Leadfusion, the market leader in providing online financial calculators to the financial services industry, is pleased to announce the availability of OpenDesign Branding for Leadfusion CALCULATORS. OpenDesign Branding takes Leadfusion’s industry leading branding capabilities to the next level, giving financial services companies and their website design partners extensive control over the layout and look-and-feel of their financial calculators. With OpenDesign Branding, Leadfusion clients can quickly create unique user experiences with minimal effort and cost based on their own design needs and standards.

“Until the advent of OpenDesign Branding, website designers wanting to create a truly customized user experience for their calculator users had to invest in extensive development of the user interface. With OpenDesign Branding, Leadfusion delivers the ability to create deeply customized user experiences without the need for extensive, time consuming and costly development”, said Christopher Cunningham, Leadfusion’s CEO. “By applying OpenDesign Branding, our customers can take advantage of the latest in Web 2.0 UI design while minimizing cost, schedule and development risk.”

OpenDesign Branding provides the calculator building blocks as components and allows website designers to focus solely on the look, feel, style and design of their Leadfusion CALCULATOR experience, providing a significant cost savings to the website owner. With OpenDesign branding, designers have control over:

• Calculator Layouts: Designers can now select from a number of preset content templates that place different calculator components into different layout styles. For example, inputs and results can be shown on the same page, either in a columnar format or laid out side-by-side. Customers can also create their own layouts using a building-block approach to core calculator components.
• Skins: Designers have the opportunity to explore their artistic side by recreating the look and feel of their Leadfusion CALCULATORS. OpenDesign Branding puts the creative control in the designers’ hands, by allowing creative options such as, rounding the corners of the calculator for a sleeker design, introducing textured styles or simply changing the complete notion of what a financial calculator is supposed to look like.
• Web 2.0 Features: OpenDesign Branding supports key Web 2.0 features such as sliders for input control, animated transitions between pages and interactive error messages. AJAX support also means that users can navigate through a Leadfusion CALCULATOR without page refreshes.
• Page Elements: Designers can now control key page elements such as calculator titles, tabs, inputs sections, etc. either by stylizing them to meet their needs or moving them to different areas of their web page or calculator area.
• Calculator Content: OpenDesign Branding now allows designers to add new design or functional elements between components in calculator pages. This includes logos, digital assets such as Flash, video or audio files, promotional banners/displays, custom input fields or lead forms.
• Style Element: Style element allows the incorporation of existing web standards to control font, color, dimension, etc. As web standards change, these style elements can easily be updated on your Leadfusion CALCULATORS.
• Tooltip Definitions: To simplify ease of use, designers can now implement tooltips that will display glossary content when a user places their mouse over a data element name. These tooltips can be stylized to be consistent with other elements of the calculator design.

Leadfusion CALCULATORS provide comprehensive calculator functionality underlying the design, including field editing, data persistence, segmentation, “next step” messaging and the ability to integrate with Leadfusion EMAIL or EMAIL FULFILLMENT to deliver calculator results directly to the consumer’s inbox. Backend reporting remains available and tax law changes that occur are automatically incorporated without any additional support requirements.

Over 20 million consumers use Leadfusion’s calculators at over 250 leading financial services company websites to answer their most basic financial questions. Leadfusion provides over 140 calculator topics spanning 18 different categories to help consumers through their financial services buying cycle.