Most banks design mobile sites as shrunken versions of online banking. Citigroup Inc.'s new website instead takes the lessons of mobile and blows them up for a bigger screen.
Citi has taken cues from the ways consumers bank from mobile handsets and tablets and their desire to have a consolidated view of their financial lives. For example, it designed its previous site to be read from top to bottom, whereas the new site is designed horizontally, with information displayed in three strips.
The first section is a snapshot of a consumer's finances, and the second facilitates tasks such as money movement. The third band displays more detailed information, such as electronic statements.
"This is a case of mobile banking driving online," says Emmett Higdon, founder and principal of Prizm Strategy of Charlotte, N.C.
Citi also is the first bank to publicly launch a site designed in part with Yodlee Inc.'s FinApp developer platform. Citi relaunched its public site Oct. 2 and is rolling out the online banking changes to customers over the next two months.
The redesign is "focused on clean design, intuitive experience and emotional engagement," says Tracey Weber, Citi’s head of Internet and mobile for North America.
Specifically, the redesign factors in the simplicity users experience in the mobile channel. The new site brings together many of the elements industry experts say are critical to the next generation of online banking products. These include a centralized dashboard view of a consumer's finances and the ability to transact from that dashboard. It also enables users to set financial goals and aggregate data from multiple accounts.
The site's second strip, called the Quick Tasks window, enables consumers to view rewards and statements, transfer funds and pay bills directly from the dashboard. When consumers take a deeper dive into their Citi accounts, other overlays appear, displaying transaction details or offering a talk with a Citi representative.
Citi also redesigned the public website to make its language more consumer-friendly and less "bankerly," Weber says.
"Citi is moving in the right direction with a starting page that emphasizes 'view' plus 'do,' " says Mark Schwanhausser, a senior analyst for Javelin Strategy & Research.
The site will enable customers to track spending, aggregate other external account information, create a financial plan and set goals, among other things, Weber says.
"Banking websites are about accomplishing tasks, so the easier you can make that, the happier and more satisfied customers are," Weber says.
Citi worked with Yodlee, of Redwood City, Calif., to enable the account-aggregation portion of the website and some of the more complex personal financial-management capabilities, such as setting goals and net-worth tracking.
"[Citi] was very motivated to become one of the top destinations for online banking, and they are pulling out all the stops," says Peter Hazlehurst, Yodlee chief product officer.
Yodlee's FinApp platform provides financial "widgets" banks or their customers may drag and drop to various points on a website. Widgets can provide such functions as account aggregation, wealth tracking and tax preparation.
Citi developers designed their own applications with the FinApp platform, Hazlehurst says. They also chose from a "carrousel" of applications developed by others, he says.
Yodlee has long said that some of the top banks have worked in development on the platform, but it has not previously named them.
Citi frequently develops its online banking capabilities in-house, but "Yodlee was one of the best partners building this and it made sense to use them," Weber says.
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