Extra! Extra!

The other day I was reading about more negative news on the US economy when Jay Leno came on TV and began to ask people on the streets of Los Angeles (mostly young adults) basic financial/budgeting questions. Obviously, it was funny (yet shocking) how little some of the people he talked to new basic financial concepts.

More and more leading financial institutions are recognizing the importance of educating their members of the different financial products and/or services that are available to them. Why wait until a customer asks if you offer a 401K instead of educating the value of retirement services to them up front? I took a look at some of the leading financial websites (and some smaller ones) and its evident that many financial institutions are realizing the importance of actively educating their members on financial related topics. Here are some websites that caught my eye (and actually increased my financial knowledge along the way):

Financial Education
• CEFCU: https://www.cefcu.com/learning/financial-basics.php - The site has some great financial calculators, tools and articles.
• UFCU: https://www.ufcu.org/learning/index.php?loc=menu – Educational material for students, home buyers, vechice purchasers, etc.
• Visa Practical Money Skills: http://www.practicalmoneyskills.com/english/index.php - Financial literacy information targeted by user segments: School, Home and Work. The site has strong content with a personable voice and a nice range of features.
• Schwab Money & More: http://www.schwabmoneyandmore.com/toolsResources.php?nav=2#articles – Site has various financial calculators, articles and a glossary:
Life Events (mostly targeting Gen Y)
The following websites do a good job at presenting specific financial products/services based on major life events a member might go through.
• CEFCU: https://www.cefcu.com/learning/life-events.php
• Schwab: http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/planning/life_events?cmsid=P-1897641&lvl1=planning&lvl2=life_events
• WAMU: http://www.wamu.com/personal/learn_plan/browsebylifestyle.asp
• 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy: http://www.360financialliteracy.org/Life+Stages/
• Schwab: http://www.schwabmoneywise.com/milestones/ - Directly targeted at young adults or for adults who want to talk about the management of money with their kids.

Congratulations to Citizens Equity First Credit Union (CEFCU) for launching the new website CEFCU.com!

CEFCU worked with Extractable to intuitively organize information on its website for members while making sure CEFCU’s business objectives were addressed. This was done while maintaining the integrity of the website’s great visual design!

The new website has better exposure to their competitive rates (which will hopefully lead to increased applications), targeted custom marketing banners, increased number of financial tools, and a financial Learning Center section that aims to educate their members.

Congrats to CEFCU!

There are a few applications that are standard on almost all web sites. Every site should have a search engine and there are some great search engines out there from companies such as Autonomy, Omniture, Google, and Surfray (Check out SearchTools). Every site should also have an analytics application such as those provided by Omniture, CoreMetrics, or Google. Most sites have a Content Management System such as TeamSite, Rhythmyx, Ektron, or Contribute (Check out CMS Watch). For applications such as ecommerce, chat, and application servers there are many excellent options in all price ranges for each category.

Then there is the crown jewel of customer support applications – the knowledgebase, were the number of good options a web developer has narrows significantly. Application providers like RightNow Technologies and Talisma provide good solutions . But they are priced out of the range of small to midsize companies. The knowledgebase is the key to customer self service. I don’t think the average user is very pleased with the phone support they get from the majority of companies they interface with. Good knowledgebase applications allow customers to solve their problems quickly and easily without forcing them to navigate frustrating phone trees. Knowledgebase applications show customers multiple ways to solve every common problem as well as give customers an easy ruote to rate the quality of support solutions. Yet, the vast majority of sites out there don’t have any knowledgebase to speak of.

One key point to make about knowledgebase applications as a part of web development is that they are probably the easiest application to calculate a healthy ROI. Good knowledgebase tools with excellent support content reduce call center volume, increase customer satisfaction, and offer excellent opportunities for personalized upselling.
Some examples of good knowledgebase tools are below:

• RightNow Example (Plantronics)
• Talisma Example

Many financial institutions (and almost all credit unions) have their membership base defined by geographic boundaries. Most credit unions are even bounded by law that all members need to live, work or pray in the areas that the credit union is located.

When people search for financial terms in Google, Yahoo or MSN the search engines don’t put to much weighting on your physical location (by using a reverse DNS lookup) when producing the search results unless you include a geographic term in your search phrase (eg. “San Francisco credit unions”). For example, when I searched for “credit unions” in Google.com (from Foster City, California) the first 100 results included a credit union for practically every state in the USA!

Using Wordtracker, I did some further research and discovered that not many people include geographic keywords when searching for financial services/products. For example, the specific phrase “car loans” is searched for over 15,000 times a month but the phrase “San Francisco car loans” produces no searches (or at least less than what Wordtracker records).

While it is important to produce websites that are “search engine” friendly, it seems like one of the best opportunities to gain additional memberships for financial institutions that operate in a certain geographic area is to use Google and Yahoo’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) services that display paid ads to only people searching for financial related keyword phrases in the areas they operate. For example, a San Francisco based financial institution could bid to display an ad on the search engine results pages for only people searching for the phrase “student loans” in the San Francisco area. The financial institution could further increase their conversion rates by optimizing the ads to speak directly to these users (eg. San Francisco is expensive but your Student Loan doesn’t have to be).

Here are some screenshots from Google and Yahoo who allow you to display your PPC ads in only selected regions that you define.