Vanguard

Let me start off by saying that I love Vanguard.  I love index funds, and Vanguard definitely has quite a selection.  Plus, low expense ratios are nice.   They were also one of the first companies that had an online website (Not having to call to make transactions?  Genius).  And in general, even if Vanguard hasn't entirely embraced Web 2.0, they still seem to make a decently usable (albeit somewhat slow) website that gets the job done.

Yet..there are a couple of things that I feel that could vastly improve some of the user experience:

1.  The location of the "Automatic Investments".  This is Vanguard's current navigation structure.

I'm generally used to going to "My Portfolio" to (naturally) look at my portfolio.  Considering how the primary/first level tabs are laid out, the only tab that seems to be geared to my account is "My Portfolio".  Then under the secondary tabs, "Accounts & Activity" seems like a natural location for everything there is to be said about my different accounts (Individual Accounts, IRA Accounts, etc).  Here is the what that looks like now:

And in general, I'm pretty happy with this overview of my accounts and funds.  The problem comes when I actually want to set up a recurring bank transfer to any of these accounts.  Notice that it's pretty easy to perform certain actions on this page "Buy & Sell", "Transaction History", and "Cost Basis".

and since "Set up automatic transfer" is not an available option, and technically, "automatic transfer" is "buying shares", I would naturally click on that selection.  However, this is not where "automatic transfers" is located.  And in actuality, this page really only allows you to "Buy, Sell, Exchange."  So, I head back to the original page.

I can tell you that after much frustration that "Set up Automatic Transfer" is no where on the "Accounts & Activity" page.  In actuality, I think it's probably in one of the most unintuitive locations possible: "Account Profile":

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And I will admit that after much thought, I can understand why< this information might be located in this section, but I definitely never would have found this on my own (S had to call Vanguard to do this himself, and as he watched my frustration increase exponentially, he quickly told me its secret location before I exploded).

Note:I see now that (Is this recent because I definitely did not notice this a few days ago when I was trying to set up automatic transfers) that when I click on "Buy & Sell", the sidebar includes "Set up Automatic Transfers", but if I directly click the "Buy & Sell" primary tab, no such mention of "Set up Automatic Transfer" is there.  In actuality, it is a completely different page!  This may require some more investigation on my part (and I did, and this page is a complete mess!).  However, what I wanted to say is that all of this could be vastly improved by providing some way from the "Accounts & Activity" page to directly access the ability to set up the Automatic Transfers.

2. After completing any task, be it multiple steps or not, the last page of the action (the confirmation) simply ends.  It basically feels like a dead end and I have no idea where to go next.

I'm no longer in any type of navigational flow (Which secondary tab am I under?)  There doesn't seem like an easy way to "get back to where I was" (in this case, setting up automatic transfers).  Once I finish the task, I have no idea where to go next.  I feel a little lost and disoriented; the walkthrough for the automatic transfer was so focused (showing steps on the left and navigating me toward the end goal), that the end result which simply spits me out "randomly" feels even my disconcerting than it might normally have.

It seems like there could be two possible solutions to this problem: 

1) Send me back to the "Set Up Automatic Transfers" page with the confirmation at the top.

This may not be ideal if users usually print out their records.  I don't, but I might not be the normal user.  In that case, try solution 2.

2)  Have a link somewhere near the confirmation section that lets me go back to the "Set Up Automatic Transfers" page.

3. My personal pet peeve of the moment.  WHY is there not a space between "Portfolio of" and my name?!  This isn't a usability thing per se, but it drives me insane.  It makes the site look a little less professional.

There are quite a few other minor things that frustrate me about the Vanguard site (While playing around the site to figure out Issue #1, I discovered more issues with "Buy & Sell" tab), but these are my top three for the moment.  What are yours?