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

CommBank Introduces Kaching For Facebook and 'Signals' Insight Platform

Commonwealth Bank of Australia continues to be one of the bank innovation leaders, announcing two social-based platforms this week. 'Kaching for Facebook' is an extension of the already popular Kaching smartphone app covered in a previous Bank Marketing Strategy post, allowing customers to do basic transactions within the Facebook website. 

In addition, CommBank introduced the 'Signals' insight hub that collects transactional data to allow customers to view and share how their transaction patterns compare with others.

Kaching Comes to Facebook

CommBank Kaching for Facebook is a new app that will give Australia's 12 million Facebook users access to everyday banking and payments on their favorite social network. Based on the popular Kaching mobile payments app, the new app lets users pay back money owed or make cash gifts to friends of family for birthdays or weddings. The app also allows a customer to view transaction history within the Facebook website.

"With Facebook popularity skyrocketing to more than 55 percent of the population in Australia, we know our customers, particularly Facebook's core user base of 18-35 year olds, are looking for new ways to connect their banking and their lives, friends and causes within Facebook," states Commonwealth Bank's chief marketing and online officer, Andy Lark. "So what better way to respond than by giving them access to everyday banking and payments on their favorite social network?"

Accessed directly from the Commonwealth Bank Kaching Facebook page, the app is a scaled down version of a typical online banking app optimized for mobile using responsive design.

Improving Bank Onboarding, Cross-Selling and Retention With Personalized Video

At a time when self-service banking models are replacing one-to-one interaction, personalized videos can provide a highly engaging and relevant communication option that can improve engagement, increase sales and reduce churn. 

Combining real-time data with highly customized content, marketers can turn big data insights into differentiated 'wow' experiences.

Online video is coming into its own, no longer being just an add-on component to institution's Web site. Partially due to the explosive growth of tablets, web videos have evolved beyond being used just for education or brand building to become a viable direct marketing messaging and selling tool, deserving of dedicated resources.

Online Content Booming

According to recently released data from comScore, 180 million U.S. Internet users watched almost 36.2 billion online videos in January of 2013. While the majority of these videos were for entertainment purposes, nearly 25 percent were promotional content, helping companies communicate with new and existing customers. In fact, video ads were the fastest growing category of online advertising in 2012, with U.S. spending increasing 46 percent to $2.9 billion.

More and more sophisticated viewers don't want to watch a repurposed 30-second TV spot on their computer, tablet or phone. They want online content that is personalized, compelling and interactive. "People are sitting viewing content online wanting to push a button -- give them a reason to push a button," said Jay Miletsky, CEO of online video network MyPod Studios in an interview with CMO.com. If done right, online video can be both a strong branding opportunity and an effective engagement tool.

A survey by Digitas found that 51 percent of online video viewers in the sought after 18 to 44 year old demographic would look up a new brand or product they saw on an online video, and 58 percent of 18 to 34 year olds who follow brands on social media would watch a video that a brand posted online. In addition, the just released Global Video Index : 2012 Year in Review conducted by video analytics provider Ooyala, found that while viewership differs between devices (desktop, tablet, mobile), the overall amount of viewing doubled in 2012.

Competition for Wealth Management Customers Increasing

At a time when retail banks are finding it difficult to achieve pre-recession levels of growth and profitability, the competition for wealth management business has never been more intense. But while increased marketing and significant monetary incentives are being used to lure customers, recent research indicates that organizational barriers remain that could hamper growth. 

A just published Retirement Plans Trend Report conducted by the direct and digital monitoring firm Competiscan found that retirement rollover direct mail, electronic media and digital communication volumes increased during the second half of 2012 as did the value of offers used to entice customers. While many of these offers came from investment firms, more marketing was done by traditional banking organizations than in the past. 

In 2012, Bank of America was one of the most aggressive wealth management marketers, cross-selling the services of their brokerage unit, Merrill Lynch to current higher value bank customers and prospects.

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Cross-Sell Mailing (December 2012)

Moven: From Mobile Banking to Mobile Money

February is definitely a pivotal month for the start-up previously known as Movenbank, having changed it's name to Moven, winning the best of show honors at Finovate Europe and gearing up for a February 25 closed beta launch of its mobile-optimized financial services application. 

Founded by Bank 3.0 author Brett King, with $2.4 million in seed funding, Moven is the latest but not the last in a plethora of unique banking alternatives including Simple™, GoBank™ and Bluebird™.

So what sets Moven apart from not only traditional banking organizations, but also the less traditional financial intermediaries that are entering the banking battlefield? 

First of all, Moven is not a bank. Similar to Simple, while not having a banking charter, Moven provides a unique customer experience interface with a traditional banking organization working in the background (with banking licenses, FDIC insurance, etc.). The focus of Moven from the beginning of development has been to 'help customers spend, save and live smarter' using mobile technology.

According to Brett King, "With Moven, we're not talking about downsizing an Internet banking portal onto a mobile screen or downloading a debit card onto a mobile wallet. Instead, we are creating an entirely new way of thinking about a bank account, giving the customer mobile insight and control every time they make a decision that could impact their financial health."