“Where’s The App?” - Tips for Presenting Your Mobile Channel on Your Credit Union's Website

 

by Chris Steffes, Remote Services Consultant

If you watched television in the 1980s, you probably remember that famous Wendy’s commercial, where a petite, harmless-looking grandma desperately searches for the meat inside her burger, and to our surprise, shouts out in a shockingly gruff voice, “Where’s the beef?” 

Wendy’s gives us valuable advice when it comes to presenting an image to attract membership. Younger audiences are hungry for their version of “the beef” in your mobile banking product. Millennial members need reassurance that your credit union takes your mobile channel seriously, because that’s their preferred channel for engaging with you. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 57% of Millennials use mobile banking, outpacing all other population segments. The rest of the nation isn’t far behind, as Bank of America’s Trends in Consumer Mobility Report found 48% of all Americans use mobile banking. 

Mobile is a full-service channel for member engagement, and deserves to be marketed as a convenient, robust banking option for members. Since most members and new audiences search for your app on your website first, here are some tips on how to successfully feature your mobile channel within that space:

1. Front Page News. While this may seem obvious, it’s surprising how many credit unions don’t advertise their mobile offering. For some credit union members, finding the link for information about mobile banking can turn into a scavenger hunt, causing frustration and a poor user experience.
   
   Tip: Proudly declare your mobile presence with a banner ad, positioned in the center in the page, and link it to a product page.
   
   
2. It’s a product. It’s a channel. It’s Mobile! Your mobile banking solution is a product for transacting and a channel for member engagement with your credit union, so it requires its own place marker on your website landing page.
   
   Tip: In addition to a clickable banner ad, include a separate link to a mobile banking product page under your product listings.
   
   
3. Product Page Shout Out. The product page showcases your mobile channel – the place where members self-serve, interact with you through messages/chat, and learn about your products and specials. Within the page, provide your members with everything they need to know about your mobile experience, including:

           a.  Product features

           b. Links to Apple and Android downloads

           c. Download instructions

           d. FAQs on how to use various features 

By building an information-rich page that educates members, and providing easy ways to locate it, your mobile channel becomes more than a product you offer – it becomes part of your credit union identity, and defines a new core value to meet your members’ needs, wherever they are.

CU Solutions Group can help your credit union beef up its mobile presence on its website and satisfy the appetite of your mobile members! Contact us today!

 

What Makes Your Credit Union Unique?

When we work with credit unions on a marketing campaign, social media plan, website or an HR consultation we often ask them “what makes your credit union unique?” More often than not, they’ll say that it’s their member service, variety of products or mobile banking. While these are all great answers, if all credit unions say this – then these features aren’t truly unique, are they?

Sometimes you need to sit back and look at your credit union and its website, marketing materials and offerings as if you were a member and see if there’s something that would set you apart from the competition. Or you could always conduct a member survey to determine what your differentiators are in their eyes. 

If you’re still not sure what makes your credit union unique, here are some places to start in your search:

• Personality – Spread out all of your marketing materials and look at your website – do they have a common voice? Does the verbiage help convey a personality for your credit union or is most of it in business “brochure-speak?” Members want to feel a brand personality and a connection to the organizations they do business with. This is true especially for Gen Y and younger, they want to feel like they can identify with you, that your credit union “gets” them, so be sure to write your materials with that in mind.
  
  This common voice and personality should also be evident in your social media – one of the most informal forms of member communication. Share interesting non-financial related articles or fun staff photos from recent promotions or outreach events. Social media is a great outlet for showing off your credit union’s sense of humor and community involvement. Just make sure to keep all content business appropriate.
  
  
• Rewards – More often than not these days, people expect to be rewarded for doing business with you. No matter how great your rates may be or how few fees you charge, these aren’t enough. And everyone offers a credit card with reward points these days. It’s time to think bigger. Offer relationship-based programs that encourage members to bring all of their accounts to you. Many credit unions now give their members special yearly dividends on their accounts to boost wallet share.
  
  Another option is to help them save. Everyone wants to save money, and with the credit union credo of putting members first, a dynamic discount rewards program could be just what you need. Invest in America offers exclusive discounts on what people buy every day – from new cars and roadside services to monthly wireless service and satellite TV.
  
  
• Technology – Keeping up with the current website technology is basically a credit union requirement these days. How you do it is what matters. Your website is the first contact many people will have with your credit union – so make sure they can see it the way it was meant to be seen with responsive design. This lets your members have a seamless online experience whether they visit your site on a PC, tablet or smartphone. Speaking of smartphones, members are becoming more tech-savvy and expect their mobile banking app to be able to do almost everything they can do in your branches.
  
  Other ways you can set your credit union apart online is by offering online chat as a member service tool or a searchable FAQ section to get their questions answered. Financial literacy can also be a differentiator, so offer members helpful articles, videos or podcasts to help guide them.
  
  
• Staff – Sometimes it is excellent member service that sets your credit union apart. A happy staff leads to happy members and a happy credit union. Make your recruiting count and hire the right people for the right jobs. Once they’re hired, have a solid onboarding process in place so they can hit the ground running in their new position. Many credit unions have a “buddy system” in place so your new hire has a go-to person already on staff to help them smoothly navigate your credit union’s culture.
  
  Don’t forget about your current staff. Sometimes it’s easy to hire someone, train them and then have them fall off of HR’s radar. Stop that from happening by offering useful performance reviews and ongoing training, including your managers. The better your staff understands your credit union and their role in it, the better they’ll be able to serve your members.

Finding what makes your credit union truly unique is a complicated, continual process. But don’t be afraid to dive in and uncover things that set you apart from the competition – your credit union’s success could depend on it.

Keeping Our Credit Union Website Clients Safe

It seems like in the online world lately, the hits just keep coming. The Target data breach, denial of service (DoS) and Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and most recently the Heartbleed data leak. What’s a credit union to do?

DoS and DDos Attacks

DoS and DDoS attacks involve fraudsters targeting a server/system and then saturating it with external communications requests. They send so many that the system can’t respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly that it essentially becomes unavailable. These attacks typically target websites or services hosted on high-profile Web servers such as retailers and credit unions. 

CU Solutions Group takes any and all Web security attacks seriously. As far as DoS and DDoS attacks, we have strong mechanisms in place to mitigate these attacks: Enterprise Radware IDS/IPS is on our network edge and inside the load balancers; as well as Juniper AppSecure and other Enterprise class devices to stop DoS and DDoS attacks from affecting our clients’ sites.

Heartbleed

Heartbleed is what’s called an OpenSSL bug which basically lets a hacker eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users, and impersonate services and users. In response to Heartbleed, we have reviewed our networks and hosted solutions, and have determined that the bug has no impact on any devices and systems that we manage. 

In an effort to assist all CU Solutions Group website clients, we are offering the following information, which can be passed along to your information technology staff or vendors. This vulnerability can be quite daunting to navigate, and we would be happy to assist your credit union if you have any questions or concerns. You can contact us at support@cusolutionsgroup.com if you need any assistance. Below is information that can assist you and your staff in determining where you may have issues related to the bug, and resources from various vendors and security notification services. It is crucial to review the following systems for this bug:

• Home Banking servers
• Website servers
• Firewalls, IDS/IPS devices, load balancers, and VPN devices
• APIs to third party service providers where data is passed between applications
• Any miscellaneous Web-based service that use SSL to secure your members data

Major providers like Yahoo, Google, Network Solutions, Akamai, CloudFlare, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Intuit, Dropbox, Minecraft, Imgur, Flickr, RedTube, OkCupid and XDA were all impacted. While these providers have all have been patched now, this does not mean that all sites on the Web have been fixed, or that your data wasn't compromised before they were. It is recommended that you change all passwords for these providers after the vendor has patched the services.