Whinging about Vanguard website redesign

[LD_TAndK]

Not sure if people are already griping about this somewhere else but, I despise the direction Vanguard took with their redesign.

First, massive whitespace and low information density. On my laptop I only ever see a handful of numbers at a time, most of the screen is blank space. I have to scroll, scroll, scroll my way to see it all. I keep wanting to use an external monitor because the laptop screen feels so cramped.

Secondly, the frame of the page loads immediately but the actual data gets loaded by separate javascript requests, so I get spinning wheels for a couple seconds in the frames. This info should be sent with the original page response!

Seems like this is where the modern web is headed though. Can anyone commiserate?

[ATtiny85]

I only use the app, but in general I do not like the direction of web design.

You can surely find some commiserate partners here

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6577355#p6577355

[LD_TAndK]

I only use the app, but in general I do not like the direction of web design.

You can surely find some commiserate partners here

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6577355#p6577355

Thank you, exactly the whinging I was seeking. Someone gave a good example, the pages for a fund at three different institutions:
https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vlcax
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/922908579
https://research.tdameritrade.com/grid/public/mutualfunds/profile/profile.asp?symbol=VLCAX

[Sibley]

I haven't liked how banks are designing their webpages for the last several years. You just got lucky that Vanguard doesn't put a lot of money into their website. However, I tried to log in to see and it appears that they're having tech difficulties so I can't see it directly.

Best option: design your investment strategy so you don't need to go to the website frequently.

[coppertop]

Vanguard has redesigned their website numerous times in my 20 years as an investor with them, and every single time, I hate it.  I don't understand why companies feel they need to change something that seems to be working fine, but it's as if they just feel compelled to say they are "improving" even if the "improvements" are frustrating to users.  I just want to log on and find the things I am looking for in the places I am used to seeing them, instead of having to click all over the places trying to guess where they've hidden the info I want. 

[YttriumNitrate]

I don't understand why companies feel they need to change something that seems to be working fine, but it's as if they just feel compelled to say they are "improving" even if the "improvements" are frustrating to users.

My guess would be that changes are mainly designed to make the websites more appealing to potential new users. Existing customers may gripe about the changes, but are unlikely to switch providers based on the website. At this point, my bank could add flashing pop-up ads reminiscent of the late 90s to their website and I still wouldn't switch because doing so would be too much of a hassle.

[slackmax]

Vanguard has redesigned their website numerous times in my 20 years as an investor with them, and every single time, I hate it.  I don't understand why companies feel they need to change something that seems to be working fine, but it's as if they just feel compelled to say they are "improving" even if the "improvements" are frustrating to users.  I just want to log on and find the things I am looking for in the places I am used to seeing them, instead of having to click all over the places trying to guess where they've hidden the info I want.

As a new user to Vanguard website, on a desktop using Chrome, I can commiserate !

I transitioned myself from a legacy account to a brokerage account a few months ago. Lately I tried to do a simple thing like connect my VG account to my checking account. Unbelievably frustrating. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is clear. 

The screen says I must enter a dollar amount, Fine, but there is nowhere to enter it !!    If you want to buy a new product, the screen says "Ah, you want add an account".  No, I do NOT want to add an account, I already have an account. I want to add a product!   Where do they find the sadists to create this garbage?


At this point in my saga,  the website is demanding I link my IRA to the checking account. I do not want that !  Can't I just link the checking account my general account ? 

And the FAQ's are useless, of course.   

And yes, they hide any information, (and it's always ambiguous, unclear info) in any screen they like.   

Awful.

I hear the wait time for an agent is hours, lol. 

Thanks for hearing my whinge  !! 

[Duke03]

It's horrible!!!

[Fomerly known as something]

Vanguard is wonderful compared to the new TSP site.  We had a nice simple year 2000 site that was gasp easy to navigate and quickly displayed information in a rational manner.  Now we have what appears to be the industry standard of suck.  I知 guessing so that people think investing is hard get an advisor.

[rantk81]

LOL "massive white-space and low information density"

That phrase basically sums up what has happened to the web (and mobile apps) over the past 5-10 years.  Vanguard is just behind the curve, heh.

[slackmax]

Vanguard is wonderful compared to the new TSP site.  We had a nice simple year 2000 site that was gasp easy to navigate and quickly displayed information in a rational manner.  Now we have what appears to be the industry standard of suck.  I知 guessing so that people think investing is hard get an advisor.

What is TSP ?

[zolotiyeruki]

LOL "massive white-space and low information density"

That phrase basically sums up what has happened to the web (and mobile apps) over the past 5-10 years.  Vanguard is just behind the curve, heh.

So. Much. This.  Citi recently redesigned their site as well.  We only have a CC through them, and I only log in weekly to check transactions, and monthly to pay the bill.  I found that only about 15-20% of the webpage contains information I care about.  The rest is whitespace, advertisements for citi's other services, announcements I've already seen, and links to articles that are not relevant to me.  It would appear someone in their web design team struggles with the definition of "all", because clicking "view all transactions" increases the usable content to about 25%, and only shows the most recent 10 transactions.

Chase's website is similarly information-sparse, but at least it doesn't clutter up the entire interface with ads, and shows more than 10 transactions at a time.

[Arbitrage]

Vanguard is wonderful compared to the new TSP site.  We had a nice simple year 2000 site that was gasp easy to navigate and quickly displayed information in a rational manner.  Now we have what appears to be the industry standard of suck.  I知 guessing so that people think investing is hard get an advisor.

What is TSP ?

Thrift Savings Plan, the 401(k)-like plan available to US Military and federal employees.

[Fomerly known as something]

Vanguard is wonderful compared to the new TSP site.  We had a nice simple year 2000 site that was gasp easy to navigate and quickly displayed information in a rational manner.  Now we have what appears to be the industry standard of suck.  I知 guessing so that people think investing is hard get an advisor.

What is TSP ?

Thrift Savings Plan.  The 401k equivalent for US federal employees.

[slackmax]

Thanks for defining TSP.

On the Vanguard thing, I am seriously thinking of giving up a half percent of interest to avoid Vangurd's awful website and awful customer service.

I'll just stay with Penfed Credit Union , where I already have a lot of CD's, and where the website MAKES SENSE and is user-friendly.

I have too many different financial places where I have my investments.

I already have VWINX index fund at Vanguard, but I'll just leave it alone. No need to do anything with the awful website.   

[SpaceCow]

Vanguard is wonderful compared to the new TSP site.  We had a nice simple year 2000 site that was gasp easy to navigate and quickly displayed information in a rational manner.  Now we have what appears to be the industry standard of suck.  I知 guessing so that people think investing is hard get an advisor.

A fellow Fed who feels my pain! The new TSP site is by far the worst financial web interface I have used. And the old one was fine!

[ChickenStash]

Putting on my grumpy old man face, I often miss the days of Web1.0 when the sites were made to be as fast as possible since broadband wasn't nearly as widespread and fairly uncomplicated to keep the rendering time down on the slower PCs and browsers in the day.

I worked summers maintaining servers and doing some light coding at a small, local web design company in the late 90s. We were in a fairly remote area so the best most folks had was dial-up, and rarely did anyone have new PCs. We spent tons of time trying to make the pics on our real estate sites load fast enough and maintain good quality (for the day). We even kept some of our slower PCs around just to test load times on the complex sites to make sure things didn't get too far out of line.

Nowadays, it seems designers just throw in whatever they can with little regard for what happens on the client side. Just depend on everyone having new PCs with crap loads of memory and huge downlinks. My stupid banking app takes forever to just display my account balance - it's freaking text! My phone can push/pull 160Mbps on Wifi and I'm waiting for one line of text to display.

Not much different in the server world these days, either. So much easier to just demand more resources than it is to make it actually work well.

Darn kids, get off my lawn!

[sparkytheop]

Vanguard is wonderful compared to the new TSP site.  We had a nice simple year 2000 site that was gasp easy to navigate and quickly displayed information in a rational manner.  Now we have what appears to be the industry standard of suck.  I知 guessing so that people think investing is hard get an advisor.

Who needs to see useful investment info?  TSP would rather show you someone's bare feet.

[RunningintoFI]

I don't know if other people have had this experience with VG but in the past I was able to directly buy a mutual fund w/in my Roth IRA or brokerage account and have the money come out of a linked checking account.  Now with the re-design, I have to move money to the Vanguard settlement account before I can purchase any mutual funds.  It drives me slightly insane. Thankfully my automatic contributions have avoided this process but increasing the friction of purchasing funds is not something I have enjoyed. 

[wilderness]

I spent this afternoon creating a CSS stylesheet to make the new Vanguard web design more tolerable, at least on the Holdings page. It's not my finest work but it's a huge improvement in density. It gets glitchy if you make the window really narrow, so if you like to do that you'll have to toggle it off at that time.

To those not familiar, CSS "user stylesheets" change the appearance of the page, but don't execute any JavaScript or have any ability to "read" the page or do anything with it. If you're not sure, it's a good habit to ask someone who knows about the technology before installing things that come from strangers. :-)

It ought to work across browsers but I only tested in Safari because that's what I use. To install it, go to the preferences/settings, Advanced, and look for a Style Sheet dropdown. And here's how to install it in Firefox: https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-can-i-override-the-css-of-a-site-in-firefox-with-usercontent-css

Anyway here it is (attached), enjoy! Hopefully you agree it makes things a little bit less Crayola.

[Telecaster]

Best option: design your investment strategy so you don't need to go to the website frequently.

100%.  A lot of people complain that Vanguard customer service sucks.   I wouldn't know.  I never used it.   

Same with the website.  I do a backdoor Roth conversion once a year.  Seems to work okay.  I don't need it to do more than that. 

[wilderness]

Same with the website.  I do a backdoor Roth conversion once a year.  Seems to work okay.  I don't need it to do more than that.

You like to see bands give a good performance, I like to see web developers give a good performance. Cheers friend.

[Telecaster]

LOL!  Fair enough! 

[GilesMM]

Have you contacted Vanguard with your concerns?