Accessibility is a big part of getting consumers to use mobile banking, and Fifth Third is among the early adopters of short domain names that are easy to use and easier to remember. The bank’s newly minted mobile offering, 53.mobi, hopes to offer financial services without requiring users to enter long domain names on mobile devices.
“These names are popular with mobile customers because of their brevity,” says Amy Mischler, a vp at dotMobi, one of the few registries to make one and two character names available, a practice it commenced in January in the hopes of attracting retailers wishing for short yet memorable Web addresses. Fifth Third debuted its mobile banking service in February, with the goal of making it available to its entire 12-state territory by the end of March.
Beyond the unique domain—Fifth Third is dotMobi’s first mobile banking client—the bank’s financial service offerings are pretty standard mobile banking fare, with access to account balances, pending and posted transactions, funds transfers, notifications and branch/ATM locations. Like a vanity license plate, Fifth Third hopes the domain will give it an immediate identity in the mobile space, and will also serve as a natural extension of the bank’s existing online brand, 53.com
“We think the shorter mobile domain will allow us to better market the solution and make us top of mind among consumers,” says Paul Moore, vp and director of alternative delivery for Fifth Third.
