Door

Private banking

4 sites tested

For this issue we had a look at companies in the sector of private banking. We made a selection of 4 renowned players on this market. Each site was extensively tested especially on usability, structure and ease of information retrieval. Tests were performed on IE 7 and Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.6.

Rothschild (www.lcf-rothschild.be)
The LCF Rothschild website is set up with a good combination of white spaces and font sizes. Much attention has been put in defining a proper style (with amongst other features a photo slide on top) which looks quite nice. A logical and simple navigation tops a professional looking site.

The main menu is displayed twice – once on top and once in the left sidebar – which makes one wonder why. At first sight the same pages display once you select one of the 5 main menus and a first-time visitor does not see any information about private banking, but can read a lot about the family, wine, mixed farming and yachting. It is only when we navigate through the “The Group” menu that a ‘world of information’ opens:
The ‘Activities’ menu shows you immediately which branches provide private banking services and you can click to the branch sub-site. Only then the left side-bar gives you other menus than the top menu bar. The way the ‘Activities’-page is set up is really ingenious in the way it clearly and quickly provides all necessary (contact) details by hovering over either activity or local branch.

Via the ‘Global Network’ sub menu, we can click through to a local branch which directs us to that particular site.
All pages provide the same recurring top page menu (“Home”, “Contacts”, “Legal Information”, “Sitemap”). The “Contacts” menu displays an address and email, but no other contact details. The Sitemap gives a detailed overview of an actually not very elaborate site. Drawback while surfing is that breadcrumbs are not available. The overall basic functionalities are available, apart from lack of breadcrumbs. The clearly displayed logo redirects to the homepage, the sitemap does its work and a search engine lets the visitor find any text.

Overall this website disserves a good overall score, but concerning private banking it should be seen more as a portal site than otherwise.

Bank Delen (www.delen.be)
The site of Bank Delen comes across as quite boring and old-fashioned. “Just fill a few word pages and convert them to a language a browser can understand” seems to have been the general philosophy. Although the content makes up for the not-so-flashy structure.

The homepage provides a quick introduction to the company. Navigating through the pages is simple via the left menu bar whose submenus are links to other pages. The menu bar remains visible throughout the site as it is a fixed frame.

On the button “Presentatie” we find a sort of “who is who” with phone numbers and locations. The button “Historiek” covers a very brief company history, which tells us the site was constructed in 2000 (which explains a lot).Via the button “Jaarverslag” we can get pdf documents with the yearly results that have a much more appealing feal than the site itself. The button “Aanverwante bedrijven” provides an organization chart of related companies, but it is impossible to click to the respective sites. The button “Persartikels” makes it possible to download pdf versions of press articles since 2000 till now. A separate browser tab for each article prevents losing track of the main site.

News bulletins can be selected via a menu, but the summary of bulletins could profit from a bigger font. Now we really have to almost get our noses to the screen to read the bulletins.

When we click “Vermogensbeheer” we get a lot of information about asset management, all very well explained and readable, right font, right size and right background color. The same thing applies to “Funds”, “Eurobonds”, “Advies & Internet” that have all aspects in harmony.

The site lacks bread crumbs, a logo that redirects to the homepage, a sitemap and a contact page with sufficient error-handling. Overall there is a lack of creativity, a good feel and the site can be improved linked with current requirements, but content-wise it delivers the goods.

UBS (www.ubs.com)
The website of UBS immediately stands out for its professional look-and-feel, even though the homepage seems packed with menu-items and links. After a few minutes searching and exploring, the professionalism of the site can only be confirmed. Overall the several menus on the homepage are linked with the type of visitor to the site. There are menu items for “Individual Clients” and for “Corporate or Institutional Clients”. A separate menu is present for these types of clients to login. Menus (which are directed to sub pages) for “Analysts & Investors”, “Media” and “Career Candidates” are also available.

When clicking on whatever menus as described above, the visitor arrives at a page which looks like a totally new homepage for that type of client and/or service: a brand new left menu is visible with (again) almost endless possibilities of information. The great thing is that all this information is structured in such a way that you never get the impression that you are lost in a maze of data. A help with this aspect is certainly the extensive search engine and the ‘Location Finder’ & ‘Service Finder’ functionalities. Drawbacks are the lack of bread crumbs and unavailability of a sitemap, but the well-structured site makes up for the latter comment.

What UBS apparently wants (and succeeds) to put focus on is its compliance with W3C standards. Of most pages there is a ‘screen-reader optimized version for visually impaired and blind visitors’, which can also be accessed via the “Zoom version” menu on every page.

Technically top-notch and a valuable addition to the website of UBS is the “explore virtual UBS”-functionality. This brings the visitor to a separate and fully virtual website that provides information on the company, its commitments, and other information. On the whole, this site is extraordinary professional and should serve as an example to other sites.

SG Private Banking (www.sgpriv.be)
The website SG Private Banking offers a good idea of what is available. The continuity of the site is respected throughout (font, structure and colours). Bullet lists and tables are on all pages, which makes it a little repetitive.

The left side navigation bar offers a simple layout and easy structures the content of the site. Most of the menus provide submenus, but the underlying or resulting pages offer quite a meager content in comparison with the space offered on the page. Nevertheless, everything is explained very well and the visitor has the possibility to download further information via pdf documents (e.g. stock information). A contact form can be filled in and sent via the site, but the site does not offer any contact details and the form can be sent by only filling the mandatory fields with spaces.

A sitemap is available and it seems of poor quality at first sight, but actually it copies the images of the left menu on the homepage and even makes it possible to arrive at the submenus by clicking those parts on the images.

Via list boxes to the right of the homepage, offices can be selected in Belgium and worldwide. Not all have the same performance, however: when we select the office for Leuven, a separate page opens up only after about 20 seconds before the information is displayed.

The languages available are French and Dutch. Switching to another language is easy via the language button and the switch happens on the same page instead of redirecting the visitor to the homepage first. The private E-Banking logo makes it possible to log in, but this can be frustrating when still a number of plug-ins need to be installed (In our case the browser crashed for this reason).

To summarize, the SG Private Banking website is conform with basic standards. It does lack some creativity and energy and might be a bit complex for the first time visitor.