Recent research from Keynote Systems provides instructive benchmarks for what constitutes truly great bank websites from the customer and technical perspectives.

The insights result from extensive study of the sites of ten large banks. The rankings are based on responses from real users, who were observed as they accomplished tasks on each of the sites studied, as well as real data collected through Keynote website monitoring to assess the technical quality of the sites.

U.S. Bank ranked first for Best Overall Customer Experience and Wells Fargo ranked first for Best Overall Technical Quality.

For the ‘Customer Experience’ portion of the study, Keynote observed and conducted online interviews with 2,000 prospective online banking customers as they interacted with the websites of a total of ten leading U.S. banks (200 people per site): Bank of America, BB&T, Chase, Citibank, Citizens Bank, PNC, Regions Bank, SunTrust, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.

For the ‘Technical Quality’ portion of the study, Keynote performed 6,000 total measurements for each site, for a total of 60,000 total measurements, from 12 locations in the United States.
 
Keynote Competitive Research produces industry research using the company’s commercially available web performance monitoring and real user experience testing products. Keynote regularly evaluates the current state of online customer experience, technical quality (responsiveness/reliability) and implementation of best practices on leading websites across a wide variety of vertical markets including financial services, automotive, media/entertainment, retail, travel and technology.

 

 

More about Customer Experience rankings
The 2,000 online panelists were asked to evaluate the website’s home page and think about how helpful the home page is for understanding what they are able to do on the site. Panelists were then asked to use the site to find a checking or savings account that might suit their needs, explore and evaluate the online banking and bill payment services available on the site, learn about the online banking and bill pay features, costs, and policies, and take advantage of the online demo, if one is provided. Finally, the panelists were asked to choose a specific savings, checking, money market, or CD account, and proceed through the process of opening that account online, going as far as possible without actually submitting the application, then spend a few minutes to find all options available on the site to help resolve any problems or questions that arose during the research and application process.

The study revealed that when tested by actual users U.S. Bank’s site offers the strongest Overall Customer Experience, placing first in Brand Impact, Acquisition Impact, and Online Adoption and placing second only to Regions’ http://www.regions.com in Customer Satisfaction. Regions is perceived more than any other site as “easy to deal with” and “friendly” and, along with U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, “helpful.”

Design and organization and customer Support are the leading drivers of Brand, while privacy and security has declined in importance to where it is no longer a significant driver of either Brand or Acquisition.

“Based on our quantitative and qualitative insight into the attitudes and behavior of actual users as they interact with bank marketing sites from their own computers on their own time, our study of U.S. banking websites revealed that when researching and opening a bank account online, good website design and organization and a strong set of customer support features are the top determining factors of a positive customer experience,” said Christopher Musto, general manager of the Keynote Competitive Research group.

 

 

More about Technical Quality rankings
In addition to evaluating customer experience with its panel of actual users, the Keynote study also examined two broad aspects of technical quality: responsiveness and reliability. Responsiveness comprises high-speed response, DSL (midband) response, response time consistency, geographic uniformity, and load handling, while reliability measures availability and outages.

Using measurement computers located in 12 cities across the country, Keynote measured a typical transaction starting at the bank’s home page and going through the process of finding and applying for a checking account, stopping where applicants were asked for their identity.

Based on the thousands of transactions monitored over the course of the study, Wells Fargo  ranked first in Overall Technical Quality. In the two components of Technical Quality, Regions set the standard for responsiveness (or speed), while Wells Fargo led the group in reliability and was second in responsiveness.

“Based on the rigorous testing that Keynote performed for this study, when compared to some of its larger national competitors, Regions’ website outperformed them all in terms of speed, while wellsfargo.com scored a perfect 100 on Keynote’s reliability scale,” said Ben Rushlo, director of performance management at Keynote.

The full study is available for purchase from Keynote.


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