Marketing wants to go live quickly, run a lot of tests and make frequent updates, all to optimize conversion or tweak the user experience. IT wants to make sure systems are running smoothly, are maintainable and cost effective.

Does it really have to be so painful? No, we don’t think so. We’ve seen with several ways to ease the tension between e-business and IT, so both can meet their goals.

Background

First a little bit of background: we’ve implemented Rich Internet Applications at dozens of Global 2000 companies, usually to optimize online conversion, increase customer retention and cross-selling, or to improve the user experience in general. We usually get the order from the e-business department and work with IT for the implementation. We use the following strategies to speed up projects:

1: Leverage the Content Management System

A lot of changes to your website can be done from the CMS, even changes to interactive items such as forms, calculators, products finders, and self-service dashboards. The great thing about Rich Internet Applications is that they essentially are made up of web pages, so there is usually no need to install anything on the web server. And publishing something via the CMS is much faster than having to go through IT. And IT is fine with this, because it follows established web publishing procedures.

2: Use Loosely Coupled Links to Back-end Applications

Often Rich Internet Applications need to interact with information on the web server or a back-end system. The IT department needs to make these connections, and that may take some time. However, if IT can expose the application as a Web Service, the RIA can be changed in any possible way while still talking to the same Web Service. There are also specialized vendors that turn existing applications into a Web Service. Once the Web Service is done, you can use strategy 1 to make changes as often as you want.

In other cases the performance of back-end systems is disappointing. This can be solved with a nightly publish from the back-end system, rather than connecting in real-time. We’ve done this for zip-code checks for both DSL lines, as well as certain financial products: that type of information does not change more often than once a day. Obviously, this is not a suitable approach for real-time information.

3: Host Externally

If option 1 and 2 don’t work, you can also host the application externally, and link to it from your website. In most cases, this is only possible if you don’t need a link to internal applications. In addition to linking to a page on an external web server, you can also embed external components within your own website, just like you can load external widgets in Facebook or iGoogle, and it will look totally integrated.

We’ve found that e-business projects tend to be faster and more successful when using the above strategies. We hope you find it useful. Please let us know if this has worked for you, and if you know other ways to facilitate the cooperation between Marketing and IT. Just leave a comment below.

Rob’s main RIA example is Home & Abroad, a personalized travel site. If you have a couple of minutes, use the ‘Quick Planner’ to see how they suggest a trip itinerary based on your preferences: pretty cool.

However, when I started editing my itinerary I wasn’t very impressed with the user experience. Until I realized why I wasn’t impressed:

► All travel planning sites need great faceted search!

And that’s what Home & Abroad is missing. I scoured the internet for some other examples. I found some good sites via the excellent Web 2.0 Travel blog and Travel+Leisure’s Top 25 Travel Sites. But let’s first define what we mean with Faceted Search.

What is Faceted Search?

Faceted search allows you to narrow down search results with multiple filters, so you quickly see which search results are most relevant to you. This is especially useful for structured search, where you know the important search criteria beforehand. For example, you may want to filter a flight on price, number of stops, and the total flight duration. Unstructured search – like Google – is not a good candidate for faceted search.

These are some good examples of faceted search for attractions, flights and hotels:

Faceted search at Home & Abroad, Farecast, InsideTrip and Kayak

Focus on Meta-Search Engines

Most usability innovations seem to take place on meta-search engines, such as Kayak, Farecast and InsideTrip. These websites search multiple sites for flights, hotels and cars and present the results in a single screen. They make money with referral fees and advertisements. They exist because of their superior user experience compared to established sites such as Expedia and Travelocity and Orbitz.

Based on the analysis of several faceted search tools, I’ve tried to distill some best practices for faceted search, and I’m proposing the following top 10 rules for faceted search. Let me know your feedback!

Faceted Search Best Practices

1. Combine Search Criteria

Faceted search got its name because you can combine various search criteria (‘facets’) to narrow down the search results. So technically Home & Beyond doesn’t have faceted search, because the search criteria cannot be combined. You can’t see ‘Buildings & Monuments’ that are cheaper than $5. You either see all buildings, or any attraction cheaper than $5. So the ability to use multiple search criteria at the same time is of key importance for faceted search applications.

2. Use Flexible Ranges

If you can specify prices or flight times, it’s great if you can set a lower and upper threshold, rather than select a pre-defined range, such as $10-$20 or ‘afternoon’. Kayak has introduced a great tool for this: the double slider (see picture), which is now also adopted by other sites. Move the sliders to narrow down your choices.

3. Use multi-select for non-numeric filters

If there are multiple categories to choose from, it’s useful if you can select more than one category. This is illustrated with the airline selection tool from Farecast (pictured below). They even add ‘clear’ and ‘show all’ shortcuts.

An elaborate example is from InsideTrip, where you can refine their trademarked TripQuality rating, based on Speed, Comfort and Ease categories, see screenshot below.

4. Use Keyword Search if there are too many possible options

In some cases you may have more than a couple of dozen options. For example, if you go to Orlando and want to stay in a Disney hotel, you can search for the keyword ‘Disney’. It’s not possible for the creator of the faceted search tool to think up all possible search terms upfront. For example, in other cities other search terms will be popular. And of course, it should be possible to combine keyword search with all other search criteria. Look at how Kayak hotel search shows hotels costing more than $130 and contain the word ‘Disney’ in their name:

5. Expand to show more details

In the listing of the search results you should include the key pieces of data, but you cannot show everything. If visitors want quick info without leaving the search screen, you can provide a ‘details’ slide-out window. I found that InsideTrip was able to squeeze the most information in such a window, without creating information overload. In the screenshot below you can see that they put a lot of flight quality information in their search results, because that’s their unique approach.

6. Sort the results by Criteria

Even when you’ve used all your facets to narrow down the search, you may still have dozens of options. Therefore, it should be possible to sort the results. Here I’ve sorted hotel results on their proximity to DisneyWorld:

7. Use different views on the data

The default way to present search results is the list grid. It shows a selection of the available information, and you can sort based on this information (see rule 6). But what if you want to see hotels on a map? Or if you prefer to see flight prices for different times of the day? Then the list view just doesn’t do it. Above you see that Kayak offers the Map and Photo view for hotels, and below you see that the Farecast time grid shows you the cheapest time of the day.

8. Show total and filtered number of results

It is easy to lose track of the total number of results of the search, and how many options remain after you’ve applied your filters. If the site prominently displays how many results are shown, the users know whether they need to apply additional filters. If there are still hundreds of options, it’s probably good to use some more filters. Kayak displays the number of results prominently above the search results:

9. Superfast update of results

It’s actually fun to play around with faceted search, but only if the filters are applied almost instantly. When you have to wait 10 or even 5 seconds for the results to appear, it is suddenly a lot less enjoyable. Most sites use a technology called ‘Ajax’, which makes it possible to update search results without refreshing the page. And usually the engineers who develop the sites are obsessed about performance: all changes to the site will first be tested on performance before they go live.

10. Save search results if you switch between tabs

Many of the meta-search travel planners can be used for flights, hotels, cars and more. If you go on a trip to a specific city, you may need all three of those. However, when you’ve just searched for flights, you switch to hotels, and then switch back to flights, all your search results are gone. It would be nice if those would be remembered!

Conclusion

As I’m writing the conclusion, I realize that some of my coworkers made a very early demonstration project for faceted search for travel planning. It doesn’t have all the cool features that are common today, but it was created five (5!) years ago. Take a look yourself: Backbase Travel Demo.

So if you’re creating a faceted search tool today, check these 10 rules to make sure you’re using all available best practices. However, depending on your application, you may not need all of them. Let me know your feedback, so I can improve these rules!

Of the sites we looked at, Kayak was one of the first to use RIA functionality in a mainstream travel booking site, and they still add a lot of new features. But others are following closely, such as Farecast and Insidetrip. Farecast has an edge with their fare prediction (see picture below), and Insidetrip with their quality rating. Home & Abroad should look closely at those sites to improve their search page.

Farecast Fare prediction

Compete: Mint vs Wesabe

On Compete it’s easy to compare the popularity of multiple websites. Compete monitors the online behavior of over 2 million Americans (with their permission), which form the basis for these statistics. From the graph it’s clear that Mint has a lot more visitors than Wesabe.

However, it’s always a little unclear how reliable these data are. Therefore I’ve done the same search with several other traffic measurement websites, using AttentionMeter. You can see the results after the break.

Quantcast: Mint versus Wesabe

First of all, Quantcast shows really cool demographic data on either site, such as other sites that are visited by Mint and Wesabe users. Both the Mint report and the Wesabe report show that these sites attract a somewhat male, more educated audience. Anyhow, Quantcast confirms that Mint.com has more traction than Wesabe with 97,000 versus 10,000 US visitors:

Google Trends: Mint compared with Wesabe

Google Trends is using search data for showing the popularity of websites, rather than a consumer panel. The Google search results confirm that Mint is an order of magnitude more popular than Wesabe.

Alexa: Wesabe more popular than Mint???

Alexa was the first website that provided traffic statistics, starting many years ago. It has been criticized for being somewhat unreliable. Alexa certainly defies the trend that we’ve seen with the other traffic measurement sites, with Wesabe overtaking Mint in the past couple of days. Probably not entirely accurate.

Technorati: Mint and Wesabi in the Blogosphere

Technorati is a search engine for weblogs, so it searches for blog posts that mention ‘mint’ and ‘wesabe’. Now, I’m fairly sure that the graph below also tracks articles about ‘mint tea’ and cars that are in ‘mint condition’. In any case, Technorati also lists the number of blog reactions that reference either Mint.com or Wesabe.com, which should more reliable:

• Mint.com: 4,085 blog reactions
• Wesabe.com: 1,507 blog reactions

And here are the graphs (first Mint, then Wesabe):

Conclusion

It is clear that Mint is more popular than Wesabe, although Wesabe has a fair amount of mentions in Blog postings, maybe because of its social nature. Personally I found it easier to import all my accounts with Mint.com, maybe because they use the Yodlee account aggregation technology rather than developing it in-house like Wesabe. I do like the social aspects of Wesabe: there are a lot of intelligent discussions going on there. We’ll keep track of both Mint and Wesabe in future posts, and if you have any feedback, please leave a comment below!

Alyson’s take is that people are desperate for financial advice and that their needs are not met today. “Firms should focus on delivering a better customer experience starting by giving clients access to financial advice”, she told me. “The need for advice is amplified by new and complex taxes, pension reforms, turbulent markets, and complicated financial products. Most people can’t afford expert advice so most of them are shifting to the Internet in search for advice.” But advice delivery has not caught up.  Sure you can view your accounts, access general information, apply for a credit card or for a mortgage, and do some transactions, but where is the advice - the personal touch that people need – the collaboration?

Where are the collaborative advice tools?

Alyson stressed that today, technology firms fail to connect advisors to their clients and that there is a huge need for collaborative advice tools.  I could not agree more.  Some companies have already noticed that such collaborative tools could give them a competitive advantage.  In our discussion, I mentioned Vanguard, for instance, who’s using Backbase co-browse to collaborate with their customers.   Co-browsing technology allows a client to share his browser with a company representative who in turn can take control of the client’s browser if requested by the client. Vanguard’s goal is to provide online customers with a personalized experience similar to what they would get in a branch. Today, Vanguard is setting up online meetings with customers, and using co-browse in the meeting to go over forms together.  The customer experience is similar to sitting next to the advisor and filling up the form together in a branch.  National City is also using very effectively another collaborative tool – Online Chat.  A survey they conducted told them that their customers expected dialog online to be as good as within a branch. National City has found that Chat was a good fit for that, as well as for building trust and relationship. Both Vanguard and National City have found that these new collaborative tools reduce the cost of advice, improve the customer experience, built trust in the advice process and financial advisors, and made advice more relevant with better client-advisor collaboration. Even tough collaborative tools for the Internet are now widely available; however, very few are in full scale development in the financial services sector.

Financial calculators are everywhere – but how effective are they?

If collaborative tools are not yet wide spread within financial services companies, simple online tools, on the other hand, are. But they are usually disconnected from the product. In addition, they deliver different customer experiences usually more poor than rich. Financial calculators, including mortgage, retirement, savings, auto, college planning, etc are widely available.  Our study of mortgage calculators from top US banks shows some drastic inequality between offerings.

Fidelity MyPlan retirement calculator is using intuitive sliders to select the retirement age, money contribution, investment, etc. and results are shown in real time.

At the meeting I showed some of the online tools our customers were able to build using Backbase technology.  ABN AMRO retirement calculator is also using sliders and real time update graphs to show results based on choices.

An other interesting concept is the inclusion of calculators as widgets within a personal dashboard. Below is an example of such dashboard and widgets designed for the European bank ABN AMRO.

This dashboard designed for ABN AMRO includes many intuitive financial widgets such as a retirement planner, budget planner, etc. The concept of dashboard allows users to select the modules or widgets of their choice and to visualize the data the way they want.

Faceted search or product selectors are fast becoming the standard in online retail applications – they are still too few in financial services. Product selectors are merely filters that narrow down choices. Bank of America, for instance, is using selectors to narrow down searches of over 400 credits cards they offer.

After selecting your choices, you get a listing of cards based on your criteria, in this case No annual fee with cash back cards.

Vanguard, however, is creatively using drag and drop as selector for its mutual funds & ETFs.

To compare funds, clients just need to drag the funds from the first line down to the second line.

What about the advice tools?

Well, as Alyson said this is what’s most needed.  If I want a new plan or a new financial service, I would like to be well informed, well advised on what I need, based on my personal situation. Too few financial institutions offer these kinds of tools especially within their online channel. We were able to find a few though.

E*trade for instance, is offering advice as you’re building your retirement plan.

You can really tailor your investments based on your needs and goals.  And it’s visually attractive and definitely very intuitive.

In a project designed for ABN AMRO (see dashboard above), a Personal Advice widget was created. Customers can get advice on the listed topics and through phone, email, Chat, text message or Skype.

Some other tools I’ve seen used for advice are interactive videos. ING and Online Insight have some good examples.  They are using videos to educate and guide users. The host then guides the user through the tool providing educational information and advice based on what the user selects or enters.

So why do financial institutions need online advice tools?

It’s first and foremost to improve the customer experience. Financial products and services are more and more complex so there is a real need for education, and online advice tools have proven to be very effective for that. Advice tools will also increase your conversion rates.

There are many benefits to advice tools but today’s implementations only include standalone elements. For a real customer experience you need to consider all the elements you need, how to integrate them with your products, how to add collaboration tools and how all of these will complement other channels.

She states that the advantages of RIAs are:

• Speed of the website
• Opening up information: simplify complex information
• Convenience (autofill)
• Multimedia perception (rich user experience)

In her article she also gives 6 important tips and tricks how to use RIAs in a valuable way, visualized by some great examples like the sliders used in the ABN AMRO applications. She concludes that RIAs do offer a lot of advantages, but that RIAs should only be used in functional applications.

I gave it some thought and I have to say that I agree with her. Think well about the usage of RIA, don’t use it because ‘you want to use the latest innovative technology’, but make sure it benefits your site, but most of all: if it benefits your target audience. Hip youngsters might like a very animated, personalized and customizable site, but older people might prefer a site that looks like the site they were used too, optimized with some nice rich internet applications which enable a friendly user interface.

Click here for the full article.

The “choose your location” page also uses faceted search, which gives visitors the option to narrow his or her search according to specific criterions. For instance, I can narrow my search for Ace stores that only sell Benjamin Moore Paint or provide key-cutting services. (In my previous post, I’ve discussed how BlueNile.com, the popular online jewelry store, also uses faceted search to increase customer engagement).

By using geo-location technology, the website is able to target the visitor’s IP address, so when the visitor returns to the home page, they are quickly greeted with the “My Local Ace” section, which displays the number of local Ace stores on the right hand side of the screen. This is a neat way to instantly add personalization to the website.

So, what do I gather from all of this? First, the lessons:

• Look far ahead. Retailers need to leverage their website to drive business to their stores and vice-versa. Old methods can only take you so far. Look forward and research emerging technologies, such as Rich Internet Applications, that can further engage customers and help you achieve your business goals.

• Personalize your stores. Not only does Ace allow you to find the nearest store, but each store has a personalized web page with their contact information, store hours and even in-store promotions! According to Kevish, the goal was to “bring the local Ace store to life online.”

• Think “user experience.” If you have numerous stores, don’t conceal your store locations or address on your website. Make it easy for visitors to quickly find the store closest to them. I’ve read many stories of horrible user experiences, and this story is no exception.

Second, the facts:

• RIAs are proven solutions that drive business. According to Kevish, “In May, 83% of the dollar volume on acehardware.com was picked up in a store, an overall increase from the previous site.”

• …and customer engagement: “By offering the ability to search by services within the store locator, we tell our customer that our stores are all about being helpful. And if the Web site assists in finding what they’re looking for, the site is a more helpful extension of our brand.”

Kudos to Ace for taking the next step in improving online customer engagement! Readers, what about you? How are you using emerging technologies, such as RIAs, to increase customer engagement? We’d like to hear from you!

What went wrong?

On the Internet, the regular login worked, but he was locked out of his account when he was asked to repeat the credentials when confirming his TIN.

On the phone, the voice response system did not have the right options, and he couldn’t immediately get through to an operator because they were closed.

When he called back, they couldn’t help him but confirmed his account was _not_ locked out.

When he logged in later that night, he found out he _was_ locked out. Of course, the phone help desk was closed now.

The next day he used the online chat feature and a representative helped him get back into his account, which worked well. After filling out a form to dynamically generate a PDF, the resulting PDF was unreadable, and contained the wrong TIN.

What went right?

Actually, it seems the online chat was the only feature that actually worked: it allowed him to get back into his account quickly.

On this blog we’re writing about customer engagement and great user experiences. This is often about elaborate web applications that offer innovative features. However, Steve’s write-up makes me realize that a great customer experience starts with making the basic things work: online systems that don’t throw errors, and voice response systems that connect you with the right person at a time that is convenient for you.

First of all, the look of the website is pretty good. It looks somewhat like a hotel, because it shows a picture of the lobby, and it has a prominent link to a virtual tour. So they definitely succeed in promoting their in-bank services. How much online service can you expect from a bank that probably has a limited in-house IT staff? Let’s take a quick look at the home page, online forms and online banking.

Home page

The home page does not include any type of value proposition, just pictures. I personally believe some kind of promotion is useful, especially for people who have never visited a branch office. The moving navigation bar is not very easy to use: visitors have to be pretty good with the mouse to hit the right button. Also, the background music can be annoying, especially since I didn’t find out how to switch it off. Additionally, it would be useful to see where they are based. I would expect a tagline like “Lifestyle Banking in Scottsdale, Arizona”. Also, they might want to invest a little in search engine optimization, because currently only the front page is indexed, and that doesn’t contain any text. So I admire the concept, but feel the execution is lacking.

Application Forms

It’s very good that the ‘apply online’ button is prominently placed on the home page. There are various applications behind this button, some are PDF, and some are forms hosted on a third party website: theformsgroup.net. These forms look very “2001”, just like the copyright statement on the website of the Forms Group. I’m a big proponent of software as a service, and it’s probably the right decision for a small bank. I wonder if other vendors provide forms that deliver a better user experience: does anybody know such vendors?

They also have their own forms; however, the apply-for-a-loan form gives a ‘page not found’ error, which is obviously not a good thing.

Online Banking

I’m not able to login to the actual online banking system, but I assume they are using some kind of off-the-shelf software, because it is very costly to develop your own online banking system. I’ve recently looked at Jwaala, and they have an impressive offering for small banks: see their screenshots. They provide an attractive online banking system that connects to various core banking systems. Regarding Goldwater: they should also revamp their online banking login page: it looks like it hasn’t been changed in over ten years. It even has promo buttons for Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4 (released in 1997).

Summary

The Financial Brand weblog is pretty positive about the new Goldwater site. And at first sight I agree. However, in my opinion it doesn’t go beyond pretty pictures. I don’t think it’s a matter of spending more money: it’s really about smart use of 3rd party tools such as Jwaala which make it much more cost-effective for small banks to offer a large-bank online customer experience. What is your take? Can we expect small banks to have a really cool and functional website? Or is that only possible for the bigger banks?

The Test Scenario

A couple in California is looking to buy their first home in the next year, so they want to find out how much they can afford. They each make about $7000 a month and they have approximately $60k available for a down payment. They estimate they can pay approximately $4000 a month for their home.

The Criteria

First of all, I looked at whether the calculator was easy to find, and whether it was quick to get the first results. Then I looked at the help system: mortgage-specific terms can be confusing, especially for new home owners. So I was looking for context-sensitive help, online chat and a toll-free phone number.

Of course, it also helps if the questions are logical: for example, asking for ‘points’ without explaining what it accomplishes does not make a lot of sense. Once you have the results, it is useful to get a fairly complete picture of the monthly costs, for example including real estate tax payments.

If you’re new to home buying, you might want to tweak your numbers a little: for example, you might get a much better deal if you save up for a bigger down payment: so it’s great if you can change your inputs, ideally with instant updates.

And finally, once you have the right numbers, how easy is it to take next steps, such as saving your scenario, or getting pre-qualified?  Also, does the calculator show real examples of mortgages?

So let’s take a look at the different lenders, in alphabetical order:

Bank of America – grade: D

In the Bank of America calculator you enter how much you’re willing to pay each month, which is less intuitive than entering your income and letting the calculator give a monthly payment suggestion. Unfortunately, the calculator doesn’t include any context-sensitive help, nor an option for online chat: if you need help you need to call their toll-free phone number. Although they give an example of closing costs, it’s generic and it’s not related to the numbers you’ve entered. It’s not easy to change your inputs, either.  Every time it takes up to 20 seconds to see the results. Eventually I found an ‘update my search’ button, but that didn’t work for me, because I couldn’t change the numbers in there. Because I’m an existing Bank of America customer, I started pre-qualification and logged in to have my details pre-filled: unfortunately they were only able to pre-fill my phone number. All in all a disappointing user experience.

Chase – grade: D

The Chase calculators are a little difficult to find, and the user experience is somewhat unsatisfactory. Chase is the only company that uses Flash for their calculators. The first thing you notice is that it takes a little longer to load. The browser’s back-button doesn’t work. Also, there are problems printing: you have to first click a ‘print’ button; otherwise you get a blank page. And you cannot easily select the text to copy to a Word document. Not related to Flash, the content-sensitive help is hidden: I would expect a help button, but you have to hover over the field label to see the help text. On the positive side: the values you enter are remembered across different forms.

Unfortunately, Chase also asks you to enter your desired monthly payment rather than asking for your income. On the results page you get a summary of what you entered, plus the option to change it. They provide no details on the available mortgage types. Also, it’s not immediately clear what the next step is. Once I found the tiny ‘apply online’ link, the application form appeared: after a few seconds a chat window popped up, which was useful, although it took a little while before an agent was available.

Citibank – grade: C

For this test I focused on citimortgage.com, and not on any of the other Citi mortgage websites. First of all, praise for the calculator that is right on the home page: it won’t get any easier to find the calculator. The ‘how much can I afford’ calculator is also easy to find, and requires only the key information: income, other payments and down payment. However, it is really strange that the toll-free phone number on the results page is almost invisible, and there is no chat option. Also, there is no help system for the results page, which makes it difficult to interpret the results for new home buyers. Once you apply, it offers options to apply online, over the phone or in a branch office, which is nice.

Countrywide – grade: B

It was a little hard to find the calculator on the Countrywide web site, but it worked very well. They ask for relatively little information, there is a good help system, you can easily update the information and recalculate, and you get a detailed breakdown of all costs. In the form they ask the maximum points you are willing to pay, which – I feel – is a little too detailed for this calculator, but that’s a relatively minor point. They show their toll-free phone number prominently with every step, and also encourage you to get prequalified. A cool feature is that they show what the limiting factor is for the amount you can loan: for example, it could be your income, or the size of the down payment. Their results screen has one of the most detailed overviews of the total cost of the mortgage, including tax and closing costs. I also took a quick look at the monthly payments calculator, but that one is disappointing: it assumes you already know exactly what you want, and only gives details on monthly principal and interest payments, not on any other costs.

WaMu – grade: C

The Wamu calculators aren’t overly easy to find either, because they’re hidden behind a tab. Only little information is required, although I would rather skip specifying the loan term in this type of calculator. Very interesting to see that they only suggest adjustable rate mortgages: luckily, a chat window popped up, so I asked if I could get information on fixed rate mortgages too. Even more interesting: the chat rep sent me to a calculator on http://www.dinkytown.net, a totally unrelated website. However, he also offered to do the math for me, but it’s still a little strange. The information on the WaMu results screen is comprehensive, but it could use some more contextual help, plus an option to interactively change the data you entered. Your data is remembered across forms, which is a useful feature. The availability of live chat is definitely the best feature of the WaMu site.

Wells Fargo – grade: F

Well Fargo also provides a calculator right on their home page, which is a big plus. The ‘how much can I afford’ calculator was buried a little deeper in the site, and was called ‘Loan Calculator’, which is not totally intuitive. If you click on it, you get a message that you are leaving the Wells Fargo site: that is a little weird! The calculator asks for a lot of information, which makes the process more time-consuming than necessary. However, in the result screen they have both a conservative and an aggressive estimate, which is nice. However, these results are generic, and not specific to Well Fargo mortgage products or lending practices. You have to contact them by phone or in a branch office to get specific information on Wells Fargo mortgages. Very disappointing: it seems like their website is only a lead generation tool, and does not provide any specific information about Wells Fargo mortgage products, other than some generic interest rates.

Moneyou

Disclosure: some of my coworkers have helped develop this calculator.
Moneyou is an online mortgage provider in the Netherlands, owned by ABN AMRO. Their ‘Maximum Mortgage’ calculator can be found on the front page, and it requires only income information. Even better, the results are updated immediately on the right-hand side, using graphs. A large button brings you to the next stage: calculation of monthly costs, which requires slightly more information. As you change the information about your situation, for example the size of the down payment, the mortgage details are updated automatically on the right-hand side. This facilitates going through several ‘what-if’ scenarios. The only negative is that the site is hiding the interest rate behind an optional panel, so it’s more difficult to compare with other lenders. Extensive context-sensitive help is available, and if you still have questions you can use live chat or call a toll-free phone number. From this screen you can step right into the prequalification form. Overall, this calculator is easy to find and easy to use. I haven’t rated it, because the Dutch mortgage market is not entirely comparable with the US market, but it’s clear that the major US providers can pick up a lot of good ideas from this example.

Conclusion

The traditional mortgage lenders have a lot they can improve to their online calculators. It’s not rocket science: promote the calculators on the front page, provide good support via content-sensitive help and live chat, and display the phone number prominently. Also, facilitate what-if scenarios by including the input form on the results page. Moneyou has taken it one step further, by using real-time updates and graphs. This type of calculator is often classified as a Rich Internet Application and in my opinion this is where the mortgage industry should be heading to provide a superior online customer experience.

What is your take? Do you agree with the test results? Do you know of other websites that are providing great mortgage calculators? Or maybe you just have a question? Let me know by leaving a comment below…

Prior to researching online options, I visited a well-known jewelry store to speak with a “sales professional.”  After all, he professionally attempted to lure me into buying one of their expensive diamond rings.  Granted, the ring looked spectacular but given the price tag, it was way out of my budget!  I wondered if I could find a better deal online for a comparable ring, and while I was certain I could, I wondered if an online retailer could match the in-store experience of a brick-and-mortar.

It didn’t take long before I stumbled upon the bluenile.com website.  The first thing I noticed right away was how easy it was to search for a diamond.  With the use of Ajax, they employ what we call “faceted search”, a rich internet application (RIA) feature that uses criteria sliders to narrow your search results.  This is an intuitive functionality that makes it easier for the user to find a specific diamond they are looking for.

Complimenting faceted search is a super-fast data grid.  The Ajax grid will update the number of diamonds available in their inventory as you move the criteria sliders.  You can even sort each diamond by price, cut, clarity, etc.  Once you’ve narrowed your search, you can view images or diagrams of your ring or view a library full of educational resources in case you would like to learn more about diamonds.

Purchasing a diamond ring over the Internet can be intimidating, but Blue Nile has done an excellent job employing the latest RIA technologies to engage visitors, while making them feel confident in their purchase decision.

Do you know of any websites that utilize RIA functionality to increase customer engagement?  If so, drop us a line and let us know!  Also, if you have any tips for purchasing a diamond ring, let me know too!