Infotech Lead India: A recent research from Kern reveals that despite Internet evolving as an important channel for customer acquisition, banks in India neglect the user experience of their websites.
“Apart from the leaders like ICICI Bank, banks turn away significant chunk of online customers everyday,” according to Ripul Kumar, director of Research at Kern.
Kumar also noted Western banks reap good customer engagement and conversions online as many have embraced good user experience practices over the past two decades.
In the first-ever syndicated user experience research report in India, Kern benchmarked the user experience of 32 prominent banks and financial institutions’ websites in India. The research report ‘Acquiring Car Loan Customers Online’ throws shocking insights about the user experience of banking websites in India.
This result comes in at a time when RBI’s executive director G. Padmanabhan commented on improving online banking products and services. “Banks need to examine how they can make electronic transactions safe and secure while providing customers equal or more ease, comfort and convenience compared to branch banking,” he said.
According to the report, the leader ICICI Bank has a UX Index 75.31 out of the maximum 100, a 30 percent lead from the runners-up Tata Capital at 58.32. ICICI Bank leads the UX Index because prospective customers are able to find relevant pages easily, get complex information in a user-friendly way, and can become a customer-all easily online, without human intervention.
The other user experience leaders are HDFC Bank at 54.76 and Axis Bank at 51.34. The only public sector bank in Top 5 is State Bank of Hyderabad with the UX Index of 49.93. The worst performing bank has a UX Index score of 18.07.
Contrary to popular belief, public sector banks actually provide overall better user experience than private banks. Overall, new private banks lead the user experience with an average score of 52.51.
There is huge potential for Internet based banking services. The volume of car financing is increasing rapidly at 40 percent per year and active Internet users in India are more than 11.1 crore. Banks and leading financial institutions now consider Internet as an important channel to offer loan services to customers.
