PROBLEM

Content isn’t King, it’s the Kingdom.

The challenge with the Merrill project, COBE, was to create consistency out of a project that spanned years of

Merrill’s COBE (Collaborative Onboarding Experience) project was introduced to streamline account opening through a fully digital platform. Originally a paper-based process, the content strategy aimed to significantly shorten the onboarding time, simplify financial language, support accessibility, and ensure clarity across this tremendous legacy system.

Thoughtful content also supports accessibility and trust, especially during key interactions like digital attestations or form completions. Ultimately, content tailored to client needs will elevate the platform’s usability and drive greater adoption.

ANALYSIS

As the content strategist for the project, my goal was to create clarity and consistency across the digital onboarding experience. By creating an extensive series of copy decks, I was able to audit COBE’s tremendous library of messaging and tone, and create guidelines that supported cross-functional collaboration between design, product teams, as well as legal and compliance. I also wrote best practices to streamline complex financial concepts, ensuring that both clients and advisors could easily navigate tasks with efficiency. 

In later phases of the project, I evaluated COBE’s information architecture and found ways to better structure content for discoverability and task completion, particularly by improving labeling, hierarchy, and page flows across the digital interface.

FINDINGS