Selection and Implementation of Navigation and Information Search Strategies in Bank Web Sites: Turkish Case

Abstract

One of the major issues in banking is “consumer loan”. Most of the banks allow customers to apply for a “personal” or “generic” loan online. This procedure requires filling out forms with some “familiar data” and calculating the rates and fees for the total cost. Although online banking is a supported feature of banking in general, every system offers a different path for the same experience. This pilot study, which is the first step of a long-term study, focuses on three different bank web sites in Turkey and investigates the “find and search” strategies that users employ in order to apply for a specific amount of loan. For this purpose a qualitative usability test, based on a multi-method approach, was carried out with a sample of 11 Turkish senior year university students who were experienced Internet users and potential new customers. The participants were observed during the task executions and additional data was collected by the “think aloud” procedure, eye-tracking and video recording of the participants. Complementary data on user experience was collected by a final debriefing interview. The findings revealed significant usability problems caused specifically by the user interface features and information architecture of each system and enable to propose guidelines to improve user experience in form design and/or check-out process.

Keywords

This study was realized by the coordination of Barış Kara (PhD) with the support of Galatasaray University Scientific Research Fund (Project ID: 12.300.004).