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 April 25, 2009 on 11:42 am |  Our Progress |  No Comments
During the month of April, Wall401k was officially released as we removed the beta version on our homepage, and we are now providing full services to help our customers to get their desired portfolio. Apart from the basic optimization features being provided, we will put on the additional services for our premium package to fit different customers’ needs. We also opened our consulting service options by providing investment reports using stochastic processes to customers, and we assist customers for any questions they may have. We hope the wide varieties of services can bring satisfaction to our customers and our customers can be able to enjoy the rate of return of their 401k portfolio.
April 24, 2009 on 8:03 am | Our Progress | No Comments
During the beginning of 2009, we started to post ads and send emails in various areas. More and more visitors came to our website and signed up after they viewed how our website works. Furthermore, we also made tutorials to help our members to understand how to use our optimization feature. We posted a visual tutorial on YouTube to help provide further instructions.
Posting Ads and Sending Emails
We posted ads on various websites on Yahoo, Google, and other popular search engines. As our website is still new, we emphasized keywords to make more impressions and increase our clicks. In order to further improve ourselves and try to earn credentials, we sent emails to finance professors from various universities asking for their professional opinions about our website. We valued all the opinions and tried to advance in any way we are able.
Tutorials
Our optimization feature was viewed as a professional tools and it might be difficult to individuals other than finance professionals to understand. In an effort to alleviate the problem, we posted visual tutorials on our website, YouTube and other video sharing websites to help viewers to understand how to use our optimization feature.
January 14, 2009 on 5:45 pm | Our Progress | No Comments
Despite the website was opened, we had not yet known how the public would respond. During the month of December 2008, once all the web pages of our website were finished, we believed a beta testing would be appropriate to check our work.
Group Tests
In the beginning, we want to know how different group of people would respond about our website. As a result, we divided our beta testing into three different groups, the first group contained professionals in the finance-related field, like professors, as they are very familiar with the terms and graphs being used on the website. The second group consisted of semi-professionals who were students studying in universities, as they knew something of the finance-related field, but might not be as knowledgeable as the professionals. The third group of people included people who had no knowledge about finance. We showed our website, especially our optimization feature page, to the respective three groups, we then asked for opinions for possible improvement of our website.
Test Results and Actions
The beta testing went well, as we gathered valuable feedbacks from the three groups. According the professionals, our website was professional and understandable. The semi-professionals were able to understand part of the materials, while the third group needed our staff to explain how to use and all the meanings of the optimization feature. The test results showed that, our website, despite professional in appearance and function, needed to simplify in order to let the majority of people to use effectively without assistance. After the beta testing, we decided to simplify our wordings on the optimization feature. We also wanted to create a online tutorial for users to use our feature page.
January 14, 2009 on 1:02 pm | Our Progress | No Comments
After further revisions of the optimization feature and our search for the business partner, our company had officially opened the website “www.wall401k.com” on the Internet. Despite the optimization feature was fully available, our website, however, still lacked the additional contents to support the feature. The additional contents include the FAQs respective to 401k, detailed explanations to make our optimization feature understandable, and of course, the blog to inform the users about our progresses and updates of our websites.
Making the Pages
Recognizing the need to expand our working staffs, our company hired a few staffs to work on the additional contents. Our staffs were skillful and experienced, as they searched through frequently-asked questions about 401k, and we answered the questions in a clear manner. Apart from that, we started to write definitions of the likes of efficient frontier, risk, rate of return, and other finance-related terms. We believed the definitions could help our users to use the feature and to understand the terms easily. In addition, we uploaded blog entries to reveal our progresses and updates of our websites to make sure our users can know any new features being available to use.
January 14, 2009 on 1:01 pm | Our Progress | No Comments
During the process of making the optimization feature, our company was engaging in the process in seeking for a potential partner to operate the business. Our company believed that a suitable partner could share the same vision with us to make the business successful. Furthermore, our business could be able to gather more capital for investment for future expansion. Our company targeted to find a partner before the official launch of the website to the public.
Business Partner
During the month of March 2008, our company, thanks to the efforts of our owners, finalized the creation of the optimization feature. Apart from that, good news seemed to come successively. Our company announced the formation of a business partnership with Premium Soft, Inc. Premium Soft, Inc. will sponsor the business operation of the company, as well as marketing our service to the public. We believed our business, with the involvement of Premium Soft, could be able to extend our market segment horizontally.
January 13, 2009 on 12:58 am | Our Progress | No Comments
Once the business was formed and the name had been decided, the next task would be to create an easy 401k service on the website that is capable for clients to use conveniently. Most of the working individuals have 401k portfolio, but they normally do not know how to allocate their salary into different mutual funds in their respective 401k portfolio. Our owners decided to make an optimization feature to help clients to allocate their funds in order to get a higher rate of return or to get a lower risk.
Making the Program
Despite the idea of making the optimization feature was finalized, the process to make the feature was a difficult task. In order to make the program in an efficient way, our owners decided to divide the work to try to finish the program on a timely manner. Two of our owners, programmers, were responsible for the design and setting of the optimization feature. They also made the graphs of efficient frontier, the 5- and 10-year comparisons. On the other hand, the other two owners, actuaries, were responsible for the calculation of the rates of return for the mutual funds based on historical data.
Importance of the Program
The making of the optimization feature lasted approximately a year, as the program provided historical data for most of the mutual funds available worldwide. The program also consists of different allocation strategies, as well as graphs of efficient frontier, 5- and 10-year performance comparisons. Our program is also graph-oriented, as we believe a graphical representation can provide our users a better understanding of the material and the feature can be easily glimpsed through. In order to achieve perfection, our company are continuously improving the feature at all times, as well as updating all the historical data for the mutual funds to provide more accurate information to our users.
January 7, 2009 on 2:25 am | Our Progress | No Comments
Making an own business is challenging. People may think it is easy by investing money in a particular business. However, without careful consideration of the future benefits and the present competition, the business may not go as well as expected. At the beginning of 2007, our four original owners, with the intent to start a new business, faced the same difficulty as well. We started considering a few options of business. These businesses, however, could not convince us that they can operate in a long-run basis.
401k Business
On a particular day during March 2007, one of the four owners suddenly came up with an idea of starting the business in helping clients to manage 401k portfolios. The idea gained unanimous acceptances from all the four owners, since there was a growing prevalence of people using 401k to preserve money for retirement. Moreover, the 401k business was new to the market, as there were yet any companies offering a 401k portfolio service. We believed that the company might get competitive advantage as an innovator in the field.
“WALL”
After the idea was made, the company’s name became another concern the owners had to deal with. Through a thorough consideration, the owners decided to use “WALL401k” as the company’s name. “WALL” is the simplification of the first alphabets of the four original owners’ last names. As a result, the company “WALL 401k” was formed.
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