Little changes--big difference: you can achieve an online 'Wow' with your customers just by upgrading some of the seemingly minor aspects of your Web site--such as registration and login.

• Author: Rubini, David
• Position: Website Redesign

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How do you "Wow" an online banking customer? An online "Wow" is delivered by a Web site that is easy to use without external help, anticipates users' common needs and problems, and lets them get their tasks done quickly. In practical terms, to Wow users online, you must succeed in getting users to do three basic things repeatedly:

* Visit your site.

* Seek and find the information they need.

* Take action.

Sometimes a Wow experience can best be achieved by avoiding an "Oww" experience, or the painful and nonproductive "speed bumps" that sites often present to their visitors. These online "speed bumps" are flaws in the design of the Web site that slows down users from achieving their immediate goals.

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Getting the basics right matters. Before customers can be loyal and productive, they must be able to sign up for services and access them with ease. Without focusing on these basics, banks risk losing online users before they even gain access to any ongoing value. Conversely, banks that solve well for these basic needs may increase their presence as the primary financial, capture a larger share of wallet, and increase retention--durable benchmarks of success in online banking.

Mastering the funnel

Think of the online channel as a funnel, with anonymous visitors (some new and some returning) at the top, and with loyal, satisfied and profitable customers at the bottom. To get from the top to the bottom of the funnel, users must:

* Visit your site. They have to know you have a Web site, make a conscious decision to visit it and be able to find it on the Internet.

* See and understand what to do. Once they are at the Web site, they have to be able to find what they are looking for with ease or be offered something that they see as meeting a need.

* Take action on their own. The online channel is touted as being low cost since it lets customers serve themselves, but it only saves cost if customers can actually serve themselves, and not resort to contacting you, or even worse, abandoning your site.

Registration

One of the first places speed bumps appear is in the process of initial registration for services such as online banking. This registration process is necessary to associate users and their accounts with the online service, but can be slow to complete and confusing for users. Below are a few tips to ease registration:

* Minimize the 'legaleze.' When presenting Terms and Conditions, use a link to...