In a perfect world, every visit to your bank or credit union website should lead to a conversion. It might be as simple as a user calling a branch after finding the phone number on your Contact Us page, or your ultimate goal might be for a first-time user to open an account and become a steady customer.
If a visit doesn’t lead to any action, consider these three design guidelines to implement on your bank website.
Get and Keep Your User’s Attention
In 2015, a Microsoft Corp. study discovered that the attention span of digital users had dropped down to eight seconds compared to 12 seconds in 2000. With the technological advancements over the past five years since the study, the time to capture your customer’s attention may be even shorter now.
To complete a transaction, your bank website design must deliver the solution for your customer’s question or problem as quickly as possible. You can use text or imagery as calls to action to lead the user to the answers he seeks.
For example, state your promise or benefit in a succinct headline. Use visuals that draw attention to your call to action. Make buttons and links simple and clear. The key is to engage the user long enough for them to close the deal.
Showcase People, Not Objects
Other than using photos and illustrations as visual cues to attract the user, images are quick and easy communication methods. As the adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Images can tell a story in a literal blink of an eye.
A captivating story evokes emotion. Using photos of people rather than objects can elicit empathy from your customer. Instead of showcasing your products or services, spotlight the benefits your customer will receive from them.
To get an idea of what we mean, look at your loan web pages. Do they feature photos like a set of car keys or a for sale sign in an empty yard? If so, replace them with images of people driving their new car or enjoying their first home so your users can emotionally relate to your products and services.
Optimize for Mobile Use
Having a responsive bank website should be a major design consideration. If you want to meet your customers where they are, they need to be able to conduct business with you regardless of the type of device they’re using. When your site isn’t optimized for mobile use, you could lose sales.
Where mobile optimization is concerned, you want to focus on speed and organization. Loading time is influenced by the amount and type of content on the site. While using multimedia can engage your users, be mindful of how long videos and photos take to load. An easy way to increase load time is by compressing your images. There are several free optimization tools and WordPress plugins available to do this.
When organizing information on your web pages, place the information that will lead to conversion at the top, such as your sales promise and call to action. Depending on the amount of information on the page, you should repeat this information in the middle of the page at least once as well as at the bottom.
Final Words
Maintaining your bank website is a hefty investment. You’ll want to ensure that you’re achieving a high ROI with a stable or increasing conversion rate. Making these simple changes above is a good place to start.
Our BankSITE® team has designed website templates especially to meet the needs of our financial institution customers. We also provide tools and modules that will aid in converting a site visit into a sale. Don’t lose another customer because of faulty bank website design.
