Thinking a lot, as I have lately, about the design of our website, I find myself focusing about three things. Obvious as they may be.

1> The vast majority of our site traffic is coming to do their online banking, so in a list of priorities the website is a relationship deepening tool first and foremost.

2> If we look at our member (credit union speak for customer) segments there are clear heavy users of our website and clear groups of members who don’t use online banking for their transactions. Based on the known priorities of the segments who use online banking, we can easily make the webiste sing for them, while bringing like-minded members along for the ride quite nicely.

3> I have stopped looking at my FI peers for inspiration. No offense to the other FI sites, but we’re competing against other e-tail experiences, not other FI sites. The kind of members who are core users of online banking are not comparing us to other sites in our vertical, but to the kinds of experiences they have shopping elsewhere on the web. Maybe not even just shopping, but getting entertainment and amusing themselves online.

Not rocket science, I know, but man do we have a whole lot of work ahead of us…