Press Room: 2009
Best & Worst of Canada’s Banking Web Sites Revealed by Keynote Systems – Most Comprehensive Study Ever Done
- First-of-Its Kind Study in Canada Interacts with Real Online Users and Measures Actual Site Performance, Rather Than Relying on Analyst Assessments – Takes the Guesswork Out of What Makes Sites Effective, Responsive and Reliable
- With 1,750 Live User Tests and 14,000 Technical Measurements Keynote Answers the Question: How Effective, Responsive and Reliable are Canadian Banking Sites, and What Can Banks Do to Improve Them?
- Study Enables Business and IT Operations Managers to Prioritize What Will Most Improve Site Effectiveness and Performance
- President’s Choice Financial Provides the Most effective Overall Customer Experience; Scotiabank is Tops for Site Responsiveness while National Bank of Canada Sets the Standard for Site Reliability
- Site Organization, Help and Support are the Most Important ‘Brand Drivers’
- Accounts Offering Interest are Largest ‘Acquisition Drivers’
- Sites Vary Widely in Both Reliability and Responsiveness
SAN MATEO, Calif., — November 19, 2009 — Keynote Competitive Research, the industry research group of Keynote® Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), the global leader in on-demand mobile and Internet test & measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience, today announced its entry into Canada with the Keynote Competitive Research Study for Canadian Banking Prospects. For this ‘first ever’ study of the public Web sites of leading Canadian banks, Keynote observed and interviewed an unprecedented 1,750 prospective banking customers as they interacted with a total of 7 sites: BMO Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, President’s Choice Financial, RBC Royal Bank, Scotiabank, and TD Canada Trust. While conducting these user sessions, Keynote performed 2,000 instances of a representative banking transaction on each site, for a total of 14,000 transactions, from 4 cities in Canada: Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.
Keynote sent 250 online users to each bank’s Web site, each a Canadian adult not already a customer of that bank. The users viewed the homepage, looked for a checquing or other deposit account, started the process of opening the account online, learned about the bank’s commitment to privacy and security and evaluated the site’s customer support. Concurrently, Keynote performance testing agents (also known as ‘Keynote measurement computers’), across Canada measured a typical online banking transaction of visiting the homepage, finding a checquing account, reviewing that checquing account and starting the application process.
The study revealed that when tested against actual users, President’s Choice Financial offers the strongest Overall Customer Experience for prospective customers. President’s Choice Financial finishes the clear winner against the other six sites in two components of Overall Customer Experience: Brand Impact and Acquisition Impact. For the third component, Customer Satisfaction, President’s Choice Financial ties with BMO Bank of Montreal and RBC Royal Bank, with CIBC and TD Canada Trust finishing close behind.
Keynote analysis of user sessions revealed six areas of site design and content matter the most to Brand and Acquisition. In the leading driver, Site Organization, BMO Bank of Montreal edged out President’s Choice Financial slightly and performed significantly better than the other banks. For Ease of Opening Account, RBC Royal Bank edged out BMO Bank of Montreal while performing significantly better than the other banks.
Keynote examined two broad aspects of technical performance: Responsiveness and Reliability. Responsiveness comprises High Speed Response, Dial-Up Response, Response Time Consistency, Geographic Uniformity and Load Handling. Reliability comprises Availability and Outages. Scotiabank set the standard for Responsiveness, while National Bank of Canada scored a perfect 1000 out of 1000 for Reliability.
“To see how effective bank marketing sites are with the consumers that will actually use the sites, you have to interact with actual consumers as they use the sites. It’s that simple,” noted Christopher Musto, general manager of Keynote’s competitive research group at Keynote. “It may sound impractical to run 1,750 live user sessions across 7 sites while interviewing the users, collecting clickstreams, verbatims, rankable responses and panel facts and to then calculate the relationships between site experiences and business outcomes, but with our Keynote WebEffective remote user testing technology and our experience measuring sites around the world, we can do just that.”
The ability to dig deep into a statistically robust number of user sessions from around Canada was crucial in obtaining useful findings, Musto observed. “Otherwise you’re guessing as to what’s important to offer on a site and whether the site, for all of its best practices and plaudits from analysts, actually connects with consumers better than does the competition. Or you’re stuck analyzing clickstream data, not actually knowing what users are trying to accomplish and what impressions they come away with that may drive future behavior.” Unless your business model consists entirely of people opening accounts online on their first visit to your site, Musto observed, “you need to know more than what clickstream data alone can provide.”
The technical performance measurements were captured with Keynote’s global test and measurement network, the world’s largest. “With Keynote Transaction Perspective®, you can accurately, realistically and representatively measure the performance and availability of multi-protocol transactions that incorporate the most sophisticated Web transaction programming techniques in use today, including Web services, Web DAV, ActiveX, dynamic date/time support, file upload, XML and Flash 6.0 plug-ins and digital certificates,” noted Ben Rushlo, director of service level consulting at Keynote.” With its unique ability to monitor sites using an actual browser session—just the way consumers experience sites—and with its locations across Canada, Keynote revealed compelling trends in site performance. “We saw great variability in how fast some sites deliver content to consumers across Canada. We also saw the impact of new technologies on site performance and were able to determine steps each bank can take to improve its use of these technologies,” noted Rushlo.
The study is available for purchase from Keynote and comes with extensive analysis of Brand Impact, Acquisition Impact, Reliability and Responsiveness and the factors that drive sites’ performance in these areas. Clients will receive an Executive Presentation, extensive back-up charts and illustrations, and online access to all clickstreams, verbatims, question responses and panel facts for all panelists at all sites for all tasks and can download and use this data in their own research. To inquire about a copy, please view: http://www.keynote.com/company/contact/request.html.
About Keynote
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: “KEYN”) is the global leader in on-demand test & measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience. For over a decade, Keynote has been providing measurement data and testing capabilities that allow companies to understand and improve their customers’ online and mobile experience. Keynote has four test and measurement businesses: Web performance, mobile quality, streaming & VoIP and customer experience/UX.
Known as The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority™, Keynote has a market-leading infrastructure of 3,000 measurement computers and mobile devices in over 240 locations around the world. Keynote’s 2,800 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies including American Express, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia, Microsoft, SonyEricsson, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone and YouTube.
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE.
Keynote®, DataPulse®, CustomerScope®, Keynote CE Rankings®, Keynote Customer Experience Rankings®, Perspective®, Keynote Red Alert®, Keynote Traffic Perspective®, Keynote WebEffective®, The Internet Performance Authority®, MyKeynote® , SIGOS®, SITE®, Keynote™, The Mobile & Internet Performance Authority™, Screen Sensing Technology and Keynote FlexUse™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2009 Keynote Systems, Inc.
Media Contact:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, Inc. (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com
