Chase’s new online banking portal takes a page — or hundreds of pages, rather — from its mobile app, which is the nation’s most popular bank app with more than 22 million users.
The site, developed over the course of 18 months, is being rolled out in stages throughout 2016, with one million of Chase’s more than 33 million online users already enjoying the new format.
Bank Innovation attended JPMorgan Chase’s website relaunch event yesterday at its new 450 West 33rd Street office in Manhattan. The office is something of a showpiece for the normally buttoned-up firm, with an open floorplan and various futuristic pods for diving deeper into work (or video games, or lunch.)
Head of Digital Gavin Michael explained that his team has focused on re-envisioning the digital space for three years, working to design a “simple, cohesive, personal system.” He offered the observation that the last website overhaul — a decade ago — was so far into the past that the development of this system was a nearly philosophical proposition. The guide for the relaunch, which is fully responsive across monitors of various sizes down to tablets, was the bank’s mobile app — “our award-winning mobile app,” Michael said more than once, earning chuckles from the assembled reporters and analysts.
On login, Chase customers will notice anew account menu on the left — a prominent mobile borrowing — and a messaging center with search functionality at the top of the screen, another mobile feature now ported to the desktop. This search allows for the unearthing of such information as the bank’s routing number to previously buried customer agreement documents. “It is a radical simplification,” said Tim Parsey, head of digital customer experience — and the site needed it. The new screen shown to the user after sign-in surfaces information spread across more than 200 screens on the older version of the site, according to Michael.
The new home screen also features person-to-person payments (“QuickPay”), billpay, and information about every other kind of transaction under the sun. The Account Dashboard on left can take the user to payment operations and invoice management options, and transaction history that put even some nonbank competitors to shame.
Another major section is instructional videos to guide users in navigating the new site. The digital team will take its design ethos over to business banking customers next.
Midway through the demonstration, we were reminded of a fun fact about the site’s word count: at 427,000 words, this website relaunch is as long as three Harry Potter novels (which specific ones are left for the reader to surmise). The team behind the website — 1,000 people — worked 2 million hours to complete the final product, and ran 90,000 test scripts before unveiling it yesterday.
Michael didn’t precisely say so, but the bank must have learned a great deal about customer behavior from the mobile channel, and mobile in turn has also influenced customer behavior. With the steady march of mobile in the banking world, online banking is becoming something of a legacy product, but when you have nearly 40 million people depending on it, you have to make sure it’s right.