Six or seven years ago, financial institutions would sometimes post non-transactional websites costing a few hundred dollars. The ante has risen considerably. Some banks are spending six figures just testing their sites. Yet, we have found that many banks are still underinvesting in their homepages. For the price new carpeting in a couple branches, most small- to mid-size financial institutions could dramatically improve their virtual first impression.
To get an overall sense of the state of the art, we reviewed the homepages of the 20 largest US retail banks. Overall, we found high usage of common website conventions. However, a few areas need strengthening, for example, only nine of 20 linked to a Security Area from the homepage (see pages 4-15).
Once you venture outside the top 20 banks, website design in more sporadic. As a real-life case study, we put Provident Bank through a portion of our proprietary OBR WebCheck Analysis (see pages 18-30).
Other Subjects:
• Innovations: Standard Life Bank’s
• Op Ed: Customer Experience Counts
• Security Matters: Fighting email fraud (spoofing and phishing)
• Identity Theft: Disturbing numbers from the FTC and what bank’s should do about the problem