SITES GONE WRONG Six Things Creatively Wrong With Web Sites and How to Fix Them (November, 2002)

By Warren Hunter

In an effort to be noticed in today’s crowded online marketplace, bank marketers make common, yet fatal, mistakes when constructing Web sites. While adding bells and whistles may increase the "wow factor," this approach often contributes little, if anything, to the overall Internet experience. In fact, breaking simple Web site creative rules may harm how consumers feel about your bank, your brand, and its services.

Giving in to the temptation to be creative for creativity’s sake is one of the most common ways to get off track and derail your site’s mission. Remember, the Web is a goal-driven medium in which visitors look for specific information. It is, therefore, imperative to provide the clearest path to that information, making the navigation familiar and intuitive. While it is illogical to distract visitors from accomplishing their goals, most sites do just that.

Below are the top six problems with most bank Web sites in existence today and tips for avoiding these traps.

Mistake #1: Too Much Creative

While trying to give consumers more, novice and veteran marketers alike often go overboard and provide too much "stuff" on their home pages. While delivering benefit-oriented copy and relevant, appealing graphics is a worthy goal, offering consumers a plethora of choices can be downright overwhelming.

Web site visitors decide within a matter of seconds whether to move on or stay. If consumers are bombarded with too many choices, they may abandon the site rather than wade through the content, as good as that content may be.

Think of a Web page as a direct mail envelope. Unless you get the envelope opened, the message has been lost. Open a Web site with a strong, but simple offer and follow through with an infrastructure that delivers on that offer.

Mistake #2: Creative That Slows the Experience

The 24 hour nature of the Internet has made today’s consumers impatient. When designing and planning for graphic elements, consider the Nine-Second Rule. If something takes longer than nine seconds to download, there’s a 75 percent or greater chance that you’ll lose your visitor. If a page requires endless scrolling, most people simply abandon the site. Evaluate each graphic element individually by asking how it will impact the consumer’s overall experience. Do you think the element is worth the wait? Will the consumer think so? Conduct individual usability tests with non-marketing people, including those who represent your target audience, to gather valuable feedback.

Avoid the temptation to include things for "coolness" sake. What purpose will it have served if a visitor doesn’t have the opportunity to view it? Here's a simple rule of thumb: tell your webmaster that the objective is to have all the files required to display the home page total less than 120K in size.

Also be sure to test your site at the lowest common denominator - in other words, using older, slower technology. If download times are acceptable there, you can probably feel confident that more advanced systems will not experience downloading delays or problems.

Mistake #3: Creative That Provides No Experience

On the flip side of offering too much, there is the mistake of providing so little interactivity and content that there’s no experience for the visitor. Remember that by its very nature, the Internet is an interactive medium. It’s important to strike a balance between creative overkill and static, flat pages that do little to invite visitors.

Consider a consumer’s motivation for visiting your site. Then, create "landing pages" that either deliver on a promise made in your offline advertising efforts or provide an immediate benefit or vehicle for responding.

Mistake #4: Not Making the Site Easy to Find

In order to experience your site, visitors need to find it. This requires adopting a search engine and site indexing strategy. Savvy marketers follow a discipline of regularly updating and managing the search and index variables of sites and frequently submitting sites to search engines. Managing keywords, meta descriptors, repetitive text, contextual copy and content, header and title information and submission are all part of ensuring your site gets maximum exposure on the Web. This can all be accomplished internally, externally or combined with specialized software resources.

Whatever route you choose, it is important to adopt and manage a search engine and site-indexing strategy that places your bank’s Web site in the first-level results.

Mistake #5: Hidden Data Forms

In Web marketing – just as in other modes of direct response advertising – it is still rule No.1 to ask for the order. Many of today’s Web sites disregard this axiom by burying the order form or, horror of horrors, not including one at all.

An online application or request for information form should never be more than a click or two away and should be accessible from every page on the site. The easier you make it for a prospect to respond, the better chance that he or she will. Take a look at your favorite charity's Web site. Chances are, you'll find a prominent "donate now" button on every page.

Remember, the Web is a goal-driven medium in which visitors look for specific information

Mistake #6: Distracting Creative

Be ever mindful that all creative elements – copy, graphics and data collection forms – must help consumers get where you want them to be and to do what you want them to do. Visitors who get distracted or lost along the way will eventually bail out.

To avoid this scenario, keep Web pages simple and ensure that transitions from one place to the next are logical. Plan the flow so that visitors can always get what they want no matter what path they choose.

To avoid costly mistakes when developing Web site creative, consider the audience and their motivations for visiting your bank’s site. Is it to request additional information? Will they be applying for an account or a loan directly? What do you have to offer that your competitors don’t? What is your offer or positioning and how should the audience respond to it?

Before writing a word or clicking a mouse, determine what it is that your customers’ need and use these requirements as your guide. Create a virtual advisory board to attain goal-driven feedback on new features, content or designs before you launch.

Carefully craft your questions. Instead of making subjective queries like, "What do you think of our site?," Ask: "How quickly did you find the rate quote you were looking for?" Or, "Were you able to get the details you needed quickly and completely?" The answers to these questions will help you take action.

It is also wise to partner with an agency that has experience in direct response marketing – both online and offline. Leverage the lessons they’ve learned to ensure that your Web site creative makes the most of a consumer’s total Internet experience.

Warren Hunter is CEO of DMW, a full-service marketing consulting firm in Wayne, PA. Reach him at whunter@dmwdirect.com

Copyright Ó Independent Banker, 2002 All Rights Reserved