Lack of knowledge, hurt end clients and more so hurt the end user!

28. September 2008 by admin.

I recently decided to look at some bank websites; you would think a serious financial institution with marketing, brand awareness and advertising budgets, large budgets! Unfortunately there are some countries that have very little or no talent and professionals at all, especially in the creative industry and technological aspect of the web design and construction.

Well, so I thought and had very little experience in my industry within such country as Israel, come on… Israel? The widely known Silicon Valley #2? With all the high-tech giants sitting in this tiny area and benefiting from low-cost employment, developing most advanced and leading technologies in the world.

Wow! All the big guys are here… I was amazed!

But hold on a second, how is it possible that with this entire technology savvy people, advanced development knowledge and experience, and the booming online industry, they still have no idea how to make websites…

That is a hit, a big hit… an epidemic of garbage online, and I get it, people will use it, just because they have nothing better to use.

Back to our horses!

One of the largest and leading banks in Israel, Bank Leumi (http://www.leumi.co.il)

Not a bad structure, a bit cluttered, but I guess works for them, color choice, well, I understand the point of blue, hell I’m coming from color & human psychology field, and I know these are the most used colors in the financial industry and also I get the point that blue is a trusting color… but come on people, the entire site is blue! It’s like entering the blue fiesta party, did you people happen to see that there are more colors on the web safe color spectrum? Hmm… I guess not!

Ok, so they’ve added a slight touch of grey on the site, ok, that color works, but let try and analyze this for a minute here, 90% blue and 10% grey, I wonder how people understand what is going on this site at all, or maybe that was the idea, DO NOT ALLOW USERS UNDERSTAND! Maybe, maybe I just missed something about this interesting culture, oh well…

Ok, colors are an issue but not the worst thing, I guess if people here like it, good for them! But my major concern with this web site kicked in when I entered the log-in to your account area… oh, my, god!

I forgot about all of the issues this site has…

There is a large background visual, again, completely blue shades and lots of contrast, and it is not being supported by Firefox, the most standard these days cross browsers development to accommodate the most used browsers, IE 6.0 or higher, Firefox 3.0 or higher, and Apple’s Safari any latest version…

The entire page was a scrambled egg… the input fields shifted up, overlapping the some text that is an image, and you just cant understand what it says, the help links overlapping the logo which now you cant even find these help links, and the right navigation, simply ran away to the left side which you completely miss and don’t even pay any attention to it…

Did the budget of development finished on that specific part? Go figure…

So there I am, trying VERY hard to find my way around, thinking to myself, are these billionaire people even think about their customers? Did they sit down and mapped the entire sites navigation, user behavior and interaction with the site? This is not a kids web site where you can do a complete mass, screw it up and it would still work, simply because these are kids and they will find their way around one way or another.

Guys (Bank Leumi), few things I must say to you, a. grown-up people have a very structural thinking and perception of what they see on daily basis, they have no time to figure things out, especially online, they have to come, log-in, check their account, make some operations, and log-out, simple, fast and strait to the point… and you my friends, are just made 10 times harder for your end-user do these simple daily operations.

Hope this will be fixed in a near future, even though I have very little faith in this happening.

My grade to you: ONE STAR!

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