10 actions for finserv to improve digital experience without budget

Here are our 10 tips you can be acting on, without any additional budget.

1. Are you set-up to win?

Most financial institutions are set-up with systems designed for on-premises use because security is critical with the interaction between systems. But you aren’t in the office; can you still access all the systems you need to be successful remotely? If not, it is a good time to create a list and start researching hosted platforms that your IT or infosec teams may be able to sign-off in the future. Find out what the requirements or standards are that they are looking for to help shortlist.

2. Speak to branch staff

If they are not furloughed, marketers could spend some time on the phone and connect with those who are normally on the front-line of customer interactions. Is there information customers and prospects could get in-branch that is not well represented on the website? Map out any gaps in the digital journey or materials and knowledge which you could start to address.

3. Prioritize products and information

As mentioned in our article existing customers are most likely looking at key information about your mortgages, loans, credit card and insurance policies, including any payment holiday information or criteria that you have put in place and how to apply for help. Existing customers and prospects may also still be shopping for better deals, especially with interest rates at a historic low; whether this is making savings work harder or applying for a new loan or remortgage products, there is still an opportunity to acquire more customers.

Even before COVID_19, each generation was open to being digital-first with their banking needs. Our 2020 survey of global consumers indicates at least 40 percent of every demographic surveyed have “somewhat” or “significant” use of online platforms to carry out financial transactions. Consumers are much more likely to carry out transactions online for financial services than healthcare, two equally sensitive industries.

4. Collate your content

You have a lot of information on your products on individual pages, but think about landing pages collating existing content into an easy-to-find, easy-to-digest format, whether it’s a COVID-19 specific page that encompasses all of your actions across products for existing customers, or relevant comparisons between products for prospective customers.

5. Test

If you have the functionality, you can utilize the increase in traffic to your website to hone your messaging. A/B testing can help you to determine which way of expressing offers (% or cash amount) or which tone of voice works best with your audience along with small design tweaks as simple as changing the color on the button of your call to action. Along with improving conversions, you can collate these test results to help impact your design principles for the website without opinion but with data.

Want to learn more about A/B testing?

Here you can learn the basics of A/B testing.

6. Watch your analytics

1. Where are people coming from (Geographic), what devices are they using, and how does this fit with your current content creation?
2. What pages do people end their sessions on? Is this “good” (they found the information they needed) and you need to make this content more prominent? Or “bad” (they couldn’t find what they needed and left in frustration) and something you could address?
3. Look at errors – what might have caused them, can you fix any links now, anything the development team need to investigate?
4. Can pages with low traffic be pruned or merged?
5. Check your referrers – is there anyone/sites that you could be contacting to see what trends they are seeing and if you can provide information?

7. Search

What are people searching for? Are there answers to those questions that you know of which are not as high on the index? You could improve the results through metadata or added content.

8. Forms

Specifically check form abandonment rates on forms. Can you identify information people don’t have to hand over when they are trying to complete, and is that information essential for that stage of your process? Can you streamline the forms for now and request follow-up information later in the process?

9. Note your annoyances

Keep a list of the things that took you too long to respond to – prioritize and note the human capital saving if processes or technologies were better aligned to these cases, this will be useful for future investments. Anecdotes are good but numbers are better to help justify expenditure and calculate Return On Investment.

10. Audit your content

Take Episerver up on our Content Diagnostics Offer and get to know your content better, learning where to focus and what works well with your audience.