Capital One Turns to Responsive Design for Website Delivery

With people no longer tied to their desks, customers are now checking their bank's website from more than one type of device.

So, in an effort to keep up, Capital One is enacting an online strategy to fit its website users' screens using a technique called responsive design.

Responsive design detects the device from which a user is viewing a website and scales the content to fit the device's screen size. The technology changes the bank's digital appearance on tablets, smartphones and, of course, desktops while lowering the bank's costs and streamlining its website management.

"More and more customers are using an array of devices to interact with their financial institution — PCs, tablets and smartphones," said Capital One spokesman Mark P. Andrews in an emailed statement. "Smartphones will soon outstrip PC's as the main way people access the web. We have always kept our sights and our focus trained on where customers of financial services are going and digital mobility is clearly the right direction. Ultimately, we want our customers to have the best possible experience regardless of how they choose to interact with us, which is an important step in continuing to be a digital industry leader."

The change happened in late April, he said. So far, the experience is only launched on the bank's main marketing pages. The rollout took about four months.

At CEB TowerGroup's annual conference this spring, the head of Capital One's innovation lab, Mark Jamison, praised the process.

He referenced an evolution of responsive design that better contours itself to individual users — adaptive design. It's a system that someday Capital One will mimic, says Andrews.

"If you go to Boston Globe dot com, it will default to Boston's weather in the top left hand corner," Jamison told BTN at the time. "But if you go to the website from, let's say, your iPhone, [the website] will sense that it's your iPhone, and it will pick up its location and it will serve you the weather where you are."

Branchless bank startup Simple has been using adaptive web design and advanced mobile design since its inception, says spokeswoman Krista Berlincourt, in an email. The company was founded in 2010 and it launched in beta last summer.

Bank tech vendor Banno of Cedar Falls, Iowa has been selling responsive design services to community banks since last fall.

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