Digital Branding in Online Banking

A simple and seamless experience for your users. It’s what all financial services brands are striving to deliver, whether you’re a big bank, a credit union, or a FinTech with transactional services.

And while your online banking platform may not seem like the biggest opportunity to showcase brand, the experience you provide reflects heavily on how customers perceive you and your brand. With most users logging in multiple times a week (making a transaction, confirming a payment, checking their balances), the stakes are high to get it right and make these interactions as fast and easy as possible. Essentially, these experiences are your brand.

Creating the best digital experience takes the right combination of efforts:

• The user experience, which defines the “behavior” of the product itself: from task flows to micro interactions.
• The pixel perfect design of the UI, supporting its functionality in a clean and meaningful way.
• The integration of core brand elements like typography, color, iconography and more.

The experience, its “readability” and the visual design all contribute to how much users will appreciate your brand.

Today, we see many brands using Apple and Google’s foundational design systems (iOS Styleguide and Material Design, respectively) to help build minimal or “flat” design components. These can be great resources to tap into, but the challenge lies in discovering how to elegantly and effectively make it your own, so that at any given moment on the journey, the user is aware of who is providing the experience. Herein lies the art and science of digital branding in online banking. It takes much more thought and effort than an app icon and a logo on a third party, white label product.

Adding to the complexity we face is the fact that online banking today is no longer merely a desktop experience, but now includes a range of entry points and interfaces: online banking apps on iOS and Android, chat bots, online login, alerts on smart watches, as a skill on smart speakers, and by third party apps via APIs and more. Each channel comes with its own set of user needs and behavioral contexts. For example, the banking chat bot might be launched on the go, while the voice skill might be called at home while cooking in the kitchen. Responsive design, while essential for seamless experiences, is only the first step now. We must guide users effectively through the experience across all digital channels, in a way which serves their needs and stays true to the brand.

Are you running into challenges with your brand’s digital offering? At Extractable, we have the services and expertise to help you build future proof digital experiences for your financial services brand. Let’s talk.