A Site Review Of Ent Federal Credit Union By Jonathan Hilgeman of SiteCreative.com.
Before I venture into the content portion of this review, let me start with the design. Put bluntly, you need a re-design. Some people can go without one – yours could definitely use it.
(For a complete listing of reviews of this site, site links, and to read the site review criteria established by the site’s webmaster, visit the Ent Federal review page.)
Your site currently has a design with a width of 650 pixels. Now, assuming that most of your users are using 800×600 resolutions to view the site, 650 pixels is a bit of a waste of space, especially considering all the content you need to fit onto the site. Scrollbars generally take up 20 pixels of horizontal space, so designs can take up to the screen’s width in pixels minus 20 pixels. So for 800×600 screens, you could realistically use up to 780 pixels of horizontal space. Again, seeing that you have a lot of content to fit on the page, any additional space will be helpful.
Next, with a new design, don’t make the current mistake of putting a large photo on the front. Businesses seem to like to do this a lot – particularly with photos of their offices, but in reality, it makes no difference to your visitor. In your case, people probably already know what their city looks like, so the photo doesn’t hold any important functional value, but it is 29k large, which will take a few extra seconds to load. Plus, it rotates on each page reload, so they have less chances of getting a cached, fast-loading page on re-visits. Loading time is still important, even in the land of “broadband” connections.
Now, one of the first things that caught my eye about the design was that there were links everywhere. Sometimes I like to sit back, and just intentionally blur my eyes and look abstractly at the page. Upon doing this, I see that 3/4ths of the page is made up of links. Links on top, links on the side, and links below in the form of banner ads. Worse yet, there are popup menus with more links! I also see a myriad of colors – blue, white, yellow, green, brown, and scattered reds. Overall, it’s not a looker, and it seems like too much information all at once.
On the positive side of things, you’ve done a good job of isolating the logo, so it stands out more. The friendly “Welcome to YOUR credit union” is also nice. It’s also good that you’ve provided a link to a site map, and easy access to locations and hours.
I think the best step for you to take would be to examine your log files (you can obtain these from your web hosting provider) and put them into a log analyzer program (you can use a free trial of WebTrends) and find out what the most popular sections of your site are. You may have separate log files for the online banking section, so be sure to account for those numbers in determining the most popular sections of your site.
Now, try to send out some sort of quick survey to your customers/users (this might work better as a web survey, since it will already be targeting the desired group). Just explain up-front in big letters that the credit union will be re-designing their web site and they are looking for information from their users. Then ask them what areas of the site they currently use, and what they would like to see added or improved. If you can add some sort of small incentive (i.e. a dollar per answered question gets added to their bank account after their answers are processed), then that will help get better feedback.
Once you get information about your visitors and their preferences, design around it. Hire a design firm to create a good design that will remain fairly static throughout the site – one that also focuses on usability and scalability for future search engine optimization. Right now you have a front page that looks completely different than your internal pages (which look and work better). The visitor already has to learn how your front page works – don’t make them re-learn the way that the internal pages work, too.
I would also consider re-designing some of the buttons that you have at the bottom of your site. For example, the bill pay button says that it costs 30 cents per bill every day. I realize that it’s probably just 30 cents per bill, but it sounds like you have some strange combination of charging per day, per bill. Just take off the “every day!” on the button. The newsletter one could also use some improvements. I don’t even want to click on the website survey results – I have no idea what they are, and it holds no interest for me. The tax documents online button shouldn’t have a “Learn More” “button.” Taxes are already a learning headache for most people – don’t tell them they have to learn more in order to get tax documents online. Make it seem like the documents are only a click away. Maybe even a “Click here for your tax documents.” Some people say to steer clear of the words “Click Here” but I like them for some buttons that need more action words.
These are just a couple examples. Make sure your wording is inviting and is of interest to your visitors. Make sure major areas of interest are quickly accessible. Make sure contact information, in particular, is easily accessible. If you can spare an employee, you might even try a “Live Help Chat” service. They’re a bit expensive – start with HumanClick then move to StreamingDesktop if it’s working and generating good responses – the latter is more expensive, but has more features.
Since you are also trying to get more enrollment, you may want to consider posting a list of the advantages of using Ent FCU as compared to other banks and credit unions. People like short lists of advantages and comparisons. Remember, you probably want your customers to someday be talking to someone else and brag about the deal they are getting from their credit union. People do this because it makes them feel like THEY made a wise, informed decision (a.k.a. they feel smarter). Part of the bragging will consist of web-based services and how easy it is to do everything online.
You may also want to address issues that some other banks don’t address. I see so many banks that offer Bill Pay, but not too many of them have a page that says “How Does Bill Pay Work?” They assume their customers know the system and can make decisions about it. It sounds harsh, but assume you’re dealing with stupid people who are new to banking. I regularly read my wife’s work from her Ph.D. program, which I can understand reasonably well, but I still enjoy reading the Dummies Guides because they’re easy to read. Likewise, even informed banking people may not know everything about one particular service and would be interested in reading a Dummies Guide to Bill Pay. There are many other features like this besides Bill Pay – that is just one example.
The Money Space may be a fun idea, but it just isn’t appealing. The “Space” doesn’t make me think of outer space – it makes me think of physical empty space for money. Come up with a creative title (rhymes work well) that will get them to click on it (i.e. Funny Money for bank-related comic strips, or maybe the Money Machine or something kiddy-like. Also, I would lose the “What is Planet M?” idea. Tell me already – I don’t know what it is, so don’t ask ME what it is. I want the site to tell me things; I don’t want to click on questions. Same thing with “What’s Galaxy?” I would also venture that “articles” aren’t of interest to many kids – so you may want to rephrase that word/part in the googolplex description. One last idea for the kids section – if you want to keep the photo of the mountains in Colorado, maybe make the sky extend up until it reaches space. It’s up to you and the design firm on how to work that – just some ideas from me.
I would also encourage you to do some specials, like web-based signup incentives (i.e. open a new account online and instantly get $10 in your account) or maybe New-To-Colorado specials for people who just moved there.
Finally, as a last, unorganized note, remember that people are there to do things quickly. So you should have two types of sections – sections where you learn about the service and then sign up, and then fast, do-it-yourself sections. For instance, add the username/password box to navigation scheme, so people can jump straight to their online banking area, no matter where they are on your site.
I realize all of this is a little unorganized, but I hope it helps you to begin rethinking your site, and how to approach it. Don’t make the classic mistake of creating a site that YOU like, but your customers hate.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Hilgeman, SiteCreative.com
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