Posted on April 8, 2009 - by Justin Hartman
Please help Investec from committing Online suicide
Investec Bank, a company I’ve long admired, is about to ruin their hard earned reputation online. On the Investec homepage there is a graphic enticing users to test drive their new website located at http://beta.investec.com. This is what it looks like.
I doubt that it’s just me but the new Investec site is simply unusable and I’m struggling to see how their clients are going to be happy with the new interface. While the site is certainly pushing boundaries in terms of web design I have to ask one simple question. Why?
Let me explain why I think this site is bad for them:
- The site is largely built using JavaScript. This is bad news for Search Engines and if you happen to have JavaScript disabled in your browser (many browsers do) then the site simply doesn’t load.
- All content is loaded in an iframe. Once again, bad news for Search Engines as their content is never going to be indexed correctly. This leaves a major gap for Investec competitors who’s sites are optimised for SEO.
- Font size of the content is so small that their major base of clients over the age of 45 are really going to have a tough time reading it.
- Navigation is extremely unintuitive. At first glance it looks like the site is still loading because you don’t see any navigation bars. Eventually you figure out that if you hover on the smaller buttons to the left and right the real navigation bars appear. Using the 7 second rule new visitors to this site will simply close the browser window and move onto the next site.
- The market indicators appear to be hidden in the bottom bar. We figured out that you actually need to click the indicators to have them pop up. There is no message or call to action informing people that they should click this bar to read more.
Investec have a one question survey about their new beta site and I urge anyone who likes this brand to take the survey and tell them to rethink their strategy. I don’t particularly like to hammer brands on my blog but I’m actually trying to help them out.
Please take the short survey by clicking on this link. I hope that you’ll agree with me that they should rather stick to their current site until they’ve revised this beta one.
22 Comments
I'd love to hear yours!
I am a seasoned entrepreneur and currently the CEO of 
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
New blog post: Please help Investec from committing Online suicide http://tinyurl.com/ce4ld9
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
RT @justinhartman: New blog post: Please help Investec from committing Online suicide http://tinyurl.com/ce4ld9
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
Good for you for addressing this. It never ceases to amaze me how many large corporates websites don’t work on the most basic level! Try finding where to buy an LG appliance on http://za.lge.com! Simplicity is the ultimate in sophistication.
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
RT @coda_za: RT @justinhartman: New blog post: Please help Investec from committing Online suicide http://tinyurl.com/ce4ld9
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
Hi Justin, thank you for the post and the feedback. Much appreciated.
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
Why does it seem like they’ve tried to build a site that can’t be found?
You win my god Samaritan of the day award for attempting to save Investec’s online soul.
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
Well it’s certainly progressive but like you say, it’s not appropriate given their industry and user demographic.
The navigation is too unconventional, and not worth the effort or time it requires to understand how it all works (once you’ve found and activated it first). I really don’t like how there are arrows to indicate a secondary-level menu for each item, but not all items have a secondary-level. So visually and functionally, the heirachy is confusing.
And then if you click on the “Corporate Clients” arrow (not text, otherwise that loads up the page), and then “Capital Markets”, and select an item, it will take you another few clicks to close this clickstream and navigate to somewhere else. Way too many clicks.
The buttons to keep the sidebars open/closed aren’t obvious because, at least, they don’t have any tooltips explaining their function. I’m not sure a lock is the correct icon here either – lock iconography in banking environments communicate security.
Also as your screenshot shows, the layout fits to the full width of the browser viewport but the content area doesn’t benefit from this as it’s fixed width, so what’s the point? The content is always boxed into a small scrollable area with so much wasted white space in the header.
They should be using a print-specific style sheet for print-friendly pages.
And I guess they will have to revisit their Accessibility statement: http://beta.investec.com/en_za/#home/legal/accessibility.html
A very confusing redesign.
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
They’ve done too much and too little in one bold move.
In their defence, there doesn’t appear to be an iframe on the site?
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
Jaco thanks for stopping by to leave a comment. I hope though that you guys see the value in the criticism…..
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
Hi Justin, yes we value all the feedback we get immensely and will respond where possible.
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
@Coda I agree. It is a confusing redesign.
@Ross technically there isn’t an iframe. What they’ve done is load all the content through Ajax (JS) so the point being there is none of the content being displayed in the source code of the site.
All you ever see in the source code is links to the pages but following those links you still don’t see the content.
I took it a step further. I viewed the beta site in Lynx (a Linux command line browser) because Lynx is know to replicate what search engines see. Here is what Lynx displays.
http://justinhartman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/picture-48.png
What you can clearly see is that a SE is never going to be able to index any content for the new site. Even when I followed the redirect URL all that displayed was a blank page.
I can’t stress enough how important the search engine strategy needs to be.
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
Hi Justin,
Interesting read on your take of their website changes. I couldn’t agree more that the font is too small.
I have perfect 20/ 20 vision and could see it clearly, but it was annoyingly small.
The “hidden,” market indicators could certainly be structured differently.
Overall I found the site very clean though and it appealed to me, but overall, when their current demographic is considered, your comments are certainly valid. This of course includes the SEO aspect of their website.
Perhaps they are also aiming to now attract a “newer,” demographic?
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
I tried to give them some feedback but I don’t have that much time on my hands to help out
Without rehashing the critical points of confusion that people have already mentioned, I think if they completely redesign their navigation and better use containing space, they will go a long way to making it more usable. Again, font sizing and spacing is problematic, please fix it too.
Not sure why they went so radical on the design. Seems like an insecure design trying to be completely different. Or they derive inspiration from a very “vacuum-like” web design; looks great in a PSD but is impractical in execution.
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
and in a few years time we’ll all think back to how they pushed the boundaries, when new ways are used to optimise…
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
This site is confusing even for web specialists. If this is where they are spending the interest of my home repayments, I am very disappointed.
here is also a very nice bug found on Safari 4 with their gorgeous “iframe-like” thingy.
screenshot:
http://zbra.co.za/drop/investec_bug.jpg
Visit My Website
April 8, 2009
Permalink
I agree with Coda on the ambiguity on the ‘un/lock’ icon.
And what would the idea of presenting nothing but Table Mountain on a visitor’s arrival be?
The feeling one gets is: “you got to our site, now what do you want?”
The interface overpowers the content, attention is given to the stage instead of the performer.
Visit My Website
April 9, 2009
Permalink
oi currumba! Well spotted Justin.
Wrong approach (technology, navigation, design, architecture) for a banking site.
Where do we begin:
- I do believe this kind of web dev has a place, but it certainly ain’t on a banking site (or at least occupying the core part of the site). The site should be functional, clean, focused, professional, widely accessible.
- Wrong technology choice aside, the basics are problematic: navigation is muddled and unclear and that big cheesy background image should go.
- I’m a big fan of new technologies, but this is not right. It looks someone is having a party with the Javascript EXT framework… it belongs on some sites, but not here!!
- I’m a big fan of pushing the boundaries… ie the Ster Kinekor site which is completely flash-based, I think works in that context (not all agree)… but for investec this is wrong wrong wrong
What’s they have done right:
- Launch it as a beta for comment
- Create a survey to get opinion
It’s going to be a major embarrassment if they launch this thing. Investec is a premium, widely-respected brand… this site does not belong that. I hope they make a sensible business decision here and not get sentimental about what they’ve developed. It needs to go back to the drawing board!!
Visit My Website
April 9, 2009
Permalink
Matt I think you hit the nail on the head. This does work in some contexts but as a financial services site the answer is no.
What I do like, as do you, is that Investec have been open to feedback and I hope they use all the comments in this post as a benchmark for some changes.
I have little doubt that had they launched this without feedback it would have turned nasty but in doing what they did they’ve allowed any potential issues to be mitigated by taking in feedback and (hopefully) listening.
Visit My Website
April 9, 2009
Permalink
In trying to be cool and fresh , Investec have ignored almost every usability guideline, and rule in the book. Their beta site is completley unusable in the current form. Navigation is a nighmare, it is completely unintuative, and actually finding anything is a real challenge. Research has now shown the 7 second rule is more like 5 seconds, and users scan for information, they dont read, users also dont remember navigation, it must be intuative and consistent. Who knows what they were thinking. To their credit they did not go live with this. Investec have always been the lowest scoring, by a long way, in the World Wide Worx Webagility system. Standard Bank leads with around a 70% score, the other banks ABSA 64%, Nedbank 58% FNB 55% and Investec old site around 40% for usability. The new site may even score lower than 40%.
Visit My Website
April 9, 2009
Permalink
Where to even start?
First off, I have to agree with everything that you’ve all said in response to Justin’s post. I’m also glad that this hasn’t got messy, instead positive feedback is being offered to Investec.
I do hope they take this feedback VERY seriously, as going live with the BETA proposed would be “Online Suicide” as Justin puts it.
I’m impressed that they did launch as a Beta first and encourage feedback (even if it was through a free online poll system with a single manditory field).
Clearly Investec has a lot more to learn about web strategy.
Without opening a can of worms I would like to know what company or person has been guiding Investec towards this outcome?
Visit My Website
June 25, 2009
Permalink
I couldnt agree more! The site is horrendous. Hardly intuitive, confusing, hard to read, inaccessible and just plain ugly.
Visit My Website
August 11, 2009
Permalink
greetings,
how right, i’m 69 and when i downloaded the site i went back and restated the online portal thinking i was wrong as the elder people otfen do.
thank you