10 years ago I led a series of usability tests on online banking for one of the biggest banks in the world. Web banking was still in its infancy. For most of the research participants this was their first exposure to online banking.
Who could have predicted then that online banking would become the mainstream activity that it is today? For years, the people over at the Pew Internet and American Life Project have been tracking its steady rise. Online banking, it turns out, is one of the internet's "killer apps," a game changer. Most people who use it have a hard time imagining going back to the old way of doing things.
Back then, during the research, we learned some interesting things.
- Support for log in should be provided on the home page. (It turns out that after putting it on the home page logins increased by 100%. Go figure.)
- People didn't understand the concept of "enrolling" in online banking. "I'm on the bank's site. Aren't I already banking online?"
- The meaning of term "payee" (who you pay through online bill pay) was lost on most people.
- People found the site "boring" and "depressing" and told us so repeatedly without prompting. "It feels so bland," "the site could use a little something to pique my interest," "I would never want to spend time here" were some of the comments.
Of course there were more findings. But 10 years later these come to mind. Maybe this is because 10 years later a lot of online banking sites we test still have these problems!
Even if online banking usability is still a problem, the last point, that bank sites are boring, shows some signs of changing. This is because the way some banks are marketed to consumers is changing.
Some bank web sites are changing their personality.[1]
Sites like Ally and ING Direct have a personality which is all about saving and plain dealing. They have a distinctive voice. PNC's Virtual Wallet has a voice which says that banking can be fun. USAA, the giant financial services company dedicated to serving men and women in uniform, expresses its voice by providing customer ratings and reviews of all of its products. USAA's customers are its personality.
Quicken Loans features self-recorded videos[2] of customers it has helped. These are real people and have a sincerity that can't be faked. The TD Canada site features videos of real employees talking about their work. Again, a real sincerity comes across. Sincerity is what you want in a personality.
Some bank sites are changing their personality. But most sadly are not. 10 years on, the personalities of most bank sites are still cold and detached.