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Comment by jgv | Hacker News Reader

I may be biased as a designer and front end engineer, but almost every banking website I've seen is designed horribly. Now I know this isn't directly answering your question, although it is addressing how banks can better serve their customers.

Look at Mint. My bank could offer what Mint does, since Mint is pulling in info from my bank– but they dont. A lot of what Mint is doing seems to be making the information easy to understand. Their UI is beautiful and their UX is intuitive. For me its hard to even understand why certain design decisions were made by my bank.

Beyond that, I would say to invest in mobile experiences. A lot of my interaction with my bank happens on the go as well. And while my banks iphone app is a better experience than the website, it is a little bit crippled.

You should checkout companies like Venmo and Square, who are really innovating in the area of mobile payments.

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Excellent, thanks. I will check out those companies that you mention.

As you say I think all bank website desginers must have gone to the same college and been taught by a flawed professer.

I think the biggest challenge for banks is to provide the enormous amounts of information that they hold on us in a clearer way. People get lost at the moment, as soon as banks can deliver information in a more straight forward way the sooner they will convert the traditionalists who insist on doing things at the branch. I am convinced people still feel they have to bank in a branch because the internet solution that banks have provided is just not good enough.

Your last point is interesting and I agree. I wonder when the tipping point for most people will be banking in a browser as opposed to a physical location. I definitely do not envy those who have to design for banks because their work is surely cut out for them. Such a large dataset and support for everything down to IE6 (even futher?) must be a serious challenge.

Also checkout BankSimple, they're gearing up to change online banking as we know it– so says the hype machine.

BankSimple's founder has hit it on the head:

"If you log in to say Bank of America or Chase, the application is clunky, it feels very fragile, it breaks all the time, it’s hard to find the information, it doesn’t work like a machine. If you use Facebook, there’s an expected way for things to work. It’s a more pleasurable experience"

In Germany I did almost all my banking online. I used Deutsche Bank and DKB. Now having moved to Britain I have to battle inferior online-banking solutions. (Natwest, I am looking at you!) I've recently switched to Santander, because it seems marginally better at online banking.

So to make this an actionable item: Take test-drives from online banking of banks in different countries, and compare what works best in each. Just combining the best features of all systems that are already available, would get you a long way, without even having to invent anything new.

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