Commonwealth Bank website tries to keep up with the Joneses

On the new Commbank site, there are now separate pages for the Personal and Business banking, their two main targets. The sub-sites have been clearly separated this time around and the big improvements have been on effective grouping of secondary navigation elements to reduce clutter. The result is a very clean, corporate look with lots of great whitespace. The site is very easy to read, although the default font size is perhaps a little small for some users, the site invites users to change it.

While the Business section opens in its own window and still has its old look and still needs some work, the Personal Banking section is now sporting a new directory style look which is somewhat easier to navigate. This sort of content packaging is very effective on a financial services website, and the products and information that are relevant are easy to find, with nice pretty pictures for each. Each product and service also has its own template, which features its own navigation and visual icons and panels for e-services tools. There are "Need Assistance" links and icons on most pages and context sensitive "Did you know?" type tips. Relevant disclaimers and disclosure statements are discrete but always visible. The whole thing at least looks very user friendly.

One minor usability criticism, however, (from my own experience as a user) is the inconsistent use and visual treatment of the hyperlinks. Some are underlined, while others aren't. This may seem trivial, but it is a huge issue for me. I actually went to click on the "Apply Now" and "Tools & Calculators" icons. When it didn't do anything I assumed that it didn't work and left it alone. It wasn't hyperlinked. Afterward I realised that the text next to it (which also wasn't visibly hyperlinked) was actually clickable. The same goes for the little yellow arrows on the page.  I am a reasonbly savvy user.  If I wasn't, such attention to detail it may well have costed them a customer, if not already be costing them thousands of potential customers. Relying on exploratory navigation behaviour can be costly, especially for banks which should be doing their best to take the guesswork out of doing business with consumers and business.

I am a Bendigo and ANZ bank customer, so I can't say whether other aspects such as Internet banking have also improved (perhaps some of our readers may be able to contribute here).

Though the CBA site sports some aspects of a Web2.0 look, unfortunately, according to the Age's article "Web2.0? Don't bank on it just yet" banks like the Commbank seem to be at the conservative end when it comes to implementing Web 2.0 functionality, so you won't find anything too funky just yet.

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