In the age of digitalization and modern banking, a website has become a necessity for every type of financial institution whether you are a bank, credit union, brokerage firm or another type in the banking sector. Ensuring your customers and clients, as well as future prospects, can find your business online to learn about your products and services is imperative for success and growth.
Your goal as a bank, credit union, lending firm, or other type of financial institution is to provide information about your products and services, such as loans and deposits; where they can find you, and how to best get in contact with your team. This vital information is often found on your website, making it easy for customers, clients, and prospects to learn more about your business.
However, with technological innovations and the expectations of modern-day consumers, websites for financial institutions can no longer be basic and outdated.
Websites for banks and credit unions, as well as other financial institutions, must meet certain compliance standards, implement a mobile-ready website design, and be easy to use and navigate for an exceptional user experience.
Additionally, for many businesses in the banking sector, including convenient online banking services is essential for empowering your customers and clients to seamlessly access their accounts, pay bills online, transfer funds, or get a loan from the comfort of their own home.
Furthermore, you might want to include a variety of other features and functionalities designed for a custom financial website, such as check ordering, calculators, community information, and more.
But building a financial website for your bank, credit union, or lending institution starts with one basic question – what is the most important purpose for your website?
The experienced team at Studio 78 is here to help you answer that question and provide a completely custom website designed and developed for your financial institution.
Once our team helps you determine the purpose of your financial institution’s website, we’ll next cover a few more questions to get even more clear on the list of features and functions needed to support your site’s purpose. This may include questions like, Who will most likely visit your website? What type of device will they be using? Why are they coming to your website? And how will they use your website?
When creating and building custom websites for banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions, we always implement a few site features crucial for functionality and site success.
Utilizing the latest technologies and best practices we design responsive website layouts that seamlessly adapt and look great on any device. We don’t use templates, so you get a truly custom website for your bank, credit union, or other financial institution that is unique.
Studio 78 is committed to building accessible websites. Our web design and custom coding strive to meet criteria for accessibility so everyone can have access to your banking and financial website, even users with disabilities that may need to use different technologies to navigate through a site.
We have teamed up with third party accessibility experts to provide you with an independent audit of your website to assure accessibility compliance. Not only do we know it is good for our clients and their customers, but it is the right thing to do.
Studio 78 has numerous clients in the banking, credit union, and financial sector. This is why we have developed security-focused procedures and products to meet the requirements of this heavily-regulated industry. All of our clients enjoy the benefits of our secure hosting solutions including IT Penetration Testing remediation, secure online forms, maintaining an authorized user list, and much more.
For our financial clients specifically, we offer enhanced security measures and vendor due diligence packages to help ensure they’re business continuity plan is up-to-date and compliant with federal regulations.
Site security is essential to ensure your users, customers and clients feel safe and protected when sharing their information. Studio 78 offers domain, organizational, or extended security certificates for our banking, credit union, and financial clients.
Additionally, we facilitate vetting, maintenance, and renewal of your domain’s SSL certificates for ongoing security.
We are committed to using search engine optimization best practices when building and maintaining your website. Through use of strategic keywords, code, and other proven methods, we help your site rank better organically in search engine page results for improved marketing. We can also evaluate and provide future SEO strategies upon request.
To learn more about the additional website features we include when designing and developing client websites, take a look at this page on website services and design.
Studio 78 utilizes a user-friendly client portal that makes it quick and easy for clients to submit changes or request revisions to their website. Our secure portal provides an efficient and effective way for our team to monitor and complete requests in a timely manner. It also gives our financial clients the ability to see more information on projects, requests, or packages with multiple search functions to filter through the past or present data.
You might have noticed this already but not all websites are alike and they are definitely not created equal. At Studio 78, we use a couple different methods to help our clients build out a website that functions and performs optimally for their business. This includes a Content Management Systems (CMS) website or a custom built website.
A Content Management System website is constructed so that you can manage changes to your website any time you want. A CMS is software that has to be installed on a large computer called a web server.
Many of the popular CMS programs like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or Concrete5 are “open source code.” That means the program was developed by programmers and managed by a nonprofit organization. You can download and install the program for free. When it is installed you will have the ability to log into the admin area of the software and make changes or edits to the website.
It is designed to help nontechnical users maintain their content, such as text and images. If you have some knowledge or experience with websites, more advanced changes can also be made to the website, like adding more pages and changing the navigation. But you will likely need to learn how to do these more technical edits with some help or you can hire a website programmer to develop your CMS for you. Then going forward you can manage the website content yourself.
Layouts for website pages will determine where key components or features of a website will be located on any given page. Examples are where you position your logo, text, images, etc. on the page.
When a website is created, it oftentimes involves a web designer and a web developer. The designer is focused on the look and feel of the website, including things like the placement of the logo, the style and color of the page(s), and the placement of the navigation bar.
On the other hand, a web developer utilizes web code to recreate the designed layout. Web code is what a browser reads and interprets so that it can recreate the layout seen on your computer. Developers take an element, such as a button or image, and can assign a behavior to it. For example, a button may be assigned the behavior of “go to the next page” when clicked.
With custom design you would work with a web designer first to determine your preferences for the layout, including where you want your logo, pictures, and text placed on the page. If you choose to use a pre-designed template, the design is already done and you can then work with the developer to apply your content and images on the home page and subsequent pages that make up your website. You can learn more about the dos and don’ts of website layouts by searching for more information on that topic.
A website template is often purchased for a modest fee and then installed as part of your CMS. A template is designed by someone else and then sold to people who are creating a website on a CMS program.
In contrast to a template, a custom layout will be specific and unique to you and your needs. You can think of it as buying a new home. You can buy a house in a neighborhood and all of the homes look the same because they were all built by the same contractor, or you can sit down with a contractor and tell him what you want and he will build it for you and to your specifications.
There is a consensus that a custom-built website has marketing advantages over a templated website. Most banks and credit unions want to be recognized as different and unique from their competition. When you stand out from the crowd, you have a huge marketing advantage over your competition. Being distinct, unique, and memorable will go a long way in your marketing efforts.
If not going with a CMS website, your other choice is to have a website designed and developed by professionals. This option will limit some of your editing ability and you will need to submit your desired changes to the web developer and they will make the changes for you.
However, the real advantage with this option is that you will have a minimal learning curve compared to managing a CMS. Using web service providers is much the same as using a plumber, electrician, or an accountant. They are all specialized in their field, can help you out whenever needed, and the job will be done right.
In summary, here are the essential questions you need to ask when determining what type of website is best for your financial institution.
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