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April 12, 2005
PRESS RELEASE
Leading U.S. Bank Web Sites Differ Dramatically
in Performance, Reports Keynote
- First Comprehensive Competitive Benchmark Report
Released on the Speed, Reliability and Customer Experience
Offered to Consumers on 10 U.S. Banking Web Sites
- Two Companion Studies Provide In-Depth Assessment
of Customer Experience and Service Levels and Offer
Top to Bottom Rankings
- Wachovia and Bank of America Rank Best in Customer
Experience; 30 Percent of Participants Cite Privacy
and Security as a Top Concern
- Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual Top Service Level
Rankings for Site Performance
SAN MATEO, Calif., — April 12, 2005 — The
results of the most comprehensive and in-depth studies
on performance and customer experience ever performed
on 10 leading U.S. banking Web sites were released
today by Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN), The Internet
Performance Authority®, and the findings offer
up startling proof that consumers are being provided
widely varying levels of performance and experience
when searching for information on these sites.
To compete successfully in the highly competitive
marketplace, banking Web sites must strive every day
to deliver consistent levels of performance and experience
as perceived by users. Site performance, comprised
of speed and reliability factors, and site experience,
comprised of customer attitude, preference, and expectation
factors, are essentially two sides of the same coin
and are critical ingredients for delivering on the
e-business goals of any Web site. The two Keynote studies
of banking Web sites discovered a wide range of results
from excellent to fair, and underscore the need for
the business owners of banking Web sites to work aggressively
to deliver a more holistically consistent experience
in both performance and experience and thereby further
the overall financial goals of their sites.
The Bank of America, Bank One, Chase, Citibank, National
City, SunTrust, U.S. Bank, Wachovia, Washington Mutual,
and Wells Fargo sites were examined as part of two
Keynote studies: Keynote Customer Experience Rankings
for Banking Prospects and Keynote Service Level Rankings
for Banking Web Sites.
“After fees and free checking, banking Web sites
play an increasing role in influencing consumers’ selection
of banks and their perception of bank brands,” said
Bonny Brown, director of research and public services
at Keynote. “Compared to other industries, banking
sites set a higher standard for overall site performance
and customer experience, but there is still a large
gap between the highest and the lowest ranking banks.
This is important as banks compete to attract and retain
customers. While service level management and customer
experience management of Web sites present distinct
challenges, each is equally important for an industry
attempting to secure customers online.”
Wachovia, Bank of America Lead Study in Customer
Acquisition, Customer Experience
According to research with 2,000 consumers detailed in the Customer
Experience study, Wachovia, Bank of America and Washington Mutual
provide the best online experience for prospective bank customers.
The sites topped the Keynote CE Rankings, based on an aggregation
of more than 250 metrics and four indices (satisfaction, online
adoption, acquisition impact and brand impact) measured in the
Keynote study, including traditional opinion data, as well as behavioral
data collected using Keynote’s proprietary research technology.
The same sites also outperformed their rivals in the
competition for acquiring customers online, leading
the Keynote Acquisition Impact Index for banking prospects,,
which includes five separate metrics and gauges the
overall likelihood of a consumer to open an account
based on their experience on the site.
Prospective customers looking at the Web sites of
Wachovia and Bank of America were over 20 percent more
likely to report they would open a new account with
the company than the average across the ten sites.
Wachovia’s success is particularly notable as
it demonstrates a significant improvement compared
with their overall competitive standing in previous
Keynote studies. Wachovia made notable gains by improving
in the “ease of exploring Web banking” and “privacy & security,” two
of the leading site factors that drive customer acquisition,
bringing Wachovia closer to Bank of America, the leader
in this important area. Nearly 30% of study participants
selected privacy and security as one of the top four
most important factors in selecting a bank for their
personal savings and checking accounts. The Keynote
study measures and competitively ranks leading bank
sites on more than a dozen such key factors.
Results Show Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual
Web Sites Best Overall Performers
In the Service Level study, which examined the speed and reliability
of the sites in great detail, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, Wachovia
and Bank of America sites were the best overall performers.
“The top banks in Keynote’s Acquisition
Impact Rankings, which measures the overall likelihood
of a user opening an account, are ranked at the top
of both our Service Level rankings and our overall
Customer Experience Rankings,” said Chris Loosley,
general manager, service level business unit for Keynote. “This
shows that to acquire customers a bank Web site must
address both the customer’s perception of its
Web site and its operational performance.”
The best performing sites topped the Keynote Service
Level Rankings, based on a comparison of 10
key performance factors. These included response
time (over high speed, DSL and dial up connections),
response consistency, geographic uniformity, load
handling, page design, network connectivity, site
reliability and outage hours. The results were obtained
by taking 5000 measurements of each site over a three-week
period from January 20 through February 14, 2005.
From this data, 34 distinct service level metrics
were computed for each bank, ranked, and the rankings
summarized into the 10 key performance factors.
“Although the banking industry
has set a high standard for online service, no bank
dominated every one of the 10 key performance factors,
showing that banks need to work on all 10 areas. Indeed,
even the best banks have room for improvement,” said
Loosley. “The gulf between the most reliable
and lest reliable banks is enormous. The best bank
was down only four minutes during the entire month
of the study, while the worst bank reported over 29
hours of downtime. Clearly banks still need to focus
on site reliability. The best site design is worthless
if the site is down.”
Background on the Two Keynote
Studies Performed on Banking Web Sites
In the first study, Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for
Banking Prospects, Keynote analyzed the behavior and feedback
of a panel of 2,000 prospective bank customers interested in initiating
Web banking or switching banks as they explored banking options
and services at leading bank Web sites. Keynote’s overall
Customer Experience rankings are compiled through analyzing four
indices: Customer Satisfaction, Brand Impact, Acquisition Impact,
and Online Adoption.
In the second study, Keynote Service
Level Rankings for Banking Web Sites, Keynote
compared the performance of the ten banks’ Web
sites when applying for a consumer checking account.
A total of 5,000 measurements were taken using Keynote’s
highly accurate and realistic Transaction Perspective® measurement
service. The same banks topped Keynote’s Customer
Experience and Service Level rankings.
Research has shown that brand affinity
and purchase intent are significantly influenced by
a customer’s online experience. That is why measuring
e-business performance from the perspective of the
end user has become so important. That data, however,
must go beyond understanding the basic metrics of Web
site transaction speed and reliability to gain deeper
insights into customer behavior patterns and technical
performance. This knowledge can then be used to improve
the overall e-business customer experience.
“The experience of a prospect on
a banking Web site is becoming of ever increasing importance
in the acquisition of new customers,” said Dr.
Bonny Brown. “And the sites that provide the
best experience are clearly winning out in the competition
for new customers.”
Dr. Brown noted that Keynote research
now shows Web banking services as a more important
factor for consumers in choosing a bank than either
branch locations or ATM locations.
Poor Service Levels Can Cost
Banks Customers
This new report and previous Keynote studies indicate that customers
are very open to switching banks or using different banks for different
services, and that they find doing so much easier in an online
environment. The data suggests that performance is critical to
bank’s ability to acquire customers online and outages and
errors are hampering the success of some leading banks. Prospective
customers are simply not going to open an account if they encounter
Web site problems while filling out the application.
About half the banks Keynote tested experienced
significant outages during the study – defined
as hourly periods when errors exceeded 30 percent.
Outages were often observed during peak periods, which
would obviously reduce the bank’s ability to
acquire new customers. Keynote’s testing also
revealed that the core application-processing component
of many sites, which is the key to acquisition of new
customers, was the most error prone. The service level
study identified eight key areas in need of improvement
for most banks: improving dial-up performance, improving
consistency, continuing to focus on page design, reducing
the number of pages needed to perform an application,
continuing to focus on home page response time, reducing
content errors, reducing outages and improving the
reliability of the application processing components
of the site.
Keynote found that Bank of America and
Wachovia’s Web sites delivered the most consistent
response times, while Washington Mutual offered the
quickest site response times for DSL subscribers. Most
sites provided poor response time for dial-up customers,
suggesting that banks have designed their sites with
a preference for customers with high-speed Internet
connections.
Keynote conducts two separate banking
studies each year to examine online customer experience
and Web site service levels. One study focuses on current
customers, the other on prospective customers.
Keynote Customer Experience Rankings
for Banking Prospects and Keynote Service Level Rankings
for Banking Web Sites provide in-depth competitive
analysis of the Web banking industry and contain
hundreds of additional data points and a detailed
analysis of study findings. The studies may be purchased
together or separately. For more information about
the full report, to download abstracts or to purchase
the studies, visit:
- Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for
Banking Prospects
http://www.keynote.com/solutions/cem_ce_banking.html
- Keynote Service Level Rankings for Banking
Web Sites
http://www.keynote.com/solutions/slm_slr_banking.html
Keynote Systems provides a full range of measurement
and monitoring, service level and customer experience
management services. Keynote’s research studies
provide insights into Web banking industry trends and
service level and customer experience competitive benchmarks
of leading bank Web sites.
About Keynote Customer Experience Research
Keynote is the leading provider of customer experience research
services, offering both syndicated and custom research examining
consumer attitudes and behavior on the Web. Keynote’s research
provides critical business insight into online customer experiences,
industry trends and competitive Web strategies for a variety
of vertical industries. In addition to traditional opinion data,
Keynote’s proprietary research technology and access to
a pool of 160,000+ panelists allows for the collection of detailed
qualitative and behavioral data that inform its reports.
Keynote CE (CE) Rankings are available for a number
of industries including the retail, banking and credit
card industries, as well as several travel verticals,
including the airline, cruise and rental car industries.
To learn more about Keynote’s syndicated research
offerings and for a list of the various vertical industry
reports that are available, visit: http://www.keynote.com/solutions/cem_syndicated_research.html
About Keynote Service Level Management and
Syndicated Research
Keynote Service Level Management (SLM) solutions provide enterprises
with the tools to align IT and e-business goals. Keynote’s
SLM solution suites offer a comprehensive approach to the problem
of managing e-business service levels effectively for IT, for application
deployment and support personnel, and for e-business executives.
To learn more about Keynote’s SLM solutions
visit: http://www.keynote.com/solutions/service_level_management.html.
About Keynote
Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The
Internet Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in
e-business performance management services. Over 2,100 corporate
IT departments and 16,000 individual subscribers rely on Keynote’s
growing range of measurement and monitoring, service level and
customer experience management services to improve e-business performance
by reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction and increasing
profitability.
Keynote is viewed as The Internet Performance Authority
due to the company’s global infrastructure of
over 1,600 measurement computers in more than 50 cities
worldwide that capture and store on a daily basis over
60 million Internet performance measurements, frequent
media citations quoting Keynote's Web performance data
and analysis, the company’s market-leading Web
performance indices for vertical markets and leading
customer research that provides critical business insight
into online customer experiences, industry trends and
competitive Web strategies.
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 (650) 403-2400.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective
are registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc.
Other trademarks are the property of their respective
owners. © 2005 Keynote Systems, Inc.
Editorial Contacts:
Della Lowe, Keynote, (650) 403-3233, dlowe@keynote.com
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com
Mike Hopkins, Lippert Heilshorn & Associates, (212) 838-3777,
mhopkins@lhai.com
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