Exclusive Computer Weekly research shows that banks are not
delivering a good enough online service - particularly the new
online-only banks. Daniel Thomas and Karl Cushing report
The reputation of online banking has taken a battering in the past
fortnight with a number of high-profile banks suffering Web site
downtime - of up to three days in some cases - and other technical
glitches.
Last week, Intelligent Finance, a division of Halifax bank, said it
was continuing to suffer problems with its site. Customers had been
hit by three days of downtime the preceding week. NatWest's online
banking service, natwest.com, was also down for three days in early
October, while Internet bank Egg was unavailable for an hour during
the first week of the month.
New research, exclusive to Computer Weekly, has revealed that these
may not be isolated problems and that the sector as a whole needs
to improve its Web site performance.
During September, network management firm Parallel monitored the
Web site performance of 22 UK retail banks. Using its Nexus Watch
service it tried to connect to each Web site from two locations
simultaneously and at regular intervals. If it could elicit no
response within 45 seconds from both locations, the site was deemed
unavailable. Consumers are known to regard Web sites that take more
than eight seconds to download as slow.
The research revealed that only 14% of the sites remained up for
the whole of September. The average amount of time the sites were
unavailable during the months was 108 minutes, the research found.
This equates to more than 21 hours per year.
Tim Moore, director at Parallel, said while this level of
availability is "not bad" for most industries, retail banks should
be aiming higher.
"There is a responsibility for banks to be offering a better than
average service," he said. "Lots of customers rely on the Internet
for their banking, so performance levels need to be higher."
The research showed that retail banks also need to address the
average page size. "The most important aspect to come out of the
research is that file [page] size is too big for the majority of
the population [who connect via a modem]," Moore said. "The message
is that banks need to address this."
Earlier this year Parallel criticised the size of corporate Web
sites in a study of FTSE 100 companies. Although the Computer
Weekly research shows that the average page size of Web sites in
the retail banking sector has been reduced from 84Kbytes to
59Kbytes since then, the level recommended by Web designers to give
home users - most of whom use a modem connection, according to
Oftel - good performance is 40Kbytes.
Three-quarters of the bank sites studied had pages bigger than
this, the research found, with NatWest topping the list at
106Kbytes.
As a result, Parallel said, only 15% of the banks' Web sites will
download in less than eight seconds - the generally accepted
maximum required for customer satisfaction in home users connecting
via a modem.
"There is no reason for the home page to be so large," Moore said.
"Most of the services are not going to be there so users should not
have to wait this long for it to download."
The high street banks have the most to do to get their Web sites up
to scratch. They had the worst availability, slowest download time
and largest page size when compared to building societies and
Internet banks, according to the research. NatWest fared
particularly badly, proving to be the worst performer in two of the
three categories.
"While the Internet banks in particular appear to be bearing issues
such as page size in mind, the high street banks have not addressed
it yet," Moore said.
"Banks have spent a lot of money getting their internal systems
right but it is taking time for them to realise that
customer-facing systems are equally important."
A natwest.com spokeswoman refuted the findings of Parallel's
research, saying that the bank has won the Which? Best Buy for
Online Banking award. Neither Intelligent Finance nor Egg were
available for comment as Computer Weekly went to press.
The verdict: Net banks should do better
Parallel
monitored the Web site performance of 22 UK retail banks during
September. The key findings were:
- Only 14% of the sites remained up for the entire month
- The average amount of time that sites were unavailable was 108
minutes - equivalent to 21 hours per year
- About 41% of sites achieved less than 99.9% availability - the
acknowledged industry target
- High street banks had the worst availability, download time and
page size when compared with building societies and Internet
banks
- The Web sites of high street banks were unavailable for more
than twice as long as those of building societies
- Only 15% of retail banks' Web sites would download in less than
eight seconds for the 89% of home users who connect with a
modem
- Three quarters of sites had a page size over the generally
recommended 40Kbytes.