If you’re a community bank or credit union leader, you might be forgiven for believing that your institution’s website is getting the job done — a spiffy, well-branded workhorse that gives customers and members efficient access to digital banking services and product information.
On the other hand, if you want to remain competitive, maybe you shouldn’t let yourself off the hook too easily.
Phenomena such as TikTok, AI and hyper-personalization have transformed how people interact and buy online, and it’s created the need for new thinking about the role of the modern banking website. It requires leveraging the new fundamentals of e-commerce and search-engine discovery — in effect, turning your site into a lead generation machine. And while that sounds like it requires serious tech investment, such capabilities are within reach of many banks, credit unions, and financial institutions.
Why Should Financial Institutions Change Now
Updating your bank’s website can have a profound impact on your business. Take One Nevada Credit Union, for example, which streamlined its website into a single, powerful digital engagement and conversion platform. (Find out more by viewing our webinar: Top Must-Haves for Banking Websites for Driving Acquisition.) By optimizing the site for search visibility and creating personalized digital experiences, First Nevada achieved substantial business growth. Not only did web traffic and search visibility increase significantly, but the CU also saw a 10% lift in deposits and a 20% boost in mortgage applications.
Following are the essential best practices financial institutions should consider adopting as they reset their web platforms.
Change Your Website’s ‘Why’
Many banks have websites that exist to educate customers about their products and services. While this is essential, it’s not enough. For banks to drive customer acquisition, the website must be designed with the intent to convert visitors into customers, much like an online store. An effective website should act as a digital branch, offering tools that allow customers to engage directly with the bank. If the primary purpose is customer or member acquisition — and why would it not be? — the design, navigation and user journey must reflect that goal.
One of the biggest opportunities in banking today is to focus web design on the customer journey. Rather than simply expose visitors and account-holders to products and rates, the mission instead is to lead them down defined purchase funnels that culminate in new-product transactions. To succeed, banks must understand how customers navigate through the site and strategically guide them to make decisions.
Integrated tools such as loan calculators and product comparison engines can be essential way stations on the journey, helping users make informed choices. The experience should be intuitive, and continuously optimized based on user behavior.
Leverage Personalization for Your Banking Website
Personalization has been a buzzword in marketing for years, but its potential across most of the banking industry is still materially untapped. To be sure, personalization in banking comes with regulatory hurdles. But there are ways to implement it effectively while remaining in compliance with privacy and suitability rules.
Simple strategies, like detecting if a visitor has been browsing the credit card section and then showing them relevant offers, can dramatically improve engagement and conversion rates. Behavioral personalization, which tracks user interactions with the site and tailors content accordingly, can double campaign conversion rates.
For more ambitious institutions, AI-powered, interactive experiences will soon become website table stakes, including virtual agents that provide real-time product recommendations and even assist with complex transactions. Financial services marketers can look to the more digitally advanced hospitality and automotive sectors, where websites are increasingly offer tools that allow users to plan trips or compare car models seamlessly, all while integrating with the brand’s CRM system.
In financial services, a similar approach could allow a customer to receive personalized loan or credit card recommendations based on their browsing behavior and existing account information. The ultimate goal is to create websites that can have conversations with users, gathering relevant information and making tailored recommendations in real-time.
Optimize for AI Discovery
In the age of AI and advanced search algorithms, banks must rethink how they optimize their content for discovery. In addition to traditional Google search, there are new opportunities for your content to be discovered, like ChatGPT and Perplexity AI. (Google’s homegrown Gemini AI search engine is gaining share too.) In this increasingly diversified discovery environment — where a single optimization approach no longer covers much of the market — structured data matters more than ever.
Fine-tuning your site’s schema markup (the underlying title tags, meta descriptions, URL structures and so forth that help search engines understand and find a site’s content) remains a highly underutilized strategy among financial institutions.
A bank’s product offerings present a big schema optimization opportunity, helping them rank higher for relevant searches like “best savings account near me” or “mortgage rates.” Despite its importance, fewer than 20% of financial institutions have properly implemented schema, according to Milestone’s Industry Benchmark Report: Financial Services for financial services.
Be Helpful. Be Relevant.
Have you reviewed your site’s FAQ page recently? Does your site have an FAQ page? An artifact of the Internet’s early days, FAQs remain the single cheapest tactic to build structured content and boost SEO — and also to enhance the user experience.
Beyond basic FAQs, banks must prioritize helpful, relevant content sitewide, offering content that answers customers’ likely queries directly. That means, on every product page, they should answer common questions about those products. It may sound obvious, but websites need an optimized Google Business Profile and an optimized local page to ensure it appears high in searches for anyone seeking a physical branch or a loan officer. Financial institutions can move even higher in search rankings by adding a calendar of local events. (Amazingly, most financial institution locations cannot be correctly found by a simple Google search. Don’t believe me? Try this: Open Google and search for “bank near me” and see if your local branch lists correctly. The odds are it doesn’t and your digital game needs a boost.)
They can also offer in-depth guides and explainers on complex topics like mortgage options or retirement planning. Such content builds trust with current and potential customers and members, while positioning the bank as a thought leader and increasing the likelihood users will return to find out more.
Visual content, particularly videos, has become an increasingly vital tool for enhancing both discovery and engagement. Although videos in the banking sector don’t always get the click-through rates seen in retail or hospitality, they still offer significant benefits in terms of search engine optimization and user engagement. Videos are especially useful in explaining complex products or providing step-by-step guides for services like loan applications.
Images also play a role in how search engines classify and rank pages. However, banks need to ensure that their visual content is interpreted correctly by AI algorithms, like Google’s Vision API, to avoid potential pitfalls, such as misclassification of images.
Cultivate an Omni-Channel Experience
A cohesive digital strategy requires that a bank’s website integrates smoothly with other customer touchpoints, including physical branch, call center, and mobile app. An omni-channel approach both supports personalization and reduces friction. The key is to ensure that all channels are aligned, with customer data feeding into a centralized CRM system. The idea is to meet customers and members where they are and make sure they know the institution recognizes them — literally and figuratively.
For banks looking to remain competitive, particularly smaller institutions, your website should play an integral role in your strategy. When we overhauled the website of one Nevada-based credit union, we transitioned five website domains and more than 1,500 pages onto one unified platform, optimized for SEO and user experience. Year-over-year conversion rates rose by more than 50 percent, mortgage applications by 59 percent and loan growth spiked more than 20 percent.
By focusing on customer acquisition, integrating personalization, optimizing for AI-driven search, and preparing for an interactive-AI future, financial institutions can create websites that actively drive business growth.