Your Finances are your own Business payday loans Payday loans-about-us page

Banking and Cards Research

Digging into the Customer Experience: Banking and Credit Cards

Corporate Insight’s Bank Monitor, Credit Card Monitor and Small Business Card Monitor provide ongoing coverage of the products, websites and overall customer experience offered by the nation’s leading banks and card issuers. Our value-added banking and credit card research digs deeply to evaluate the retail and small business customer experience.

Private Site Navigation PDF Print E-mail
The usability of any credit card private site is based on more than just the tools and information it provides. It also depends on the navigational layout and information architecture. In this edition of Credit Card Monitor Report, we investigate the navigation of each issuer’s card management site, looking at the main navigation design, page layouts and quicklinks.

In this Credit Card Monitor report, we look into the navigation provided by each firm on its private site. Navigation is an important aspect of every private site, with even the best tools rendered ineffective if clients cannot locate them. As we investigated the navigational features of the various credit card issuer sites, we focused on the following issues:
  • What does each firm use for its main navigational architecture?
  • Are sites designed in a consistent manner with links and page designs standardized throughout?
  • Do issuers use quicklinks, flyout menus or any other shortcuts to speed navigation?
The dominating main navigational driver across credit card firms is currently the top nav bar, a feature used by 90% of issuers. Leading issuers augment this somewhat simple design in a number of ways, with five firms providing flyout dropdown menus for one-click access to tools throughout the site, and four offering a secondary nav bar to provide sub-tabs for each main header. Only a single issuer currently offers both a dual-layered navigational bar and flyout dropdowns, a great combination of features. In terms of consistency, a basic concept that can help both experienced users and novices use a private site, 60% of card issuers currently use a standard page design for the majority of their site, though only three firms present all links with standardized colors and underlining. Quicklinks, which provide shortcuts to frequently used tools and sections, are offered by 70% of firms, though only half of all issuers offer them throughout the private site.
 
As we continued to use and investigate the navigational structures provided by each firm, we came across the following additional Key Findings:
  • Only one on firm is currently using collapsible sections to help users manage link or information-heavy pages
  • 20% of private sites offer quicklink dropdowns, providing easy navigational to common tools without cluttering a column of each page with links
  • A single issuer continues to use a combined public-private site navigational system, with an overarching nav bar placed in the header with a private site-focused secondary layer beneath it.
 
Copyright © 2013 Corporate Insight. All Rights Reserved.