This is just a part in a series of a representation of my thoughts on why and how Banks need to pay more attention to the experience that they are delivering through their websites .

1. Like Jeanne Bliss mentions in her book, I Love you more than my Dog, it’s always the intent and
motivation that helps a business to deliver a differentiated experience and build loyalty and trust.
The Landing Page is kind of the first door to be opened by any customer as part of the engagement
he or she wishes to have with you. Obviously you cannot completely change your company’s image
or brand value by having a good or bad landing page; it’s your intent as a business to make your
customer’s experience a great one that matters
This is the first part of a 2 part blog that I am planning on writing. The first one focuses on the
importance of landing page and some leanings from an existing/new customer’s experience
standpoint. The 2nd part would be oriented towards prospects, marketing content distribution and
how to help prospects determine which of the services offered by the business relate to what they
are looking for
Importance of Landing Page
1. One of the key aspects of delivering a good experience is to ensure that you do not clutter
your customer’s brain with multiple and multiple, similar looking options.
Most important thing to designing a good landing page is to be clear in your mind as to why
are individuals visiting your website. Let’s consider a few examples by looking at the landing
pages of a couple of bank. But, let’s mentally answer the question- Why do individuals visit
your website?
1. They might be looking for start a relationship to use your services (am not
adding products into the mix because to me, products are nothing but a defined,
pre-arranged grouping of services). Now this group of individuals can be
segmented into 3 groups again – a. (Segment 1) who are looking to do the
necessary research on your website before determining where they want to use
your services b. (Segment 2) They have been referred by a friend, relative,
employee etc and so they have mentally made up their mind to leverage your
services and c. (Segment 3) They lack the knowledge of your competitors, have
heard your name via different promotions etc and have made up their mind to
leverage your services
So , the people fitting into the above 3 segments can be put into the bracket of
potential customers and you surely want to create a very good first impression
by making it easier for them to identify and knowledgeably make a choice of
service that they are interested in. You want to make their life easier in making
the choice by helping them make a choice with various tools which could be a
basic questionnaire of 3-4 questions to understand their needs and they
progress on the right journey.
Remember that this group forms your potential customer list
2. Then you have the other group who are your existing customers. This group is
equally important as compared to Group 1. Firstly, because of the well

2. established fact that it costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer (members
of group 1) as compared to retain existing customers. The probability that you
are able to up-sell or cross-sell your services are far higher in the case of existing
customers. And “banks” – always remember that it is their money and you, as a
bank is just providing services to manage something which really belongs to
another individual who happens to be your customer. So, as a bank, you
absolutely need to ensure that you deliver a easy, cognitive, hassle-free and
customer-in-control experience to the user of your services. It’s the customer’s
money, his/her life-earnings that you are helping them to manage. So don’t
make them scan the pages of your website to locate what they are looking for.
With the above ground principles in mind, you need to understand how the landing page of the
bank’s website plays an important role in making the experience easy, quick, cognitive and
trustworthy
Note that this article in no way provides a holistic view of why customer’s need to engage with you
and provides examples which need to be extended out into the wider aspect of your engagement
with the customer’s. And fundamentally the concepts should be no different for businesses in other
verticals like Retail, Auto, Engineering industry etc.
Let’s look at common things that existing and new customers visit the bank’s website –
1. To register for online banking
2. Forgot my online id and password and want to retrieve my credentials
3. To register for new services like non-paper “green” statements, advices etc
4. Could be to check his/her balances on the various products
5. Could be to make a payment or transfer
6. To update his/her profile
7. To dispute a charge
8. To report a fraud
9. To make general inquiries
10. To request for statements like the interest statement
11. To request for account changes – be it adding an authorised user or request for
a credit line increase or request for credit protection services
12. Look for additional new services which may or may not be product oriented
For, all the above, you need to acknowledge the below and design the journeys/ experiences
accordingly

3. 1. The customer’s are initiating the interaction and so they obviously have
something in mind that they want to get out of the interaction
2. Acknowledging that your customer demographics have different gender & age
profile and hence their proclivity to technology can vary
3. Since they have initiated the interaction, they are clear as to what they want to
achieve. So make it easier and quicker for them as they most likely would want
to get in and get out. Help them do that
For all the above interactions, a customer needs to login and hence you should make it easy for him/
her to locate the “LOGIN” or “ FIRST TIME USERS, ENROLL FOR ONLINE BANKING “ options very
easily
It’s a normal standard to deliver the “access internet banking “option through the leftmost column
on your landing page’s real estate. Examples of some bank sites which adhere to the norm and a
exceptions. That said, of course, usage of a website will tell a customer to intuitively look for specific
information in certain areas of the website’s real estate. But let’s stick to the widely used protocol of
Sign-on option, enrol for banking services, reset online credentials and help with retrieving
online credentials for a logical grouping of needs for the customer and it is always better
they occupy the leftmost column of the real estate
Standard

4. Standard
Standard

5. Standard
Standard

6. Standard

7. HSBC’s Landing Page is Non-Standard from this aspect
RBS’s Landing Page is Non-Standard from this aspect
Let’s look at a good example and a not so good example. Remember, now I am either a customer
who has recently opened an account and want to enrol for Internet Banking or a returning customer
who wants to access his account

8. BofA is a good example. It does it the right way “ENROLL” is out in bold. The Sign-In option is just
below it grouped with the ENROLL option. Help for online credentials retrieval and reset is also
grouped in.. Great !!!
American Express, USAA are other good examples. They surely portray themselves as business’s who
have given its site’s content organisation some thought.

9. Take Citibank on the other hand. On the landing page, I, as customer, have no clue as to how do I
enrol for Internet Banking. It says “Sign On” but again cognitively, I would think that it applies for
customers who already have their online banking credentials. So I would disregard this piece of real
estate for my need to register for online banking
The good part though is when you get past the initial page by selecting a given account, the content
is well structure. Look below. Quickly before I forget, I need to mention this navigation to get to the
initial sign-on page. Citibank’s navigation from the above page to the subsequent below page
happens based on the selection of an account which I think is discomforting, flawed from an
experience standpoint. To me as a customer having multiple relationships with a Citibank, a single
sign-on should enable me to view all my relationships with Citibank. Why should have have to select

10. a product and then maintain multiple login credentials or set-up multiple login credentials . My
instinct says that Citibank is a business with which I have multiple relationships and there should be
a single point of entry into viewing my products and leveraging Citibank’s services which may or may
not be product centric
Citibank gets better once you navigate past the initial landing page
Take National City for example. What if I don’t know what type of customer I am? Then am I left to
the laws of chances to get to where I intend to get to? For customer’s it really doesn’t matter unless
your systems are inept at dealing with a customer and hence need to take a type of customer or a
product centric route. I can have multiple relationships with the bank – personal and non-personal
and I , as a customer would want to look at all my finances
Not the best way

11. HSBC is somewhere in the middle
I am sorry guys that my thoughts are being random but here is something that I would surely want
to point out which needs to be considered by all global business’s having a website. How do
individuals normally launch their websites because I as a prospect or an existing customer might not
remember the web address? The smart people remember the address or save it in their favourites in
their browser bar or store it in some attachment on their laptops or desktops. So I type in the
following-

12. Always remember that a layman never realises the nuances between typing in hsbc.com vs.
hsbc.com or hsbc.co.uk. So a fool like me and many, many other individuals just type in hsbc.com
and expect that they see the sign-on screen. But what do I see
Not acceptable. A better experience design would have been to force the entity specific following
page instead of the Global page. It would have been ideal if I am by default led to the HSBC USA
landing page and I can, if needed, navigate to the global page. Normally customers would want
lower number of clicks and intuitive navigation and would prefer the following page being launched.
But then in this case I do not have a link to switch back to the global page.
Guys, like I emphasise on, it’s the right intent with which a website is designed that delivers a good
experience. The flaw that I have pointed out might sound very minor but surely reflects your values
and intent that you want to bring forward to you customers

13. RBS Example
Shouldn’t have been this page
Should have been this page, had I launched the RBS site from India

14. Now look at Citibank in comparison which presents a better experience from this standpoint
When I type in CITIBANK.COM, it defaults me to the US page because I am physically located in the
US. From there, I was interested in moving to a Citibank in a different country, I have links. This is
quite in contrast to how HSBC or RBS have designed their sites. All the 3 of them are global banks
Citibank does it the right way

15. Lastly, I would like to talk about the some good to have functions on your landing page which can
make your customer’s life much easier. Research has shown that some of the commonly expected
functions from a customer’s view point which does not require a sign-on need to be placed on the
landing page. Examples are
1. Search option because that’s the easiest way the customer can get to what he is intending
to get to
2. Contextual Q &A though they do not apply for specifically for the landing page. Turbo Tax
does a great job at it. On the Turbo Tax website, the questions and answers piece of real
estate changes based on the commonly asked questions by customer’s when on a given
page. So, the question that immediately show up are questions which most of the customers
would have while going through the content on that page
3. Locations – Based on demographics, this is a very commonly used function on the Landing
Page
4. The real estate occupied by “Contact US” function should stand out on the landing page and
the customer should not have to go looking for it
5. Display of outage of services, special messages impacting customers. These messages should
occupy a prominent real estate so that the customer feels that the bank keeps him or her
well informed. Obviously, you, as a business, would not want to get into a situation where
the customer wants to use your services urgently but you cannot provide them because
systems are down. So, appropriate communication which potentially impacts the customer
could be displayed on the landing page. This could be achieved because most of the banks
place a cookie on your computing machine when you visit their website from your device
Some sites who have already incorporated it

16. Some of the not so good examples