banks have existed for many years and have serviced diverse income groups. This has resulted in their customer base being huge as well as belonging to a wider demographic representation, given India’s heterogenous population as well.

However, most of the traditional customers prefer to bank with a ‘bank with a human touch’ and prefer public sector banks as they form an emotional relationship with their bank personnel, which is not really encouraged by private sector or multi-national banks

The new generation which has been banking for less than a decade prefers faster transactions and more professional relationships as compared to the traditional customer. For them, opening a bank account is incidental and connected to their direct deposit salary accounts. The private sector bank has captured the corporates and IT sector as compared to the public sector bank. As a result, banks in the public sector tend to have a huge user base, but very few of their customers have the technology orientation or the inclination to use electronic media for banking. This is depicted in Figure 2. Therefore, the awareness of customers of public sector banks about online banking as an active banking tool is relatively lower. To tap this type of user base that has an inherent barrier to and not an obvious need for internet usage, just adding an internet banking channel to a bank’s lists of services may not be enough of an incentive. A streamlined, simple and customer satisfaction-oriented approach to service novice users only can help banks achieve better internet banking penetration.

Based on our client interactions before and after the studies, we found that banks view online banking as an important medium of servicing its customer base.

While they recognize it as a direct cost savings, they do not necessarily recognize it as a point of service and hence do not give it the attention they give customer service at the branch where they take great pains to satisfy the customer, and to address the smallest of queries common in live banking. A simple example is their changing banking terminology without realizing its impact on the customer that can leave an average customer baffled. A label like ‘Emonies National Funds Transfer’ is very confusing for the customer. Changing it to a simpler ‘Funds Transfer’ reduces confusion and allows the customer to complete their transaction. Another example is use of marketing gimmicks resulting in loss of usability. If other banking portals have a link called ‘SMS Alert’, then coining a similar link called ‘InstaAlert’ only serves to create confusion. Many banks have now understood that online banking is here to stay and that they need to upgrade and enhance their offerings for simple solutions and desired security to retain and attract customers. They also need to recognize that they must offer the same convenience and service that people have come to expect at the branch as well as in other areas of their life like shopping online. Payment for shopping too requires users to invariably go through the online banking portals. Banks need to also understand that transition of a new user to an advanced one is a gradual process that needs to be supported by encouraging users to explore with confidence by offering intuitive processes and user-friendly nomenclature. Only when users feel confident with the system, will it be easy for them to explore new services through cross-sell banners and other means that are popular and successful in banking. Banks are however yet to regard online banking as a ‘person-less’ service counter where the user is left to fend for himself/herself amidst stiff usability barriers and realize that it costs them. The attention they accord their other points of service are therefore deficient in online. Setting up the hardware for online banking, which is viewed as the end point for the bank is often the beginning from a user’s perspective. That a methodical user-centric rather than a technology-centric design approach is a systemic investment that creates satisfied customers, reduces costs, and increases revenue is yet to be accepted by the banking industry.

Banking is a task-focused activity and also deals with people’s money. Both need ease of use and psychological comfort of the user as fundamental requirements, for example, giving feedback like ‘your money will be transferred in 24 hours’. It specifically needs a clear task flow, clarity of language and terminology and always support available. Further, if a task completion process is intuitive and logical, the user is more likely to gain confidence and increase usage of the internet for all their banking needs, thus increasing revenue potential for the bank. An online demo of the service is an easy way to address both the task centric nature of banking as well as address the comfort level of the wide variety and vast numbers of novice users. An example of customer focused online banking would be specialized banking for the Islamic community. It is a huge business opportunity. To capitalize on that opportunity, banks must understand and design for highly specialized user behavior, expectations, and critical aspects of the various Islamic cultures. Many Islamic cultures are exceptionally collective in decision-making and tend to be more concrete and risk averse. There is a wide variety and large numbers of novice users among Indian online banking customers today. Their view goes beyond the novelty of online banking. They expect their experience to be like what they get at a service counter. The unfamiliar virtual experience cannot be completely different from their familiar physical experience. Indian users have shown their readiness to accept online banking as a sales channel by purchasing through cross selling online. But this is possible only if they can navigate the bank site. Banks need to view and reflect this through thoughtful designs of their offerings. While banks have clarity of their market segmentation, they must progress to behavior-based segmentation and user-centred methods and move beyond predesigned technology solutions.

Online banking design must create a 'quick in and out' experience, ensure success in transactions users undertake, arouse curiosity, and attract the customer to explore. Studying users, defining user types, benchmarking designs and testing for ease of use are critical for this. Specific needs therefore are clear task flows, brevity and clarity of language and terms, basic functions made obvious to average users and support available at all times. Besides short-term solutions, the long-term strategy needed is to not just create but also measure user performance with the design to ensure it is self-evident and transactions are truly self- controlled.

It is clearly in the interest of banks to encourage their customer base to use online banking. Current designs of online banking systems do not address users’ needs and expectations of online banking. User-centred design methods can achieve this. Internet, phone, paper, statements, ATM and visit to the branch all need to appear as one holistic experience [8] for the customer who is ‘anybody. In India, banking, like several other transactions, continues to be relation-based and in need of human assurance and intervention, technology notwithstanding. Hence this is particularly significant. True benefits will be seen when banks use this technology to offload customer service costs and increase sales by maximizing self-service.

As 21st century banking users entrust the care of one of their most important assets to cyber space, a seamless, stress free and successful experience is essential. Design with users’ success as focus, content understandable by ‘anybody’, supported with demos and help to reduce intimidation, will justify investment in online through increased usage by satisfied customers.