ING Direct Website Navigation Gets a Much Needed Shuffle
March 9, 2008 at 11:21 pm by Ehab Bandar
ING Direct recently cleaned up their unwieldy global navigation by reducing the number of tabs from eight to six. The changes include moving the “My Links” tab under “Account Summary” and to move the “Preferences” tab under “My Info.” This is welcome news for ING Direct’s users burdened by a wave of tabs. But for us passionate about user experience and information architecture, both decisions make a lot of sense.
Global navigation for most websites are the digital manifestation of how they view themselves. For a task-based Website like most online bank, it’s a mixed bag of bubbling up the key tasks that customers are seeking with key products and services that the financial institution is trying to push. To ING’s credit, all the global navigation are both relevant and task-based. And I’m sure in their zest to be as user friendly as possible, they opted for providing information as quickly as possible by putting all the main tasks on the global navigation — the digital equivalent of putting all your popular products on a retail store end cap. But like all good things, they must come to an end.
Taken individually, the changes make sense from a logical and functional grouping sense. The tab “My Links” was a list of bank accounts held outside of ING Direct. Given that ING Direct treats both internal and external accounts virtually alike in the sense that customers can just as easily transfer money in and out of them, grouping them together makes sense. The other change was to merge “Preferences” with “My Info” which from an information architecture perspective is a no brainer. For customers, it means that they can manage all the things that are relevant to them, from their information on file to their privacy settings.
Fewer tabs on the navigation bar has the added benefit of giving customers more structure and control over their experience, while providing more space for other products and services, which seems likely given their track record of regularly introducing new products. But it also speaks to ING’s goal of being a different kind of bank, which means creating a virtual “My ING” online where customers feel as empowered online as they do face to face.
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August 31st, 2008 at 9:06 PM
Hi!,
August 31st, 2008 at 10:57 PM
Hello!,
August 31st, 2008 at 10:58 PM
Good day!,