Keynote Systems, Inc. : Best Canadian Banking Websites Revealed by Keynote -- New Study Assesses Brand Perception and Acquisition Rates

02/06/2012 | 09:00am

- BMO Bank of Montreal Takes First Place for Overall Customer Experience

- Scotiabank is Best in Overall Technical Quality with Perfect 1,000 Point Scores in Both Reliability and Responsiveness (Speed)

- Accounts Offering Interest and Site Organization are Most Important Aspects of Customer Experience, Study Finds

*Share this news via Twitter @Keynote_Mobile

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 6, 2012-- Keynote Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN), today announced the results of the Keynote Competitive Research Industry Study examining the marketing websites of leading Canadian banks. The study assesses the sites' effectiveness in encouraging positive brand perception and increasing customer acquisition rates. In the 2011 Canadian Banking Prospects Study, BMO Bank of Montreal took first place for Best Overall Customer Experience and Scotiabank came in first for Best Overall Technical Quality. The entire study is available for immediate purchase. To request more information please visit: http://bit.ly/CanadianBanks.

Winning companies are invited to participate in the Keynote 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 whose entire clickstream is captured as they accomplish tasks on each of the sites studied, as well as on real performance 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 1,750 prospective online banking customers as they interacted with the websites of a total of seven leading Canadian banks (250 consumers per site): BMO Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, President's Choice Financial, RBC Royal Bank, Scotiabank and TD Canada Trust.

For the 'Technical Quality' portion of the study, Keynote performed 2,000 total measurements for each site, for a total of 14,000 total measurements, from four locations in Canada.

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 Canadian Banking Websites

For the 'Customer Experience' component of the study, Keynote sent 250 Canadian resident Internet users to each of the seven bank marketing sites. First, the online panelists explored the bank's home page. Panelists then used the site to find a chequing or savings account that might suit their needs and then explored online banking and bill payment. The panelists were then asked to proceed through the process of opening a deposit account online, going as far as possible without actually submitting the application. Panelists concluded their evaluation by learning about the site's commitment to privacy and security and completing a customer support task.

The study revealed that when tested by actual users BMO Bank of Montreal offers the strongest Overall Customer Experience, placing first in Brand Impact and Customer Satisfaction, two key drivers of business success. Other key findings include:

• BMO Bank of Montreal performed better than the other sites studied in Customer Satisfaction;
• BMO Bank of Montreal is in the top tier of sites for 4 out of 6 top drivers;
• President's Choice Financial is a top site for 3 drivers;
• Privacy & Security, Help and Support, Visual Appeal, and Ease of Opening Account are all key drivers for brand impact and customer acquisition.

"Our quantitative and qualitative analysis of the attitudes and behavior of actual consumers using their own computers to interact with bank marketing sites revealed that six site experiences drive Brand and Acquisition. Of particular interest to marketers, we found that the nine site aspects that combine to form the Site Organization driver are the leading predictor of Brand and the second leading predictor of Acquisition," said Christopher Musto, general manager of the Keynote Competitive Research group at Keynote. "We are using that insight to help clients determine where to focus site investment to improve business results with new-to-bank prospects."

More Information about theTechnical Quality Rankingsfor Canadian Banking Websites

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 study, using measurement computers located in four cities across Canada, Keynote measured a typical transaction of starting at the bank's Home Page and going through the process of finding and applying for a Chequing account, stopping where applicants were asked for their identity. Based on the thousands of transactions monitored over the course of the study, Scotiabank ranked first in Overall Technical Quality, scoring tops in both Responsiveness (or speed), and Reliability, with perfect scores of 1,000 in both.

"Based on the rigorous testing that Keynote performed for this study Scotiabank.com outperformed all the sites studied in both speed and reliability, scoring perfect 1,000s on the Keynote scale for each metric," said Ben Rushlo, director of performance management at Keynote. "This commitment to technical excellence serves them well; as our research indicates that banking customers increasingly expect a flawless online experience."

In order to collect the Technical Quality data Keynote used its Transaction Perspective® 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 14,000 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: http://bit.ly/CanadianBanks.

Follow Keynote on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/KeynoteSystems and www.twitter.com/Keynote_Mobile

About Keynote Systems

Keynote® Systems, Inc., (NASDAQ:KEYN) is the global leader in Internet and mobile cloud testing and monitoring. 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™, Keynote offers three market-leading product platforms:

Keynote Perspective® 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.

Keynote®, DataPulse®, CustomerScope®, Keynote CE Rankings®, Keynote Customer Experience Rankings®, Perspective®, Keynote Red Alert®, Keynote Traffic Perspective®, Keynote WebEffective®, The Internet Performance Authority®, MyKeynote® , SIGOS®, SITE®, Keynote™, The Mobile & Internet Performance Authority™ and Keynote FlexUse™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2012 Keynote Systems, Inc.

Source: Keynote Systems, Inc.

Keynote Systems, Inc.
Dan Berkowitz, 650-403-3305
dberkowitz@keynote.com