Tag Archives: vancity

Focus groupie

We held a focus group with members of the ChangeEverything.ca community. Fascinating stuff.

I don’t want to give away anything proprietary, but the trust the members of the focus group have in Vancity is amazing. It’s a bit of a virtuous circle: they use CE because they trust Vancity as a local, mission-driven organization with strong roots in, and ties to the community (if we replaced the Vancity logo with one of the big 5 banks, they wouldn’t even have tried the site even if everything else remained the same), but it goes the other way too because their trust in Vancity has improved because of CE and our lack of ulterior motives.

We also walked away with a lot of usability issues to address and some interesting functionality enhancements, which hopefully we can afford to make. There are some frustrating issues with the site, and seeing it through their eyes makes me happy the site is so sticky that it keeps our users coming back in spite of the technical issues. They all really liked the design, the open space, the colours. The Vancity brand lends itself well to this kind of endeavour, both aesthetically and thematically.

Watch the site over the next few weeks and even months for changes we’ll implement as a result of this amazing and inspiring evening.

A new direction

I have recently been asked why I don’t give my opinion about web 2.0, social marketing, banking, etc on my blog. Why I limit it to a more frivolous link blog. I was surprised by the question: lots of people are talking social web and FIs. My favourites include:

Social Signal
Open Source CU
Net Banker
NextCU

But then it occured to me, all of those are written by people outside of an FI. They’re written by supporters, vendors, partners, but not insiders. So I’m branching out and will start blogging more about trends I’m seeing, things I’m focusing on, ideas percolating under the surface. I hope I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes at these other fine companies and blogs. I admire and respect all of them, and merely am attempting to join their online conversation.

I also hope I won’t upset anyone at Vancity. I love the company and my job, and will strive to merely represent how we do business without giving away any trade secrets, inside information or anything else. I’m going to assume I have that freedom unless I’m told otherwise. Sara, I’ll wait for your call…

Now the question is, am I doing this for myself only, or is anyone else listening.

Thanks,
Wm