Turner DeVaughn / Benchmark

ING DIrect

P.O. Box 60
St. Cloud, MN 56302-00
Phone: (302) 255-3473
http://home.ingdirect.com/

Insights

The site has useful content throughout — such as a eductional section of Tips & Tools, which includes calculators, worksheets, promotions and strategies to save for and buy a home. Its Customer Corner has lots of information for prospective customers, but does not provide access to comments or suggestions from other real customers, as DialogueTDN. There is a demo that has good information but but simplistic and moves at a very slow pace. A simple fix would be to allow users to click a "forward" or "backward" button.

ING Direct relies on word-of-mouth and advertising to create awareness and interest in banking online. In other words, the web site does not do as much as it could to aid the conversion process. The site scores 60 out of a possible 100 basis points, with only features and benefits. There is no value proposition, proof points, testimonials or user-generated content on the site. Of the peers identified in a Google "related" search, BofA was found to have an online community. Many organizations are weighing their options. KPMG recently conducted an survey of enterprises and 60 percent of those in the financial services sector feel that protecting and securing critical data is the chief barrier to adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. 19 percent of non-ICE companies use social networking tools and 17 percent report increased revenue as a result.

Revenue-minded web sites are continually quantifying and validating their value propositions. Validation can only come from customers. 72 percent of buyers seek value propositions when making decisions to buy or invest.