Wealth Management Website Redesign Case Study

Glenmede went from blending in to showing up in AI answers

We redesigned Glenmede's site in 2023, before most people were asking ChatGPT for a wealth manager. Since then we've restructured their fund and strategy content so AI models can read it, and contact requests that start in those tools have risen sharply.

LLM-sourced contact requests

+828.6%

Organic search conversion rates

+51%

Contact form submissions

+226.7%

Non-branded traffic

+108.6%

Night sky filled with numerous stars scattered across a dark blue background.

Company

Glenmede

Industry

Private wealth & investment management (est. 1956)

Services

Rebrand · Website Strategy & Content · SEO/AEO Content Strategy · Website Design · Website Build · Ongoing Retainer

Timeline

5–6 month redesign · ongoing retainer since 2023

Overview

The problem was a generic site Glenmede couldn't fix alone.

Glenmede's old site read like every other private bank's. The copy was text-heavy and written in a generic first-person "we," and a 2022 competitive review found the site hard to tell apart from JPMorgan Private Bank, Bessemer, and Northern Trust.

The navigation listed every service and left visitors to work out which ones applied to them. In Q4 2022, sessions fell roughly 27% compared with the prior period.

Glenmede's team couldn't fix this on its own. Every content update needed a developer, and the site had to serve private wealth clients and institutional investors at the same time.

Challenge

A brand buyers couldn't read and a stack nobody owned

Key Challenges

Private Wealth, Endowments & Foundations, Corporate, and GIM audiences all funneled through one generic site

No self-serve content editing. Every change needed a developer

Fund performance data manually re-keyed each quarter, with recurring "as-of" date errors

Four business lines, each needing sign-off, with no shared source of truth

How We Fixed It

Two purpose-built WordPress sites, glenmede.com and glenmedeim.com, on one shared, reusable component system

A Gutenberg block page-builder any non-technical marketer can use

An automated data sync from the client's custodian, with a manual override

A structured milestone process that kept 8+ stakeholders aligned

Approach

We rebuilt for compliance and speed.

One brand, two sites, and a component system built for a marketing team without a developer on call.

Step 1: One brand, four stakeholders

We started with the brand, producing full guidelines and three homepage concepts from three different designers. From there, the project moved through Discovery, Wireframes, Mood Boards, Initial Design and a Working Draft. That milestone process kept stakeholders from all four business lines aligned on a single direction.

Step 2: Two sites, one system

We built two custom WordPress themes, one for glenmede.com and one for glenmedeim.com, on a shared component library, even though the two sites serve very different needs. The GIM site needed new content types for Private Wealth, Endowments & Foundations, Sustainable & Impact, Insights, People, Mutual Funds, and Strategies. It also got a Fund and Strategy Finder tool and a Gutenberg block builder that marketers can use without a developer.

Step 3: Built to hold up

We built every page to WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards and tested it on Edge, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, iOS, and Android. We also set up an automatic sync that pulls fund performance data from the client's custodian, with a manual override. That ended the quarterly re-keying behind the old site's recurring "as-of" date errors.

Step 4: Ongoing retainer

Since launch, our retainer team has closed 487 support tickets and grown the shared component library from 40 to more than 65 components, mostly through small, steady updates. A 2025 enhancement sprint accounted for 90 of those tickets in five months. Part of the later work was answer engine optimization, restructuring fund and strategy content so AI models can parse and cite it.

Step 5: Local Market Pages

In 2024, we built location pages for Glenmede's core markets, starting with New York and Philadelphia. Between March and May 2024, "wealth management nyc" and "boutique wealth management" in New York both went from outside Google's top 100 to #1, and "wealth management philadelphia" reached #3. The pages also brought in Glenmede's first form submissions from organic search. By July 2026, Glenmede appeared in AI answers for most of the local boutique wealth management prompts we track, and our SEO team ties that visibility directly to those local rankings.

Results

The numbers tell the story