Website audit: LloydsTSB Business BankingThis audit concerns a specific aspect of LloydsTSB’s UK operation, namely business banking. In particular, it focuses on marketing directed towards new business enterprises in their start-up phase. The review will compare LloydsTSB’s pages to those of three competitors—HSBC, RBS, and Barclays. It will also make a comparison with pages from the relevant government website offering advice to a defined group within business start-ups, namely welfare-to-work clients on the New Enterprise Allowance.

BackgroundSince the early 1980s, successive British governments have included an enterprise-related scheme in their welfare-to-work provisions. The objective is to enable long-term unemployed people to set themselves up in business, with the potential for subsequently going on to employ other people. An unvarying stipulation of these schemes has been that the client should have a separate, designated business bank account.

The government publishes take-up statistics for its various schemes on an ongoing basis, but success rates are more difficult to evaluate. The current official statistics (as of May 2012) show 4,560 starts under the New Enterprise Scheme to February 2012 . If LloydsTSB provide banking for 1,000 of these, then based on an average annual turnover of £20,000 the new business would be worth approximately £20 million per year.

Since merging with the Trustee Savings Bank in 1995, LloydsTSB has inherited a programme of community investment grounded in nineteenth century nonconformist social activism. At present, the parent group (Lloyds Banking Group PLC) Is engaged in a process that will see the former TSB branches transferred to the Cooperative Bank.

It is not the purpose of this review to comment on government policy, or LloydsTSB’s relationship with it, despite the fact that the public has owned a substantial shareholding in both LloydsTSB and RBS since the financial crisis of 2008. Rather, in the light of concern about failure rates among start-ups, we will look at the market positioning of LloydsTSB relative to the competitor banks selected for comparison, as evidenced by their business focused web pages, and consider the branding options for the separated ventures in the future. For a critical review of the previous government’s Flexible New Deal, especially regarding the difficulty of evaluating success or failure, see O’Brien 2010.

Front endsBefore focusing on the details of the LloydsTSB website’s business pages, it is useful to orient their ‘front end’, the home page for business users, in relation to their competitors. The following screenshots show the LloydsTSB Business home page, followed by Barclays , HSBC , and RBS . They were taken on a 1920x1200 monitor in full screen mode, using Microsoft Internet Explorer 10, to show the onscreen positioning of each:

It should immediately be pointed out that the page shown, and the service it links to, is currently (as of November 2012) under development. Nevertheless, a critical inspection might follow up that observation with the remark ‘good job, too.’ Compared to its competitor sites, the LloydsTSB page is busy and lacking in semiotic directness. There is a personal log-in option, a general announcement about branch transfer, and left-over promotion from the group’s involvement in the London 2012 Olympics. Note also that text extends beyond the bottom of the screen. This may in part be a rendering issue, but in general a good home page endeavours to direct traffic with the minimum of scrolling and navigation.

There are a number of optional lists that do not need to be on a home page. For instance, there is an ‘Industry Focus’ panel, which could as easily have the effect of diverting traffic as of inviting and promoting it. The RBS page features a similar list, but it is on the next level (see below), and is shorter and more general. Business needs—which one might expect to be the topic that most immediately interests visitors—is in the central panel rather than clearly and separately displayed.

To clarify that remark, the assumption is that existing internet banking users will proceed directly to their login, and continue with their business there. The informative and advertising dimension of the page should be targeted towards potential new customers, who can include existing customers seeking new services.

Although the home page at Barclays is fairly busy, it is more regular in appearance, more orderly and economical in the layout of its panels, and fully contained on a single screen, as are the remaining two sites in the comparison. Of these, both RBS and HSBC give new businesses a high priority—RBS by placing the topic at the top of its main list, and HSBC by placing it at the left of the screen. When reading material onscreen, English speakers look at the left hand side first, as they would with a book. (They may look at pictures first, wherever they are placed.)

Stakeholder managementThere is one more page to make a comparison with, namely the New Enterprise Allowance page on the Department of Work and Pensions website .

To be fair, this is not a like-for-like comparison, because the selected page is deep in the host website’s hierarchy, and not a home page. Nevertheless, it is strikingly different in its appearance. It shares the friendly and informal tone of the banks’ sites, freely using contractions to imitate conversational speech. However the text is far clearer, less cluttered, and above all much larger. As a consequence, the material is easy to read and simple to comprehend. Let us adopt it as the standard by which to evaluate LloydsTSB’s approach to building a relationship with this stakeholder community.

A question that can immediately be asked is whether non-customers (as they will be at this point) can count as stakeholders. The concept of stakeholder is grounded in ethical philosophy and is not amenable to simple definitions, but Mitchell et al. offer three ‘relationship attributes’ that between them indicate a stakeholder interest: power, legitimacy, and urgency . It is the last of the three that draws potential new clients into the picture, on the assumption that a trajectory has been set in train by the initial enquiry that may ultimately lead to a customer relationship. As Mitchell et al. explain:

We propose that adding the stakeholder attribute of urgency helps move the model from static to dynamic. "Urgency" is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "calling for immediate attention" or "pressing." We believe that urgency, with synonyms including "compelling," "driving,"

and "imperative," exists only when two conditions are met: (1) when a relationship or claim is of a time-sensitive nature and (2) when that relationship or claim is important or critical to the stakeholder.

How dynamic, in this sense, does the appropriate page feel? On clicking the link to Start-up Accounts, the user is taken to the following page:

Again, it is a busy page, with a variety of information. Several of the links listed are of no direct relevance to the question at hand, and again the semiotics are less than direct in terms of the evaluations and actions that might be required of a client. A particularly critical eye will notice that the links under ‘useful information’ are not correctly spaced. The first two lines (‘Contact us’ and ‘Security’) are separate topics, whereas the last two (‘Financial Services Compensation Scheme’) are a single one. Either there should be no space above ‘Financial Services’ or the other topic above it, or else there should be a space below ‘Contact us’.

Although the standfirst text describes some of the benefits of opening an account with LloydsTSB, and the right-hand column lists ‘business help’ under its ‘Useful links’ section, there is little to orient a potential new customer to the bank’s competences across the range of starting enterprises, beyond the plain buttons for ‘Sole trader’, ‘Partnership’ and ‘Limited company’ near the bottom of the page.

For would-be sole traders, the main concern about business banking is to feel supported and not overshadowed or neglected by comparison to larger enterprises. The offer of 18 months’ free banking must be considered a positive thing, and yet it could give the impression, phrased as it is, that you the customer are on your own. This sense may be compounded by the offer of a 90-day trial with Sage book-keeping software. By comparison, the RBS page for business start-ups wraps up its similar offer in more generous-seeming language, talking about ‘up to £850 of free start-up benefits’:

Their page is also more focused, and more action-oriented. There is a left-to-right dynamic that draws the user towards the definitive step with a single click subtly emphasized by the pointing of a pen. The LloydsTSB equivalent merely invites the user to phone.

Clicking the ‘Features’ tab on the LloydsTSB page presents the user with a fresh central column that is still framed by the same left- and right-hand columns. While this new information is richer and more absorbing, it remains unfocused. For example, it talks about ‘Support from a relationship manager’, but the practicalities of this in terms of office location are left unstated. If a customer seeks a relationship founded on face-to-face meetings, it is not clear how to go about locating a venue. The invitation to phone might imply that the ‘relationship manager’ is in fact just another call centre operative.

Website functionalityAn effective website needs to be intuitive to navigate, and easy to learn. The former attribute depends to a degree on complicity with the user, while the latter is more a question of attunement to prevailing technologies and fashions. A design team needs to anticipate the former and embed potential users’ needs

in the most effective technical means available. The resulting site needs semiotics that efficiently guide the user through material that can often be complex and daunting.

The LloydsTSB site scores highly on high-level elegance and functionality. The way that the top level is reflected through the main (top) menu and then through the left-hand menus on resulting pages shows coherence and simplicity. Where the problems set in is at a difficult-to-determine point where web functionality crosses the path of content provision. A comparison with the HSBC start-up business page helps to clarify the point:

In some respects, the HSBC page resembles the LloydsTSB page, in tending to be unfocused on action. However, under HSBC’s ‘How to start a business’ panel there are a number of useful avenues that a potential customer might want to explore, while the ‘Latest from HSBC’ panel lends a sense of dynamism that compensates for the shortage of action semiotics.

Brand communicationReferring back to the ‘general announcement about branch transfer’ mentioned previously, it is interesting to note that what is taking place is a separation of the Trustee Savings Bank brand from the Lloyds brand. In relation to the general orientation of this audit towards start-up businesses sponsored by government-

backed enterprise schemes, the TSB movement, historically, was geared towards the savings needs of people with modest capital means. The LloydsTSB branches being transferred are to be adopted by the Cooperative Bank, another brand associated with thrift and self-help.

Given the forthcoming separation, it is an open question whether the present auditing exercise should focus on the continuing Lloyds brand that will most likely evolve from the current website. The alternative would be to base recommendations on the current website of the Cooperative Bank:

The Cooperative website gives the impression of being less well developed, less thoroughly thought through, and less invested in when compared to the other sites already discussed. One sign of this is that the fonts are subtly more difficult to read than those of its competitors, partly because of the colours chosen, partly because of the use of boldface, but partly also because the font is designed to be compact. The last factor not only makes the font intrinsically more difficult to read, but its adoption also tempts the designer to fit more text into a given space.

At present, the Cooperative Bank’s Business page makes no specific mention of start-up businesses, so perhaps the solution to the problem of which half of the newly split LloydsTSB should be addressed is to focus on the present LloydsTSB site, with the suggestion that the advice offered will be of value to the Cooperative Bank too.

Images are an effective way of reaching out to potential customers with subliminal cues. Current technologies allow slideshow montages so that the restricted message of a single image need no longer be a deterrent. The Barclays Business home page cited earlier shows how this can be done. The images used at present (on both sites) are crude—pictures of computer equipment on the Cooperative site, and software packaging on the LloydsTSB—and unimaginative.

To date the parent company, Lloyds Banking Group, has made no play of the fact that the public holds a substantial minority shareholding at present. Although the group inherited a number of social inclusion projects when they merged with TSB in 1995, and continue to invest in community-focused sponsorship programmes, there is little overt connection made between such activity and the website’s projection of the corporate image.

While the top-level design of the LloydsTSB site is well-executed, there is scope for brand consolidation and development at lower levels. The principal deficit to be addressed here is a style of language use that, without being exactly non-committal, is less dynamic and action focused than it could be. There is a ‘goldilocks’ aspect to this, because it would not be appropriate to be too gung-ho and forceful in language use either. Nevertheless, it should be possible to arrange the page and choose language with the objective of guiding prospective customers to a firm decision to engage in a relationship with the brand.

Findings and RecommendationsIn broad terms, the top level organization of the current LloydsTSB website is well executed. The information is logically arranged and easy to navigate. This audit finds that there is scope for development and refinement at lower levels, with a view to delivering richer and more engaging content to potential new customers.

Strategically, the objective is not to recruit new business at all costs, inviting a corresponding risk of increased exposure to insolvent ventures. Rather, it is to embrace the ethos of social responsibility by enhancing the communicated sense of continuing engagement and support. For start-up businesses, confidence can be as important an asset as capital.

This can be achieved by revising the ergonomics of high-level pages so that there is a more singular focus and a singular direction of action. Judicious use of images can be used to convey subliminally positive and reinforcing messages. Supplementing this evolution, further content should be developed with a view to minimizing a potential customer’s inclination to look elsewhere for advice and support. These measures should be implemented as part of the current development cycle, and rolled out within the next nine months.

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