AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerUser Testing for Financial Websites

Subscribe to AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

User Testing for Financial Websites

We do deep diagnostic dives into websites prior to beginning the remodeling process. This includes competitive analysis, SEM, SEO and eye-tracking heat maps. All of this is an effort to understand user experience.Web designer at work

Jonathan Lay in his blog, “What Live User Testers are Saying about Bank and Credit Union Homepages,” describes his company’s process and findings. It is always comforting to have your research corroborated by other research project. Yet no matter what research you are reading, nothing replaces your actual, non-employee users for solid decision-making data.

Here are a few of Mr. Lay’s findings about financial websites:

  • The first questions people ask themselves are “does this look professional?” And “do I believe this site is safe and secure?”
  • Most users feel frustrated, confused and mostly overwhelmed by all the choices (navigation) and calls to action on a home page, AKA the Paradox of Choice (choice is inversely correlated to usability)
  • Most home page advertising banners do not sell. The click-through rate is so low that the space should be used for other things. To millennials, these advertising banners may also lead to negative awareness, “this page looks like spam.”

Too much of any good thing is bad for most things and especially for a website. The key is to create a clear PATH for your users.

Written by:

Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.

After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.

He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”

Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”

One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.

Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.

Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.