Get your own damn online strategy
December 10th, 2007
For the third time in as many days I’ve had a call from one of my credit unions peers asking about what we’re doing online or planning to do online in 2008. When I get one of these calls or emails the sarcastic side of me wants to pop out and respond saying “maybe it’s time to get your own damn online strategy”.
On one hand it’s flattering that people feel we’re (the royal ’we’ since I’m a team of one) doing some interesting stuff with our online channel and want to hear what we have going on. On the other hand though I’m growing tired of people just piggybacking off of or copying what we’re doing. We put a lot of effort we put into the design, interaction planning, usability and analytics and it is frustrating to see some of it simply re-done elsewhere.
That got me thinking about how Credit Unions (in particular those of us here in BC or Canada for that matter), could improve what we’re doing online.
Figure out who your customer is. Do you know? We do. And we spend a lot of time talking to them, we research the where, what, why, how and when. We capture them in detailed personas and constantly evaluate whether we’re meeting their needs online. We look for ways to improve, involve them in usability studies and try to make it easier for them to do business with us.
Determine what you want your online channel to be and what you need to get there. It seems that many people I speak with have no online strategy. No plans to get beyond faceless, boring brochure-ware. Few seem to be considerate of the fact that over 90% of product purchase decisions begin with an online search, or that people want to be able to open an account online. Fewer still are doing SEO/SEM, email marketing, web analytics or looking at how their customers/members engage with the online channel.
Look forward, stop standing in the same place. Credit Unions are notorious for this. We seem to be content with the same-old-same-old, don’t want to push the envelope and try new things (William with ChangeEverything, Coast Capital Savings with Julie and Gene with MemberNote are some recent exceptions).
Figure out where we can work together to advance something or cut costs. There are so many opportunities to work together. A simple example: credit unions on the MemberDirect Integrated platform all use similar tools (e.g. our find branch/ATM tool). We all hate it, want it changed, but rather than working together, some go off and build their own, spend countless hours applying band-aid changes to solve for existing problems or simply put up with what is there while we wait for our partners to finally find the time to fix it. IMHO we should be picking a few things we want to change each year, partnering to sort out the requirements and sharing the development costs.
Remember you are my competition. A couple years ago I coined a phrase I like to use to describe our credit union landscape — coop-etition. In my opinion it’s something none of us want to admit. We all need to remember that while we’re all friends and in this together as credit unions and should be working together as much as possible, we’re also direct competitors for the same customers, the same dollars, the same business. I’m taking a different path because I want to be different than you. Are you or are you just copying what I’m doing?
This week’s remainders
December 8th, 2007
Jared Spool’s Web App Summit looks great. If you register before Dec. 11 for all three days you get a free iPod nano. You might also be interested in reading Jared’s latest article Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications
Coremetrics Announces Free Migration for Visual Sciences HBX Customers. First 25 get free implementation, 6 months free, data migration and training.
FlickScreen is a new favourite Mac OSX app of mine. Take screenshots and move them to Flickr with ease.
Gabriel White’s Small Surfaces blog takes an interesting look at design for mobile technology.
Ask Semphonic about Omniture/Visual Sciences
November 30th, 2007
If you are an HBX client (like me) you’ll be interested in attending Semphonic’s upcoming webinar. Details below:
This is your chance to hear Semphonic’s leading practitioners talk about the Omniture acquisition of Visual Sciences and ask them specific questions
around the impact, alternatives and implications!Ask Semphonic is a FREE Q&A webinar hosted by Semphonic. You can submit questions in advance or during the webinar and hear our Analysts answer and
discuss them. Each Ask Semphonic webinar will have a main theme – kicking off with the Omniture / VS acquisition. Other measurement questions are welcome
and will be addressed time permitting.Ask Semphonic is a follow-up to our X Change conference. Feedback from the conference overwhelmingly found the conversational format extremely useful and
asked for more web analytics “conversations.†While facilities such as the Web Analytics Forum are excellent for many questions, the conversational format
used at X Change adds a distinctive element that is hard to duplicate in any printed setting. Each Ask Semphonic session will last approximately 45-50 minutes.WHEN: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 11:00am PST / 2pm EST
WHO: Semphonic’s Consultants will include Gary Angel, Breen Baker, June Dershewitz, Jesse Gross, Joel Hadary, Phil Kemelor and Paul Legutko.
Register now for this free webinar. Submit your questions to analytics@semphonic.com.
My questions
1) Gary’s recent blog post, Don’t Settle for Leftover Turkey When it comes to Web Measurement, notes that if you are on HBX, moving to SiteCatalyst, will involve the mapping of variables, segments, etc. His comment “The longer you stay anchored in the world of HBX, the longer you’re going to be eating leftover Turkey” sounded to me like his suggestion would be to ‘move now’ rather than wait to see the migration path Omniture proposes (the gateway being one route). For those on an existing HBX contract (ours expires in Dec 2008) is it his suggestion that we contact Omniture and start the transition now giving up a portion of our paid contract with HBX? What’s the approach Semphonic and other agencies are taking with their clients?
2) For those moving from HBX to Omniture, what do you think the biggest change for them outside of tagging? The loss of Report Builder? The need to re-tool reporting/dashboards? The need to learn a new tool? Feature decisions? (e.g. to ‘Discover’ or not).
3) Is this a time to evaluate other tool options other than SiteCatalyst (e.g. IndexTools, Google Analytics) or make an assumption that ‘big is better’?
Are you an HBX client? What are your questions? What are your plans?
A thank you from the WAA
November 29th, 2007
I got home tonight and there was a package from the WAA. Inside, a Certificate of Recognition for “service to the Web Analytics Association”. What a nice gesture. Signed by the ever-busy Jim Sterne too (not one of those scanned sigs). Thanks WAA. Looking forward to more opportunities to help out.
BTW, speaking of the WAA, if you are a member be sure to take their Web Analytics 2008 Outlook Survey.
This week’s remainders
November 29th, 2007
The email standards project “works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email”. I hope things go as well with this as with the web standards project in moving and improving the ability of all to deliver compelling, easy-to-build email. While you are at it be sure to check out David Greiner’s great advice in Ensuring your HTML emails look great and get delivered.
I love The New York Times and how they tackle stories online. For example, view the video then read the article. Good journalism. A powerful story of a man vindicated and trying to find his place in the world. Pictures, sound, story all have their place.
Gotta love this demo video for Google Maps with My Location (Beta). The use of paper cutouts (likely from the user-concept planning) and the simple, yet straight-forward summary of the functionality. I’d love to see a financial institution doing something like this to introduce their unique value proposition or reason for online banking.
Zopa is partnering with some Credit Unions in the U.S. The relationship smartly protects lenders with Credit Union deposit insurance and no fees for lenders and borrowers, while allowing credit unions to expand their lending base. This will be interesting to watch over time, though in Canada lending isn’t a problem for credit unions, deposits are. Can you say “disintermediation” or “commoditization”.
Wufoo has released their new form gallery. Grab a pre-made form, download the HTML or add to Wufoo quick and easy.
Which foods go with other foods? Think no longer. Go to Foodpairing.
Safari (Leopard) and Wordpress don’t like each other. One view and another. I’m back to two many browsers. Apple made me move to Firefox (er, actually, WASP, Firebug, SearchStatus, SEO for Firefox and the Web Developer extensions made me move to Firefox).
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