Measuring the ROI of a Bank or Credit Union Website Redesign

Have A Plan To Deliver Higher Quality Website Traffic

Just because you have a wonderful website does not necessarily translate to more people visiting it. This is where your job as a marketer becomes extra important.

• What you need to do: Review your marketing plan critically — with the lens of what can drive quality traffic to your site — not just eyeballs. You will need to dissect every part of your current marketing plan to see what tactics are driving traffic to your website (which I hope is most of your tactics). Then you’ll want to closely evaluate the quality of that traffic. Are some tactics like paid ads generating traffic but not necessarily conversions? Are visitors getting to your site but not converting frequently?
• How to measure: You will need to have custom analytics tracking on your site to do a deep dive. You’ll want tracking on every button/link/interaction and have cross-domain tracking to any site where a conversion could take place such as online account opening or loan forms. Tracking that someone clicked a button is one thing but tracking if they abandoned mid-form or submitted the form and became a customer/member are even more important. This data will help you truly determine what’s working and not working. It can also inform if you need to have a remarketing campaign in place.

Invest In Marketing Tactics That Best Result In ROI

There are proven digital tactics that data shows generate measurable ROI. While successful financial services marketing is attributed to a mix of tactics working in harmony, if you do have a wonderful new site, you want to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward with strategies that deliver real results.

• What you need to do: SEO/GEO, paid search and remarketing are great, basic tactics that any bank or credit union should be investing in. The ability to drive traffic to your website on targeted search terms is especially important in the highly competitive financial services industry. Smaller or regional institutions have a distinct advantage over large, national institutions in these areas because they can target audiences within a specific geographic radius and cater to those who value convenience, personal service, and local trust. That said, if your institution offers competitive rates, this is exactly where you should highlight them. Importantly, you should leverage dedicated, conversion-focused landing pages for any paid campaigns to seal the deal. Email marketing and personalization would be additional tactics to explore to get more bang for your marketing bucks.
• How to measure: By default, Google Analytics will identify the source of your traffic. But, when it comes to paid campaigns, you will need to connect Google Ads and other paid search campaigns to your analytics account. And as noted above, custom cross domain tracking to any third-party sites will allow you to monitor conversions.
• Real life data: What have other institutions seen when doing this?
  • A Louisiana-based credit union implemented a mix of proven inbound marketing tactics when launching their new site, resulting in a 65% increase in clicks to apply for a mortgage. Since conversions were a pain point pre-launch, this was a great way to prove to management that the site was a powerful sales tool.
  • An institution in Virginia redesigned their site with an improved UX, a landing page for campaigns and a blog. Marketing campaigns and a conversion focused site resulted in 69% increase in “open an account” button clicks comparing the month before and after launch.

Personalization Can Yield More Conversions — If Strategized Well

Everyone is talking about personalization and for good reason. This tactic allows you to enhance the relevance of your content by tailoring promotions and content to specific target audiences, and relevancy drives engagement and conversions. The good news is that implementing personalization on your site can be done fairly painlessly and in phases that align with your goals and budget.

• What you need to do: It’s important to start by defining a few key audiences and their goals so you can create personas. Personalization isn’t complicated — but having too many personas at once can get overwhelming so prioritize audiences that closely align with your marketing initiatives. Perhaps you are using a targeted mailing to drive people to the site via a QR code to give them a unique offer. Or maybe you are providing messaging to an audience in a defined geographic area about a new branch opening. A well-thought-out strategy will deliver the best results.
• How to measure: Personalization is extremely trackable — whether it’s part of a CMS or a third-party offering. Site traffic will have a unique identifier which you can then use to set up custom reporting. You’ll want to ensure your agency provides a dashboard showing how personalized and non-personalized content compares. You will also want to continually evaluate and tweak your strategy. It may not always work, and that’s ok. But once it does, conversion rates are sure to skyrocket. Why? Because it simply makes sense: you’re delivering the right messaging to the right audience(s), at the right time.
• Real life data: Does it really work? Yup — it sure does when it’s strategized thoughtfully and measured accurately.
  • A credit union in Wisconsin strategically revamped their website and created personalized content tied to key personas. One goal was to get more visitors to use online banking, and the personalized content outperformed the non-personalized content by more than double when comparing the months before and after launch.