BankNews

Build A Website That Works

By: Bill Poquette

They range in asset size from $4 billion to less than $100 million, and in geography from the northern Midwest (Minnesota) to the southern Southwest (Texas), but this group of banks has at least two things in common: They have deployed customized websites easily managed by employees and offering comprehensive suites of customer services; and they use the same vendor for tasks including development, management and hosting.

The vendor, T8 Webware of Cedar Falls, Iowa, provides non-template-driven websites to more than 150 banks and credit unions, all of them mobile-enabled. The company’s philosophy is to help financial institutions leverage their websites to drive new business and build an online marketing presence.

One of T8 Webware’s more recent signups was American State in Sioux Center, Iowa. With assets of $470 million, the bank provided an array of online banking services as well as account messenger alerts and mobile banking but, prior to the recent redesign, lacked the interactivity required to engage prospects and customers, and to encourage navigability through multiple pages. What was needed was an online presence to better reflect the bank’s true identity and current business initiatives.

“Our website is now a multipurpose resource for prospects and customers, and has become an effective driver for all our marketing efforts,” said Denise Harrison, vice president and chief marketing officer of American State.

For example, the bank introduced a promotional page, originally using it to launch its rewards checking program. In just one month, it garnered more than 40 new rewards customers. This page will be used to host future promotions, in hopes that maintaining a singular place for these efforts will keep customers and prospects coming back to the site for new information.

Since the new site went live, American State has experienced a significant decline in its bounce rate and has increased the average number of page views per unique visitor to six. The bank also has had a greater response to the online ‘Contact Us’ form, as it defines the products/services in which the individual is interested to streamline the bank’s response and better direct sales. The technology also lets American State categorize visitors by age-oriented profiles as well, and customize content and visuals for various offerings to each market.

Compliance was also important in its selection process, Harrison said. “Our previous website provider had little knowledge of the compliance concerns facing financial institutions, nor did it understand the functionality that these sites must offer customers to keep them coming back. T8 Webware gave us the tools to eliminate many of the previous concerns with making such frequent changes.”

A similar-sized bank in Minnesota, Border State in Greenbush, previously juggled three websites to address various business segments, each differing in design and functionality. The bank’s goal when it selected T8 Webware was to create a single, uniform knowledge resource that produced relevant and useful information for every customer.

To help cater to this diverse customer base, Border State’s home page now offers student, young professional and family, retiree, agricultural business and commercial business profiles that assist in the bank’s ability to cross sell. Other key differentiators include enhanced navigation and presentation, as well as tools (such as weather reports, personalized stocks and agriculture market prices) that help to increase the frequency of customer visits to the new site.

“Our new website is receiving rave reviews from our employees and especially our customers,” said Allison Harder, the bank’s marketing manager. “This next generation website positions us above any of our competitors and gives the bank the image we wanted.” Harder added that the system is manageable for any employee.

A smaller financial institution, Iowa State Savings Bank in Knoxville, with current assets of $91 million, first worked with T8 Webware nearly eight years ago, “back when bank websites were electronic brochures at best,” said David Hoke, vice president of marketing. Like the others, Iowa State sought to further enhance its Web presence while also establishing the online channel as a consistent, standardized marketing tool to improve its product and service promotions.

“With today’s shift to the online channel, a majority of bank websites remain focused on brick and mortar facilities, missing the opportunity to use the Web as an effective, independent sales tool,” said Hoke.

As the vendor’s inventory of features and functionality have evolved, Iowa State has been able to refresh its own Web design and online offerings. Hoke is convinced the bank’s proactive approach to responding to customers’ needs for an online resource for information and services has enabled it to effectively compete in its region with larger institutions.

And speaking of larger institutions, Dubuque, Iowa-based Heartland Financial USA Inc. has selected T8 Webware to aggregate content and consolidate the management of its 17 different sites. The $4 billion holding company provides community banking, mortgage, wealth management, insurance and consumer finance services to individuals and businesses through 10 subsidiary banks in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Colorado and Minnesota.

Heartland maintains one website for each of its subsidiaries, a holding company site for investors, a wealth management site and travel company sites for its customers. Employees at its corporate marketing office are charged with the task of updating all of the sites’ content, which encompasses product information, promotional messages, online account access, personnel changes and community news for regions ranging from the Rocky Mountain states to the Midwest and Great Lakes states.

All the sites will be designed around a similar framework, while also supporting the individualized, local branding aspects important to each one of the community banks. Each site will have the ability to syndicate corporate messages and also communicate local messages reflective of the community or audience that the websites serve. The system will enable authorized users to post Heartland content from any location at any time, while enforcing FFIEC guidelines and FDIC functional compliance.

“Increasingly, we view the Web as a storefront for each of our community banks,” said John Berg, executive vice president, marketing and sales at Heartland. “As such, it’s a vital communications channel for us with our customers, investors and the growing communities we serve. We are dedicated to maintaining a cohesive brand image across all of our sites while still providing each customer with the personal, local information that is needed.”

Bill Poquette is editor-in-chief of BankNews.

Copyright © May 2010 BankNews Media

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