September 6, 2006

Evaluating UK Banks' Online Sales Efforts

UK High-Street Bank Public Web Site Rankings

This is the second document in the "Evaluating European Bank Web Sites" series.

by Tim van Tongeren

with Cliff Condon, Ashara Giordanelli

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

As financial institutions spend millions to transform their sites into a compelling sales channel, we reviewed how well these sites meet the needs of online credit card shoppers. In our study, we included the five largest UK retail banks — Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, and NatWest — and the UK's largest building society — Nationwide. Our analysis covers 21 criteria across five main categories: Web site presentation, Web site navigation, contact methods, research functionality and content, and application content and functionality. Our findings? Most banks in the UK don't deliver a compelling buying experience online. Of the six firms we reviewed, only Lloyds TSB meets our minimum requirements. None of the banks provided site visitors with strong content and functionality for researching and applying for credit cards. But, we uncovered best practices in each of the categories.

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