How Your Website Is Losing You Money

Even though credit unions are not-for-profit, we still need to make money. Yet for too many of us, our website is actually losing us money. It’s not driving new members, new loans or new deposits. Your growth may be slow because your website (which includes mobile and digital) is slow.

In a recent survey, 75% of consumers judge a company’s credibility from their website design. If your website looks out of date, clunky or cheap, then it is losing you money.

Credit unions will spend $3 million on a new branch and choke on investing $30,000 on a new site. Yet that website investment will yield a much higher return.

For your credit union website to start making you money rather than losing it, there are three ways to design you site for success. You need to “ACT” with your website, which is an acronym that stands for attract, convert and transform.

Attract

Your website isn’t going very far if it doesn’t make a good first impression. You almost want to think of your website like a first date: if you don’t make a good first impression you are not going to get a second date. It’s the same way with your website: If it doesn’t make a good first impression, consumers will not revisit you.

Consider these statistics:

• It takes about five seconds for visitors to form an opinion about your site.
• Fifty-seven percent of internet users say they wouldn’t recommend a business with a bad mobile site.

A great (and quick exercise) to do is pull up your website. Using a timer, give yourself five seconds and quickly make comments about what you see. What is your first impression? What do you see and what do you not see? What could you do to make your site more appealing?

You must create a memorable first impression. As Charlie Watts, CEO of Aurora Federal Credit Union ($126 million, Aurora, Colo.) said after his site was redesigned, “We wanted to modernize the credit union to be competitive with other financial institutions that had a better online presence. With our old website we couldn’t do that. Now we take pride in our website and are updating it frequently.”

If your site appears dated, then consumers think your credit union is old. Does your site pop or does it look like every other financial institution? You need to quickly catch the consumer’s eye.

Convert

Your website should never become a glorified brochure. You need to use clicks to drive dollars.

A new dating term some young people are using now is “DTR.” That means we need to “define the relationship.” For credit union websites, “DTR” means we need to understand what consumers want in a digital relationship. Hint: They want it all.

In assessing your website, you need to make an honest review. Where do you measure up with your competition? Where do you fall short? From a digital perspective, your competition today is now Starbucks, Apple, Amazon, Chick Fil-A and Target. Why? Because consumers expect the same features and functionality from your site as they do from those.

For example, Venmo lets users apply for a credit card right on the app. PayPal lets users easily get a debit card with no physical locations involved. Rocket Mortgage lets users get a mortgage online. One of our team members recently got a mortgage using only their phone and internet – no physical interaction was required and they worked with his scheduling constraints.

When it comes to “converting” consumers with your website, remember this principle: Simplicity wins. How easy is it to do business with your credit union’s site or mobile device? The easier your website is to use, the easier it will be for consumers to do business with you.

Your website is no longer just a pretty face: It’s a serious relationship that requires effort if you want to convert consumers.

Transform

In keeping with the dating and relationship analogy, you want consumers to “tie the knot” with you. In other words, your website must be able to close the deal – the loan, the new account, the sub-account, the everything.

As Steve Jobs said, “Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.” Look and feel will get people in the door, but you need to seal the deal with website functionality.

Consumers are looking to your website to determine how easily you solve their problems. You cannot create additional friction by asking them to come by the branch. Consider Navy Federal Credit Union ($178 billion, Vienna, Va.). Users can go from looking at credit card transactions to viewing rewards points to booking plane tickets with those points, all online.

If you want a strong marriage, you have to constantly work at it. It’s no different with your website and member experience. You must constantly improve your website process by removing pain points and friction from your site. You don’t want your members looking elsewhere for better deals.

So from a practical perspective, what can your credit union do to attract, convert and transform with your website? Here are a few quick tips:

• Assess your site: Have a third party review your site and give you honest feedback regarding what is working and what is not. Sometimes we are too close to our own credit union to see where we can improve.
• Redesign your site every two to three years: It is amazing how quickly your website can get look outdated. Change is happening at lightning speed in the financial services industry. If your site looks old, you won’t attract new consumers.
• Add video to your site: People are no longer reading, they are watching. Make sure have a branded video, member testimonial videos, financial education videos, etc. throughout your site. Bonus tip: Video will also help with your search (SEO) efforts.
• Add functionality to your site: What can consumers actually do at your site or on their phones? Consistently add new features (chat, video chat, instant loan approval and funding, etc.) whenever possible.

Credit unions have to get real with their digital experience. And that starts with their website.

Mark Arnold is founder and president of On the Mark Strategies, a Dallas, Texas-based consulting firm specializing in branding and strategic planning for credit unions.