, however, there is significant room for improvement in areas which will not affect Google and the other search engine’s view of the site.

With little time available to the current Owners and a lack of expertise in selling the leads generated by the site, there has not been as much time spent on lead generation on the site as there might have been. Extensive testing of the conversion of visitor-to-lead rates by adjusting sales copy, form colours and so on would significantly improve conversion rates on the site.

Additionally, work on the more technical aspects of the site - increasing the length of the description metatags for example would make the site even more visible on Google. This is just one of the areas a Search Engine Optimisation expert would identify for improvement, leading to a huge increase in traffic.

With Google rewarding increased content and particularly favouring old websites that change their content there is scope to add much more on this site. And aside from the main mortgage based site, the other sites within the portal have certainly been neglected. There is huge scope for improving content and conversion rates on these sites too.

There is also the scope to run an opt in “get a free guide” type box on the sites which have proven to lead to significantly increased sales as well as extending the reach of the brand via other platforms e.g. charging for the daily texting of best buy tables to a mobile phone etc.

Property information

Location:

This business currently operates from a home office environment and as such will need to be relocated.

Other information

Competition / Market:

Having been established for so long and having invested heavily in building in the most effective and enduring search engine optimization techniques into the fabric of its sites this business has little need of advertising. This business however benefits most from the most cost effective form of marketing word of mouth recommendation.

Support & training:

The current Owner will provide full business familiarization, training and handover to ensure a smooth transfer of the business to new Owners

Reasons for selling:

With a fundamental lack of interest in personal finance, the current Owner wish to pass the business to new Owners to realise the full potential of the portal and build on the excellent foundations already laid