Simplicity In Banking Is Anything But Simple

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

It's time to build your simplicity capability.

Financial institutions are starting to realize that simplicity does not only improve the customer experience, resulting in trust and loyalty, but also reduces operational costs from redundant products, processes and dealing with customer complaints.

By Jin Zwicky, VP Experience Design, OCBC Bank, Singapore

How can banks achieve simplicity?

We can find great lessons from smart banking alternatives such as Simple, Moven, GoBank and Bluebird. What is less discussed is how to achieve simplicity in traditional banks that deal with a legacy of old processes, infrastructure and often don’t have luxury of starting afresh. Translating the big intent to achieve simplicity into realization is not easy.

The good news is that realizing simplicity is possible in any bank. As a design practitioner in one of the largest banks in Singapore, I’ve been leading a broad range of ‘Simplicity’ initiatives in the bank, such as website design, mobile banking, advisory tools, investment product communications as well as redesigning physical spaces. All of these initiatives have reaped measurable success in bottom line results and operational efficiency.

We saw double-digit increases in sales in investment and insurance products when we simplified the communications material. We saw 100% adoption rate in using the digital needs analysis tool in our top branches after we simplified the tool. We increased customers’ satisfaction in our account opening experience by simplifying the system. Finally, our simplified website was not only listed as The More Gorgeous and Simple Banking Website, but also we could save about 0.5 million dollars per year by reducing the number of pages in the website.

From years of my simplicity journey, I came to believe that ‘simplicity’ is not just a project. It is not just a team of simplicity specialists. It is a capability that we have to cultivate! Furthermore, it is an organizational culture that we have to create in order to achieve simplicity.

I came up with the following framework to illustrate this point.

Essential Online Channel Metrics For Financial Marketers

With evolving technologies and platforms, financial marketers need a clear and comprehensive set of metrics to determine the effectiveness of their online channel. 

Instead of drowning in data and not being able to connect the dots in a meaningful way, here are four metrics that rise to the top and provide the clearest picture as to the selling power of a bank or credit union website.

By Melanie Friedrichs, Analyst for Andera, Inc.

In the Wild Wild West atmosphere of the early internet era, companies raced to slap websites online without thinking too hard about what purpose their website should ultimately serve.  Consumer retail companies found their ROI in online shopping, and their websites gradually evolved to draw visitors in and drive them to checkout.  In contrast, financial institutions focused on expanding eServices, until their websites became little more than portals to online banking. 

In the last few years, we’ve seen institutions start to wise up to a second, essential function of the online channel.  As Joe Swatek from ACTON Marketing said, “Your website has an important SALES function.”  Technology has made it possible for financial institutions to acquire new customers and members and grow relationships completely digitally, and like consumer retail websites aim to sell consumer products, financial institution websites should aim to open new deposit accounts and originate loans.  When thinking about the account opening and lending through the online channel, there are four essential metrics that financial institutions should consider:

1)      Conversion Rate

The single most important metric for a financial institution website is its conversion rate, or the percentage of qualified  unique visitors that begin applications for deposit or loan products.

Before the introduction of online account opening and lending, financial institutions focused primarily on making online banking login as easy as possible, and on providing key corporate information.  The rest of the website really didn’t matter that much, so webmasters cluttered pages with news items and product advertisements from different departments.  Over time, most financial institution websites began to resemble ill-managed community bulletin boards.

How Good Is Your Bank's Website Performance?

When determining how well your bank or credit union's website is performing, a number of factors need to be considered beyond visits alone. 

How long does a visiter spend on your site? Do they visit more than one page during a visit? How many pages do they visit? Is your website optimized for both smartphones and tablets?

In a just released report entitled, "Best of the Best Benchmark", Adobe examines six primary site performance metrics across five different industries to show the norms and areas of excellence. Even though supporting data provided by Adobe is rather sparse, financial marketers can still use these metrics as a guide to evaluate their website's performance and to provide impetus to make websites more powerful.

Time Spent on Website

Time spent on a website is probably the most important metric for determining site engagement. As could be expected, the amount of time spent on a top-performing financial institution website (6.77 minutes) is more than 5 minutes less than the time spent on an entertainment site (11.84 minutes) where content is robust. Interestingly, the variance between the best and the rest within the media and entertainment category is the largest, indicating that not all entertainment sites are . . . entertaining.

Adobe noted in their research that video is the most powerful content to use in social media because of the engagement value. While banks are just beginning to add video as part of their website experience, custom product and service videos could definitely increase engagement for financial firms (I covered the power of video in my February 27 post entitled, "Improving Bank Onboarding, Cross-Selling and Retention With Personalized Video").

Source: Adobe, "Best of the Best Benchmark", March 2013