Spectacular CU website: Coast Capital Savings
Posted by Trey Reeme on July 22nd, 2006
We stumbled upon the new website for a Canadian credit union yesterday. It’s for Coast Capital Savings, and it’s hands down in the top 1% of credit union sites (and CU marketing in general, for that matter).
Here’s the conversation we had internally yesterday about the site. (Brent didn’t type his thoughts out, but he was quite impressed. I’m sure he’ll leave something in the comments.)
Matt’s opinion:
The more I look at this, the more impressed I am. Take a look at the Online Banking page.
The code is clean, the content is funny:
Lines of credit: Be a loan shark to yourself. With a CoastLine personal line of credit attached to your chequing account, you can write yourself a loan anywhere, anytime. Just remember to pay yourself back, because you know where you live.
They even used sifr (font) on their article headlines.
Raises the bar for us a bit, I think.
Mark’s opinion:
Sure … I’ll bite …
Homepage – Excellent! A https homepage allows direct login to online banking. Very clean seperate areas of focus. Julie kind of freaks me out … her loop is very evident and she blinks alot … if you stay on the homepage long enough. I understand the message they are going for … and at least she’s not wearing a headset :)
Navigation – Awesome! Top level 1 and 2 with the sidebar coming in if it goes deeper. I like the addition of the sidebar nav on deeper page … you don’t need ads there on level 3 … people are already seeing what they came for … no need to divert them. Also I like the use of content banners on the main links, and then their removal on deeper pages.
Overall I think the site is good … just a little on the casual side in most aspects … colors, fonts, content, ads. It’s always a hard balance between being personal and professional … so that sparks some questions in my mind.
Which side is it better to err on a credit union site?
Will being too casual or businessy ever turn people away? Will it ever draw people in?
My opinion:
It’s easy on the eyes, intuitive, and the brand is carried out on every page in both the design and content. By far it’s the best CU site I’ve seen.
Great use of cookies for returning visitors with the surprisingly non-annoying Flash girl saying “Welcome back. Was there something else I could help you with?” – right before she broke into the robot and knitted the Coast Capital logo. It feels weird to say it, but they pulled it off without being cheesy.
And yes, I typed a-dollarsign-dollarsign in the Other Products search box to see what she’d say. She told me she’d trace my IP address and call my mother. :)
Why is this site top notch?
Julie (the Online Greeter™) is engaging. This approach reminded me a less ridiculous subserviant chicken. Coast Capital has allowed their site to react with me on a two way street, and at more levels than their online banking and loan applications. I sat there for quite a while and typed in random words, some financial and some not, just to see what Julie would say and do. And each time the word was financially themed, I was unwittingly marketed, informed of what CCSCU could do for me. And I didn’t mind at all. It was relevant – I asked for it for crying out loud.
Plus, the fact that Trey typed a naughty word into a credit union site and got scolded is beautiful.
The navigation is simple and intuitive. I love to see financial sites break their content into personal and business at the top level. It’s definitely something we’re learning to incorporate into our information architecture design. Any given user automatically nixes 50% of inapplicable content right off the bat. Plus it’s much easier to look at and maneuver than a primary navigation of 10+ items.
The “new website” page makes the transition easy. It never fails that when we launch a new site, at least one person will write in complaining that we’ve pulled the ground out from under them. People are resistant to change, even if the change is a vast improvement. By including a tour of the new site and a New Website FAQ Coastal Capital keeps their members from feeling alienated and left behind. The best way to encourage use is educate and promote understanding.
The site’s copy is conversational. As you have probably seen, we’re big advocates of marketing through conversation instead of plastic sales-speak. They joke around, which makes it easier to digest, but also hit their mark by communicating each message clearly.
How do they describe their rates? “Here’s what is will cost to get some money from us.” How much more real and trustworthy is that than some inflated boast about having the best rates, followed by a series of cautionary compliance-driven asterisks?
...Man, I ended up saying a lot more about that site than I originally intended. I get excited about great work, alright?
Hey…what gives!?
They stole our ‘egg/nest’ idea…
Brent,
Call the attorney!
Nice site…I would love to do a site similar to this…but, not sure if we can be this bold…
Hey, Brent I like your comments. You say we and we’re alot. Who is we? I have been studying what credit unions are doing with their marketing. What they are trying to do to stand out from the banks. I have been going to each site, which their are alot. Do you know of any good resource sites? I found one http://www.creditunionl.com, but they are still growing their site. It looks like they will have alot of good info, so I will check back with them later.
As for this site, I was suprised that a credit union put the toilet on their sales page for online accounts.
Robert,
Man, thanks for liking the comments. It was easy to get excited about CCS’s site because its so luscious.
And by “we,” I meant Trabian, the web-development alter-egos of the OpenSource CU team.
What kind of resources are you looking for? Check out our blogroll for a roster of credit union and credit union-minded blogs. And the NCUA database is always a good place to find specific credit union information.
I absolutely love that they put a toilet on their online banking section. You can do your banking from the throne if you want to! That sir, is convenience to the extreme, and the
AmericanCanadian Way.Wow, thanks for the praise guys. My team at Credit Union Central of B.C. developed the site for Coast based on a specialized CMS product we built for credit unions called MemberDirect Integrated Services. It’s great to see the hard work we put into the basic design (e.g. integrated login, navigational structure, attention to standards) receiving some recognition. Coast did a lot of customization, including “Julie”, working with their own creative agencies, and of course the site content is all theirs, but we created the “design foundation” and did all the web development (except Julie). To get an idea of what we’ve done, you can compare Coast with a number of other Canadian credit union sites we’ve built such as:
www.vancity.com
www.gffg.com
www.nlcu.com
www.1stcalgary.com
www.citizensbank.ca
Ken Warkentyne
Director, Web Banking Product Development
Credit Union Central of B.C.
Hi,
Not only is their website great, it’s the best financial institution I’ve ever belonged to in over 40 years. The customer service is unbeatable, as are their low service charges.
Highly recommended.
PS I belonged to VanCity for two years, & it was by far the worst financial institution. Requests for customer service were repeatedly ignored, they messed with my accounts something terrible, they were reluctant to help when my credit card was phished. I was inundated with “surveys” they farmed out to phone solicitation companies. Vancity is a nightmare. I pulled two accounts & two credit cards, headed for VanCity. Before that HSBC was pretty good to me for 12 years.