standard bank
I was checking in on Muti today when I saw Coda’s entry ‘Standard Bank redesign’. I clicked through to check it out, and was gobsmacked by what I saw. [For our international readers, Standard Bank is South Africa's second biggest bank. Bear in mind that in South Africa, banks are hugely profitable and should really have a big budget for this kind of thing.]
Here is a screenshot of the new website…
standard bank
I’m at a slight loss for words, so let me list my observations in quick succession:
- The logo is missing in Firefox (my browser of choice).
- The design is breathtakingly inappropriate for a bank.
- It looks like one of those domain squatter sites (you know the ones, with a bunch of arbitrary listings from ‘adult info’ to ‘zen’).
- The adverts are cheap and nasty, and have absolutely no brand consistency.
- There is no clear hierarchy of information.
- With a redesign, there should be a news flash saying ‘Welcome to Our New Look’ with a link to an expanded explanation of their motives (there is only the confusing ‘re-energising’ banner at the bottom).
- Just checked in IE, and nope it doesn’t work there either (see missing logo below).
standard bank
Wow, I could go on, but I got stuff to do.
Sheesh. A bank. Big IT dept. Even bigger marketing dept. Lots of money. Lo-o-o-o-ts of money.
You’d think…?
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Standard Bank’s website has always left much to be desired. It’s one big hack, if you click through between sections, or do a search (they use FreeFind.com!), you get a good feel for how fragmented it is. Even on this new site, all they have really done is reorganize the home pages for the different streams. If you click through to any sub page then it reverts back to the old design, completely breaking the breadcrumb navigation.
They redesigned their Online Banking site over a year ago (not a bad effort) which now looks nothing like the rest of their site. Even the corporate blues don’t match – ie. zero brand consistency.
What bugs me the most is how they brag about all the effort they went to on that “Re-energising the face” page when in all honesty it’s nothing to be proud of.
Yep, agreed. It’s annoying. This is what happens when the IT dept. gets to hold the baton for too long. A site like this has to be a collaborative design / marketing / IT project.
The site probably works, but it just doesn’t *work*… if you know what I mean.
Was walking around the V&A waterfront last night, and spotted their new branch outside. (next to the uber cool Aston Martin and exotic car showrooms) Their logo’s and marketing banners on the windows really make it look like one kick-ass brand.
You then head on over to their site and its a total mess. They totally missed the boat that goes from offline branding to online.
I must say, I have been a STB customer for all of my banking life but this is definitely the worst effort to date. With the previous “update” to the site I thought they were moving in the right direction but now its definitely a step backwards. How I would love to sink my design teeth into this one
With expection to their interent banking their site is almost always completely offline. In the last three weeks going on their site every second day it was only fully functional once. It’s beyond pathetic.