After COVID-19 forced most of the United States into lockdown in April 2020, consumers began relying more on digital channels for banking purposes. Although all age groups increased usage of online and mobile banking, 46% of baby boomers surpassed their millennial and Generation X counterparts.
Financial institutions must recognize the importance of responsive web design to meet their customers’ needs. In this week’s blog, we’ll explain five building blocks of a responsive bank website.
Front-End Coding
Bank website design begins with coding the front end. Hypertext markup language (HTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS) work together to create the website interface. HTML controls all the content, elements, and structure of the website. CSS determines how the site displays the HTML code.
Media Queries
A media query is a CSS technique that adapts your bank website to fit the screen of your customer’s device. The media query does more than merely resize the content. It adjusts components proportionally and repositions the various elements on the page as necessary.
Fluid Layouts
Responsive bank website design is fluid. Rather than stating exact measurements, the code in a fluid layout uses percentages. For example, a photo whose size is set at 960 pixels wide would appear the full width of a standard web page on a desktop computer, but on a smaller screen, the customer would have to scroll across the page to view the entire image. In a fluid layout, the photo size is set at 100%, allowing it to resize to fit the full screen width of any device. In a fluid layout, the overall interface of the bank website appears the same across devices.
Flexible Box Layouts
A flexible box or flexbox layout is an even more dynamic solution for responsive web design. To adjust the website to fit the device screen, a flexbox layout increases or decreases the width and height of all the elements, not just images, on the page. It then distributes and aligns them to best fill the space. Unlike a fluid layout, the interface of a flexible box layout might change depending on the device.
Fast Load Time
Research shows that customer satisfaction reduces 16% for every one-second delay in load time. With that in mind, you’ll want to make sure that responsive upgrades don’t slow loading time. You should optimize your responsive bank website for mobile use as well.
Final Words
The need for a responsive bank website will only become more essential in the future, especially with rapidly changing mobile technology. BankSITE® Services customers can select from several optimized, responsive website templates that you can customize for your bank. Whether you need a new website or are ready to redesign an existing one, we’re happy to discuss your options with you.
