What does Febreze have to do with credit unions? It all clicked when I read a story in today’s WSJ: Consumer Products Getting a Makeover.
The moral of this password-protected story is: Most of Procter & Gamble’s household products live in a cabinet > If a product lives in the cabinet you won’t see or use it as often as you might, and your friends won’t see it either > By making the packaging of products like Febreze and Dawn sleek and attractive, consumers are more likely to leave them out in the open and use them more often (think about the move to snazzy designs on Kleenex boxes).
So where do credit unions come in? The key quote:
Historically, most household staples competed on performance, but today, “there are quite a few categories where product superiority claims are either hard to establish or just aren’t very meaningful to consumers anymore because there’s not much difference,” says Jerry Kathman, chief executive of LPK, a brand-design agency.
Substitute “household staples” for “savings accounts” or “financial institutions” and you see what’s going on. And that’s where design kicks in.
The financial services market, like the household products aisle at Safeway, is a crowded place. At Procter & Gamble a 1% uptick in sales can lead to an extra $765 million, and design helps grab that 1%. At your credit union a 1% rise in young adult membership can mean loan business for years to come, and design helps grab that 1%.
Bad design is easy to find in credit union Web sites, so it’s unfair to call anybody out. But here are some of my favorites from the good column:
- Amplify: I love this Texas credit union for a lot of reasons (see the MoneyTracker post), but they also do a great job keeping a clean interface and dynamic graphics.
- Utah Community: As a BYU grad, I’m a little partial to this credit union already, but their Web site gets top billing for simplicity and easy navigation. I recommend them even though they turned the undergraduate version of me down for a car loan.
- FedFinancial: Here’s a small credit union that isn’t waiting until it gets big to streamline its look.
- Verity: Stands to reason that a blogging credit union would set aside some cash for a clean, colorful homepage. And who could miss the 6.75% checking offer?
- Coors: I don’t even drink but boy do those debit cards look cool.
And, just so you know I don’t have many original thoughts, here’s an instructive design post from Open Source CU way back in the day.
Comments
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Great Post! We just launched a new Gen Y website for Credit Union last week, and design was very important to us…even risked it and added a blog. You listed some great examples. I would love to hear some honest feedback if you feel like sharing your opinion of our new site (theaddisoncafe.com) :) Anyone can email me at jonathan_gowins@addisonavenue.com Good, Bad, or Ugly, I am curious to hear what you think. Keep up the interesting posts!
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@Jonathan
Great to see you, and cool site. My (tiny) suggestions include rounding the corners of the small windows, and getting all the content to show in one frame (I had to scroll to get the three bottom boxes).
That said, you guys are way ahead of the game, and I really do like the interface. Microsite usually means AdWords campaign; how are you guys driving traffic to the site?
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This is a great example of how credit unions who want to be innovative should look to other industries and figure out what they can learn from them. I’ve often said that you could simply make a monthly exercise out of it–just choose a different industry, sector or business in another category, and then ask yourself the question, “how can we take what has made them successful, and apply it to making us successful?” I firmly believe there are lessons to be learned from examining all industries, from manufacturing to retail to professional services to hospitality and more.
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