Chase.com Home Page Gets Major Redesign

Chase.com gets top-down redesign starting with the home page.

With the changes came an array of new features that would make customer interaction within the page a much smoother, easier to use affair. Many of the changes might actually seem familiar, however, as at least some of the inspiration for the changes came from the Chase Mobile app.

Considering that Chase is actually number one among banking apps on both Google Play and Apple’s App Store—it’s also routinely found among the top 100 Apple apps around. Granted, taking any inspiration from the Chase Mobile app is probably a good idea.

Chase’s head of digital for Consumer and Community Banking, Gavin Michael, described the new app as making it “…easier for our customers to live and bank the way they want,” and with the new features involved, it’s easy to see why that is the case.

The new home page focuses on simple navigation, and can be made available in both English and Spanish to ensure a nice broad outreach. There are localization features that add images to personalize the site for returning visitors, as well as the ability to scroll down the home page with a news feed to make the most relevant content available quickly.

An easy-access menu remains always in sight while scrolling to let customers quickly move from one point to another. Customers can also promptly see what choices are available to choose from, including checking and credit card accounts, as well as mortgages. There’s even a section called “News & Stories” that offers up advice and insights alike as needed, and keeps such advice readily available in a prominently displayed section.

As good as that is, though, Chase isn’t stopping there. By the end of the year, Chase.com will start upgrading account pages as well as features that customers have access to upon signing in. This led Gavin Michael to note that, if customers liked what they saw so far, there would be plenty more to like as a new account experience debuts in the fall.

For banks, modifying the customer experience has to be one of the top priorities that can be had short of compliance with government regulation.

After all, the sheer amount of competition in the field makes it a necessity, and the rise of mobile payment systems has only exacerbated the situation.

With customers readily able to go to a different bank, or turn to a completely different breed of payment system almost at will—plus, bank customers actively choosing just how much business is done with a company by simply adjusting the amount of money kept with a particular bank—the need to have the best experience is clearly vital.

Tim Parsey, Head of Digital Customer Experience at Chase said, “We realized that financial experiences can be intimidating, cluttered and over complicated in many ways. The big part is how we approach the experiences to make it as simple as possible.”

Banks don’t exactly have a lot of options when it comes to differentiation at the customer level, so that experience is valuable.

In addition, loans are available around the same interest rate. Savings, and CD rates don’t vary too wildly—the top 25 five year CD rates according to bankaholic.com range from 0.93 percent to 2.31 percent—so the best place to compete it is in the customer experience, making it easier to find things, and to find help when needed. Thus the redesign of Chase.com makes particular sense, and seems to have already been pretty well received.

With banks looking for ways to compete not only with other banks, but also with mobile payment systems, improved accessibility and a better customer experience should go quite a ways toward keeping current customers in the fold and perhaps even bringing in new customers.

“Focusing on the customer experience in all we do – in our mobile and digital experiences, in our branches, in the interactions with our bankers – getting that right will give our customers the “human” touch they crave, and ultimately make for stronger customer relationships,” Parsey added.

Drawing on an already successful mobile app, meanwhile, should prove to be an idea that pays dividends.