Web Site Planning Process: Site Launch

This is the fifth in a series of entries on credit union web site planning. The series follows CU Village’s web site planning model that includes six phases: 1) Goal Setting , 2) Strategy Development, 3) Decision Making, 4) Site Development, 5) Site Launch and 6) Maintenance and Growth.

The fifth step in the planning model is Site Launch. This phase is about more than asking the programmer to “flip a switch” and make your site live. It’s about making sure that everything is in place and every staff member is familiar with the new site before it is made available to the public.

In this phase you’ll focus on:

Final quality testing – Do one last check for quality, using staff and even members that may have not seen the site yet. Your quality testing should include the following reviewing the following:

• Links – Do they all work? Do they open in a new window if necessary and include the “you’re leaving our site” message?
• Content – Triple check the accuracy of your information—especially rates—and make sure all disclosures are included. Check your spelling, grammar, and phrasing/wording as well.
• Graphics – Are all graphics appearing as they should? If you have rotating banner ads, are they working as envisioned?

Developing policies and procedures – Develop policies and procedures to ensure the ongoing quality, relevancy, and consistency of your site. Be sure to include what should be updated, who should do it and when, and who is ultimately responsible for the site overall. For instance, the marketing manager might be in charge of the site overall, but heads of various departments might be responsible for their own updates. Also, will the entire site be updated on a monthly basis—or will some sections be updated more or less often? For credit unions’ sites, the rates will likely need special attention, while for leagues’ sites, a current educational or events calendar is a must. Will an individual or a team be responsible for proofreading the updates to ensure that they are consistent with the overall style of the site? Making these decisions now—before you launch your site and before any updates are needed—can save you time and frustration later.

Training – Plan for and conduct staff training on how to administrate and use the various components of your site. For example, you might decide that only some users need to know how to update the rates or set up new users in your system. Consider how much cross-training and back-up you’ll need among departments as you’re planning your training.

Launch planning – Work with your Web developer long in advance to set a launch date and to define the steps needed to ensure it happens smoothly. This may include domain transfers, DNS record changes, and new security certificates. Some changes, like DNS changes, can take many days before they are fully in effect.

Marketing and PR – Your work and your new site is important, so make sure everyone, including staff, knows about it. If you’re not doing this already, be sure to include your site’s URL in all marketing materials and publications. Don’t assume that people, including your members and even board members, know you have a site. Let them know about your site and remind them of the relevant and useful information that it contains.

Launch your site – Go live with your site and celebrate!

In my next post, I'll talk about successfully maintaining and growing your site.

Research: Despite Abandonment Rates, Opportunity Exists to Get Consumers to Complete Online Applications

Research regarding online applications and abandonment rates has netted some interesting results. Conducted within the past few years, the results offer valuable information that credit unions can use to their advantage, including the following:

• Seven out of ten consumers who abandon online financial applications could be persuaded to complete them online
• Half of online financial application abandoners had no intention of completing application

Study 1: Seven Out of Ten Consumers Who Abandon Online Financial Applications Could be Persuaded to Complete Them Online
In September 2006 Compete, Inc. announced the findings from its research, "Financial Services Providers: Creating New Relationships Online." One of the key findings was that “while 14.2 million consumers start an online application each month, only 4.2 million complete the application online.” The study was conducted by Compete, a unit of TNS Media that delivers digital intelligence that helps the world’s top brands improve their marketing based on the online behavior of millions of consumers. Compete conducted the study to learn:

• Why consumers abandoned the online applications—even though they had been motivated to start them
• How companies could encourage more of these consumers to complete the process – After all, if many of those who abandoned the online application process still thought that the online app was more convenient than other application methods (e.g., phone, in person) then perhaps these people could be convinced to complete the application online.

The study revealed that “online applicants who abandoned the process identified a lack of transparency in the application process, concerns over security and privacy protection and a poorly designed online experience as the top three reasons for online application abandonment.”

Study 2: Half of Online Financial Application Abandoners had No Intention of Completing Application According to a study conducted by comScore, Inc. and Forrester Research, Inc., 54 percent of online financial product applicants abandon applications prior to submitting them. The study, based on behavioral data from comScore’s panel of more than 2 million people worldwide, plus an email survey of 568 applicants who had abandoned an application for a financial product online, examined consumer motivations in abandoning applications for online financial products, including checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, auto insurance, brokerage accounts, mortgage loans, home equity loans, and personal loans. The results were announced in September 2007. The top reasons cited by those who did not intend to complete the application included:

• Wanted more product information (23 percent)
• Not ready to apply (19 percent)
• Wanted to see if they qualified for the product (14 percent)

The study also examined some of the reasons why these abandoners chose not to complete the application online. Those who started an application with the intention of completing it, but who ended up abandoning the application cited the following reasons for not completing the application:

• Changed their mind about applying online (12 percent)
• Had privacy/security concerns (11 percent)
• Wanted to speak to a sales person regarding the product (11 percent)

What Do These Studies Mean to Credit Unions?
These findings represent an excellent opportunity for credit unions that post online applications for membership/savings, credit cards, or loans. According to Compete’s findings, “Financial services providers have a tremendous opportunity to persuade and influence those consumers most engaged in the buying process, but not yet sold—those who start and then abandon the online application. Less than a third of all abandoners outright reject the online path, meaning that savvy marketers still have an opportunity to persuade 70% of abandoners to complete the application online.” In short:

• There’s a market for online applications.
• If you use online applications, be sure they are easy to use and secure.
• Clearly state your criteria for qualifying for products and services on your Web site. If your members or potential members are interested, make it easy for them to see if they’re eligible.

Also, you might want to use a secure online chat service to assist people who seem to be taking a while completing an application. Some online chat services, such as Boldchat, enable you to monitor visitors to your site and invite them to chat. Or, simply having the chat option available near the application (without inviting them to chat) is a good choice; that way the member can click the icon to chat if they need assistance.

Commonly Used Screen Resolutions

Love My Credit Union is one of the web sites CU Village manages. It receives a high volume of traffic from all areas of the country from consumers and businesses alike. So the traffic to it is fairly representative of the visitors most credit unions are likely to get.

Some interesting usage stats we just pulled from it recently are the screen resolutions visitors to the site use. Here are the top ten:

1. 1024x768 - 45%
2. 1280x800 - 13%
3. 1280x1024 – 13%
4. 1440x900 - 7%
5. 800x600 – 6%
6. 1680x1050 – 4%
7. 1152x864 - 4%
8. 1280x768 - 2%
9. 1920x1200 - 1%
10. 1280x960 - 1%

Larger resolutions enable you to fit
more on a screen at one time

As you are considering redesigning your credit union web site, use this information as a guide for what resolution (i.e. 1024 x 768) to tune your new design to. The goal is to strike the right balance between taking advantage of the bigger screens that have come out in recent years and having it work with older systems.

Web Site Planning Process: Site Development

This is the fourth in a series of entries on credit union web site planning. The series follows CU Village’s web site planning model that includes six phases: 1) Goal Setting , 2) Strategy Development, 3) Decision Making, 4) Site Development, 5) Site Launch and 6) Maintenance and Growth.

The fourth step in the planning model is Site Development. This phase is about building your site based on the goal setting and planning work you did in the first three steps. It is also about ensuring the development of your site remains on track in terms of time, budget, scope and quality.

Unfortunately, all too many organizations start their projects here and disregard all the planning and pre-work that needs to be done. Organizations that do this typically end up with a prolonged, frustrating and expensive development process. This happens because the decisions that should have been made earlier don't go away. They still need to be made.

For you, because you have done your planning, your Site Development phase will focus on:

• Finalizing site design and graphics: lock down and commit to the look and organization (i.e. site map or site organizational chart) of your site. Changes later in the process will only slow down development and increase the overall costs of your site. Ensure that your site is right the first time. Consider having a small group of members look at your design and organization before you begin building.
• Content development: ideally you should write the content for your site before a single page is developed. If you do, the development process will move much more smoothly and quickly. Plus, this will enable you match your content with your site organizational chart, which will help you identify and fix any content holes you may have before they become issues. Depending on the size of your site, expect to spend as long as 3-4 months developing your content—or longer.
• Programming and development: today, Web sites are becoming larger and more complex. In most projects, at least some programming is required for things such as online applications, content and ad management tools and navigation. Development also includes the actual creation of your Web site pages. The more you have planned and completed by this point, the faster you'll be able to move through this process.
• Content loading: depending on the type of site you create, your content is either added as your pages as are created or once your content management system has been implemented. In either case, the process is greatly simplified and quickened by having your content in well-organized, well-edited electronic documents that are in final form.
• Testing: no one likes to test, but it is critical. While some responsibility to test falls on the shoulders of your Web site developer, it falls on your shoulders too. Test throughout the development process and after for quality, typos, organization, usability, bugs, security, formatting, consistency and completeness. Use your project plan as a checklist to ensure that everything that should have been done was done. Also, strongly consider having a small group of your members test it too.

In my next post, I'll talk about what you need to watch out for and do during the actual launch of your new site.

Web Site Planning Process: Decision Making

This is the third in a series of entries on credit union web site planning. The series follows CU Village’s web site planning model that includes six phases: 1) Goal Setting , 2) Strategy Development, 3) Decision Making, 4) Site Development, 5) Site Launch and 6) Maintenance and Growth.

The third phase in the planning model is Decision Making. In the first phase you set your strategies. In the second phase you looked at the various options that could help you achieve those strategies. In the third phase it is time to set your priorities and make decisions based on the options you've already considered. Simply, you decide exactly what needs to be done and when. Before any programming or site development starts you need to finalize and document in writing:

• Site organization and size
• Screen layouts and graphical design
• Programming and database requirements
• Features and functionality
• Hosting and other technology requirements
• Time line and project plan for completion

What should drive your decision? The three constraints of project management:

The idea being you can’t change one constraint (time, cost or scope) without changing the others, and that you really can only control two out of the three. Or put another way, your choices are doing it fast, cheap or good—pick two.

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well you just might find
You get what you need - The Rolling Stones

The other factors that should drive your decisions are what members want and what will make the most sense to them. Also, your goals, mission and positioning as a credit union should absolutely drive your decisions.

Once you've made your decision to get a new site, there is always a strong urge to get at the development of it right away. But by figuring out what you need with some precision before you start development you will save a great deal of time and money in the long run. As such, these first three steps of developing a better web site are about building a blueprint for everything that will go into your site and how it all fits together to meet the needs of your credit union and your members. The final three steps are about putting your plan into action and getting the job done, which I will cover in future posts.

Web Site Planning Process: Strategy Development

Including the last post I made, the following is the second in a series of entries on web site planning. The series follows CU Village’s web site planning model that includes six phases: 1) Goal Setting , 2) Strategy Development, 3) Decision Making, 4) Site Development, 5) Site Launch and 6) Maintenance and Growth.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
-Alexander Graham Bell

In my last post I talked about the importance of setting two types of goals for your web site. The first set defines what you want to get out your site. The second set includes what your members want out of it. Once you have the goals defined, it is the marriage of them that should drive everything you do and have on your site.

But how do you translate those goals into web site strategies or actions and make the marriage happen?

You start by wish listing—pie-in-the-sky, budget doesn’t matter, out-of-box kind of thinking. I like wish lists because I like knowing what all my options are before making a decision, and because the process gets the creative juices flowing in terms of coming up with lots of ideas on how to tackle any given issue.

To get the ball rolling take a goal-pairing like “improve members’ ability to access services” (your goal) with “convenience” (your members’ goal) and start brainstorming all the ways you can accomplish these goals through your site. You’ll likely come up with answers such as home banking, bill pay, online applications and the like. You may also come up things like instant chat, click-to-call or using Twitter for member service (Crazy idea? Wells Fargo is doing it at http://twitter.com/Ask_WellsFargo). Thoughts about content and site organization should also come into play because they can contribute much to the “convenience” of your site.

In the end, what you will ultimately have is a list of all the strategies you could employ to help you meet your goals on your web site. Some of them you will do, some you won’t ever touch and some you may do in the future. The point is that you’ve critically thought about how to tie what you do on your site with what it needs to accomplish for you and your members.

Once you have your list of all the options/strategies you have to achieve your goals, the next step is the process of prioritization and decision making, which I will address in my next post in the series.

Importance of Setting Web Site Goals

I am preparing for a consulting project, so just a quick post this week. The project is to help a client develop a strategic plan for their web site.

As I am developing the plan outline for them, what I am reminded of is the importance of setting web site goals. To a degree it is strategic planning 101, but good goals really set the foundation and direction for what needs to happen. Without them, your site may not have the focus it needs to have and won't give you the ROI you want.

There are two sets of goals you want to consider: 1) goals that you have as an organization and 2) those that your members have. Your organizational goals define why you have a site and what you get want to get out it. For example, your goals could be business growth, member education or brand positioning.

The members' goals are why they come (or want to come) to your site and what they want out of it. The members' goals could be to conduct a transaction, sign up for a service or to get support. It is important to include member goals in your planning, because if it is all about you, your members' web site experience will not be satisfying to them and can negatively impact their usage of your site.

The balance of these two sets of goals should drive nearly everything for your site. They should determine what goes into your navigation and how it is organized. The goals can influence how your site is designed—task optimized v. marketing oriented. They also should determine what content and features your site should include.

That is it for now, but over my next few blog posts look for more information on web site planning.