Investor Relations: News
| Top US Banks' Websites Studied by Keynote - Online Banking Customers Engage in Increasingly Diverse and Complex Activities |
- Online Customer Support, Ease of Paying Bills and Site's Ability to Pitch Additional Products Are Strongest Predictors of Brand Affinity and Loyalty SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov 03, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Keynote Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote (R) Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN), today announced the results of the new Keynote Competitive Research Industry Study examining the business and technical effectiveness of U.S. online banking websites. In the 2011 Banking Customers study PNC took first place for Best Overall Customer Experience, while in the Technical Quality portion of the study US Bank came in first for Responsiveness (Speed) and Wells Fargo took first place for Reliability. The entire study is available for immediate purchase. To request more information please visit: http://bit.ly/bankingcustomers. Winners of Keynote Competitive Research studies are invited to participate in the company's Online Excellence Program which recognizes the "best of the best" websites as ranked in the studies. The rankings are based on responses from real users, who were observed as they accomplished tasks on each of the sites studied, as well as real data collected through Keynote website monitoring to assess the technical quality of the sites. For each study, Keynote recognizes the companies with the overall top ranking, as well as those exhibiting excellence in specific categories. For the 'Customer Experience' portion of the study, Keynote observed and conducted online interviews with 1,305 online banking customers as they interacted with the websites of a total of six leading US banking sites (200-250 per site): Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, PNC, US Bank and Wells Fargo. For the 'Technical Quality' portion of the study, Keynote performed 6,000 total measurements for each site, for a total of 36,000 total measurements, from 12 locations in the U.S. The data was collected over a one month period during the banks' peak period every day from 8:00 AM-Midnight EST. Keynote Competitive Research produces leading industry research using the company's commercially available Web performance monitoring and real user experience testing products. Keynote regularly evaluates the current state of online customer experience, technical quality (responsiveness/reliability) and implementation of best practices on leading websites across a wide variety of vertical markets including financial services, automotive, media/entertainment, retail, travel and technology. More Information About the Customer Experience Rankings for US Banking Websites For the Customer Experience component of the study, Keynote sent an average of more than 217 U.S. resident Internet users to each of the six banking websites. The online panelists were asked to log in to their existing online bank account then -- for their most active account with that bank -- to find the largest payment or other withdrawal in the last three months and look to see if any bank fees were charged to that account in the last 90 days and if so, what the fees were for. Panelists were then asked to accomplish other relevant tasks including: Setting up an email or mobile text alert (such as a balance or transaction alert); scheduling a payment using the site's online bill payment service and learning more about the bill payment service (associated features, charges and policies) from the information available on the site, and; using the site to find another financial product or service of interest to them (credit card, mortgage, bank account), then evaluating the product offering based on a number of criteria. Finally, panelists were then asked to think of a specific problem or question they may have had while using the site, or while using a similar site sometime in the past, then take a few minutes to find all the customer service options available on the site to help them resolve their problem or question. The study revealed that when tested by actual users PNC offers the strongest Overall Customer Experience. Moreover, PNC placed first in three of the four indices that comprise the Overall Customer Experience Index. Other key findings include:
"In order to provide greater value and even more substantive insights, we have updated our study of US banking websites to include diverse new tasks designed to better reflect the growing variety and complexity of activities that online banking customers are now engaged in," said Christopher Musto, general manager of the Keynote Competitive Research group at Keynote. "This new focus has provided us with more telling insights and will help our clients better differentiate among banks based on their performance." More Information about theTechnical Quality Rankingsin the U.S. Banking Website Study In addition to evaluating customer experience with its panel of actual users, the Keynote study also examined two broad aspects of technical quality: responsiveness and reliability. Responsiveness comprises: high speed response, DSL (midband) response, response time consistency, geographic uniformity and load handling, while reliability is comprised of availability and outages. For the 'Technical Quality' portion of the banking study, using measurement computers located in 12 cities across the U.S., Keynote measured a typical transaction of starting at the site's home page, logging in and navigating to the Account Summary/Details page, then using online bill-pay to pay a bill. Based on the thousands of transactions monitored over the course of the study, US Bank scored highest for Responsiveness, (or speed), while Wells Fargo took first for Reliability. "Based on tens of thousands of measured transactions that Keynote performed for this study, US Bank distinguished itself among banking sites for the speed of its download times, while Wells Fargo scored a perfect 1000 for Reliability and was best among its peers in that category," said Ben Rushlo, director of performance management at Keynote. "Both Reliability and Responsiveness are becoming increasingly important drivers of customer satisfaction for today's more savvy online banking customers and with higher customer expectations it has become an absolute necessity for banking websites to pay close attention to performance." In order to collect the Technical Quality data Keynote used its Transaction Perspective(R) product, the leading real browser-based service for measuring and monitoring website performance from the end user perspective. With Keynote Transaction Perspective the company examines website performance from multiple geographic locations by simulating users clicking through transactions on a website. Keynote collected more than 6,000 data points that detailed each of the sites' technical performance in terms of page responsiveness and reliability. The study is available for purchase from Keynote and comes with extensive analysis of brand impact, acquisition impact, reliability and responsiveness and the factors that drive sites' performance in these areas. Clients will receive an executive presentation, extensive back-up charts and illustrations, and online access to all clickstreams, verbatims, question responses and panel facts for all panelists at all sites for all tasks and can download and use this data in their own research. To inquire about a copy, please visit us online at: http://bit.ly/bankingcustomers. Follow Keynote on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/KeynoteSystems and http://www.twitter.com/Keynote_Mobile About Keynote Systems Keynote Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ:KEYN) is the global leader in Internet and mobile cloud monitoring and testing. Keynote maintains the world's largest on-demand performance monitoring and testing infrastructure for web and mobile sites comprised of over 4,000 measurement computers and mobile devices in over 275 locations around the world that enable companies to continuously improve the online and mobile experience. Known as 'The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority(TM), Keynote offers three market-leading product platforms: Keynote Perspective(R) provides on-demand performance monitoring for enterprise web and mobile sites including online portals, e-commerce sites and B2B sites. Over 2,000 customers rely on Keynote Perspective services to know precisely how their websites, content, and applications perform on actual browsers, networks, and mobile devices. Keynote DeviceAnywhere is an enterprise-class, cloud-based, mobile application lifecycle management (ALM) testing & quality assurance platform. It is used by over 1,000 mobile developers and enterprises to deliver mobile applications, content and services faster while reducing downtime and testing costs. Keynote SIGOS offers active end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) testing and monitoring solutions for mobile, fixed and VoIP communications. Its SITE and Global Roamer products are used by over 200 network operators, content providers, carriers and regulators in over 100 countries worldwide. Keynote's 4,000 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies and include American Express, AT&T, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia, Google, Microsoft, SonyEricsson, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Keynote Systems is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at http://www.keynote.com/ or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE. 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