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RaboPlus corporate blog: Greg McAweeney, General Manager of RaboPlus

Website Down = No Access to Your Funds?

Added on 9/11/2007 15:09

A recent SMH article about how customers were unable to log on to the Westpac online banking service raises issues that can affect any online banking service and their customers across Australia.


However, when I followed some of the conversation strings of fellow bloggers out there, the frustration from customers was real and fiery! I have to say that simply through consistent use of the internet now, I get frustrated if a webpage takes more than a few seconds to load. And if I can’t get in at all, I often don’t even go back to that site unless I absolutely have to.


User experience gaining momentum the way it is, is pushing banks to make their websites much more user friendly and this includes download times (which of course is a direct result of the speed of your internet service – but there are many things web designers and developers can do to optimize page download times) and no “outages”. Many of the large financial institutions spend hundreds of thousands of dollars setting up Business continuity programs, “BCP” around their online services.  Of course, even the best laid plans can go awry. As a bank’s public website is often the portal for customers to “log on” to their internet banking service, if the website is down, it means customers probably cannot get access to their funds unless there is a telebanking service available. 


Things have improved dramatically in this area over the last five years and these types of outages are few and far between nowadays. As banks upgrade their systems to cope with ever increasing customer numbers online, we may see changes to the way they deliver online services in the future, like the increased use and popularity of mobile banking services. But how many times do you have dropped calls on your mobile phone, what implications does that have if you might be in the middle of a mobile transaction? Guess we will see more on this over the coming year.


In the meantime, I’d like to know what you think about the www.raboplus.com.au web site and your user experience on our site, so I can personally take that feedback on board, good or bad and take it back to our web team.

 

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1. Alexander Biggs (Garran ACT)Quote | 09/11/2007 10:31

I think you are doing pretty well. I have had a web site for many years, starting with early dial-up modems.My advice is: keep it simplewth graphics to a minimum.

2. Alex C (Sydney NSW)Quote | 13/11/2007 02:23

I'm really impressed by what you've gotten running in rabo Bryan. There's a lot of transparency and so far rabo has been very quick to respond to interest rates. Thanks! Happy savings

3. CMQuote | 13/11/2007 08:35

Your website is down at the moment. Its 6.35pm in Sydney and I can't log in.

4. Bryan InchQuote | 14/11/2007 01:35

Thank you for letting us know. We are currently investigating this issue, so stay posted as we provide further updates.

5. Bryan InchQuote | 15/11/2007 05:09
CM wrote:
Your website is down at the moment. Its 6.35pm in Sydney and I can't log in.

I had only just posted my story about websites being down, and how despite the best laid plans it could happen to any online banking service, and then it happened to RaboPlus. Our secure banking site was taken offline by our systems checking process for approximately 20 minutes on Monday evening. This was not a scheduled test, however was necessary at the time. Normally, our testing programme is scheduled overnight so as to minimise disruption to services for our customers. Despite us having a 99.9% uptime record since launching in May, this event did happen, but in future we aim to stick to the scheduled overnight tests. I hope not many of you were inconvenienced by this event on Monday.

6. Dallas Mc-Edwards (Perth WA)Quote | 17/11/2007 08:22

Im am so far pleased with the quick response to questions & the overall service

7. Troy Winney (Melbourne)Quote | 21/11/2007 07:26

Hi Bryan I think your website is fine. I have an account with westpac and it can be annoying when they are down. But what can you do. Your site could improve its engagement strategies a little. especially to bring more attention to your newsletter. Save the click and let the people enter their details on the home page if they like.You could also shorten the graphic with the girl on your homepage so that the boxes below fit better to the average screen. The more info might be a scroll down for a lot of people. But it has a progressive feel. Maybe you could have a small news section on the left under your 1800 number which is a bit of wasted space. But good luck to you guys. What do you do to generate traffic to it and increase your brand awareness online? Actually if i press enter it takes me forward a page and this message is all on one line which is a bit annoying. Cheers bryan. Have a great day

8. Bryan InchQuote | 26/11/2007 12:14
Troy Winney (Melbourne) wrote:
Hi Bryan I think your website is fine. I have an account with westpac and it can be annoying when they are down. But what can you do. Your site could improve its engagement strategies a little. especially to bring more attention to your newsletter. Save the click and let the people enter their details on the home page if they like.You could also shorten the graphic with the girl on your homepage so that the boxes below fit better to the average screen. The more info might be a scroll down for a lot of people. But it has a progressive feel. Maybe you could have a small news section on the left under your 1800 number which is a bit of wasted space. But good luck to you guys. What do you do to generate traffic to it and increase your brand awareness online? Actually if i press enter it takes me forward a page and this message is all on one line which is a bit annoying. Cheers bryan. Have a great day

Thanks Troy for your insightful suggestions to improve our website's design. I'll pass them on to our online team for consideration. And thanks for pointing out the bug with the comments form which we have now fixed. Our online promotion includes SEO, SEM, and display advertising, amongst other activity. If you have any ideas on how we could improve our advertising I'd love to hear them.

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