Brett King: Who gets it right with Internet Banking opportunities?

by: Brett King.Author, Bank 2.0,
      banking4tomorrow.com

Take a look at your retail or consumer banking website or homepage. I can 100% guarantee that regardless of who you are, and in what market you are in that I know exactly which part of the site is clicked on most. Contact us? Nope. Press Releases - definitely not. The biggest Ad banner on the homepage? Nope...

Figured it out. Well the headline gives it away. It is the login button. In developed economies click-thru rate from the bank homepage can be as high as 97% of traffic that visits the homepage, and in developing markets it still hovers around 70-75% generally.

The thing is that in most cases banks spend a considerable amount of money each year trying to entice new customers to apply online or to send in their details so someone in the mortgages team, call centre, preferred banking or private banking team can reach out to them. Acquisition must be a key metric of any direct channel team today. However, in most cases the visitors to your homepage are existing customers. Thus, 70-95% of daily traffic is being channelled immediately from the homepage to the secure internet banking website behind the login.

So let's get this straight. Your bank marketing team has just spent US$1m upgrading your site and putting offers all over 3rd party properties to direct traffic to your website and trigger acquisitions, but still 95% of visitors are clicking through to Internet Banking. How much product are you selling behind the login? Well, if you are most banks - virtually zero. Why? Because most managers see Internet Banking as a transaction platform designed to lower the cost of operations by transferring low-margin or costly transactions to a direct channel with a lower cost than a branch or call centre.