Keynote Competitive Research produces leading industry research using the company’s commercially available Web performance test and measurement products. Keynote regularly evaluates the current state of online customer experience, service levels (responsiveness/reliability) and implementation of best practices on leading Web sites across a wide variety of financial services industries including the banking, brokerage, credit card and mortgage lending industries, all of which are available for purchase.

Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Web Sites (Customers and Prospects)

The Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Customers examines the online experience of more than 1,600 credit card customers as they interacted with nine leading credit card Web sites. A separate study known as The Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Prospects examines more than 2,000 prospective credit card customers as they interacted with these same leading card sites.

The studies detail how each card site performs versus competitors across key business objectives, including online adoption and customer acquisition. Each of the studies captures more than 250+ metrics for each site—and provides competitive rankings in dozens of categories. The studies also outline the key areas of site performance, such as ease of exploring online services and ease of applying online, which have the most impact on a site’s success. Finally, the studies offer credit card issuers specific, actionable steps they can take to improve their online performance, with a particular focus on improving customer satisfaction, online adoption and customer acquisition.

Keynote customer experience studies employ Keynote’s commercially available WebEffective™ product, an on-demand software platform for conducting in-depth user experience research which integrates the best aspects of usability, behavior and attitudinal research. Keynote’s technology and methodology offers a unique view into both customer attitudes and behavior by questioning customers and examining their online behavior in real-time as they interact with each site from their own home or office environment.

Service Level Rankings for Credit Card Web Sites (Customers and Prospects)

The Keynote Service Level Rankings for Credit Card Web Sites examines the technical performance of leading credit card Web sites, including site responsiveness and reliability. The study uses Keynote’s Transaction Perspective® product, the leading subscription-based service for measuring and monitoring Web site performance. Transaction Perspective examines performance from multiple geographic locations and mimics the actions of consumers, collecting more than 6,500 data points for each site to detail their online technical performance.

The study offers credit card issuers insight into their technical performance relative to their competitors, and provides detailed data on their site’s performance across seven key measures critical to the operational health of an online credit card site. Specifically, the study provides performance data and competitive rankings in site reliability, including site availability and outages, and site responsiveness. Also included are performance data and competitive rankings in the areas of load handling, response time consistency, geographic consistency and responsiveness over both high-speed (DSL) and low-speed connections. Overall, the study captures data and ranks sites in more than 40 performance metrics.

Customers: Capital One #1 in Customer Experience; US Bank #1 in Service Levels

Capital One was ranked as the #1 site in the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Customers, with the best overall ranking across the 250+ customer experience metrics measured in the study. US Bank ranked #1 in the Keynote Service Level Rankings for Credit Card Customers with the industry’s best reliability (an indication the site was highly available and experienced little or no downtime) and best site responsiveness (an indication of how fast credit card sites were in downloading pages and executing transactions).

Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Customers

Best Overall Customer Satisfaction and Experience:  Capital One

Best Site Reliability for Customers (Highly available, low downtime):  U.S. Bank

Best Site Responsiveness for Customers (How quickly pages loaded, transactions completed):  U.S. Bank

Discover was ranked the #1 site for prospective customers in the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Prospects, with the best overall ranking across all user experience metrics measured in that study. Discover also achieved the #1 ranking in the Customer Acquisition Index, which measures a site’s effectiveness in interesting prospects in applying for a card or other financial account. Bank of America was ranked second overall in the prospects study, and was the second most successful company in the Customer Acquisition Index.

National City topped the rankings for reliability in the Keynote Service Level Rankings for Credit Card Prospects, which focused on the publicly available areas of the credit card sites. US Bank was also ranked number one for site responsiveness in the Keynote Service Level Rankings for Credit Card Prospects.

Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Prospects

Best Overall Prospect Satisfaction and Experience:  Discover

Best Site Reliability for Prospect (Highly available, low downtime):  National City

The American Express (NYSE:AXP), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Capital One (NYSE:COF), Chase (NYSE:JPM), Citi (NYSE:C), Discover (NYSE:MS), HSBC (NYSE:HFC), National City; U.S. Bank (NYSE:US and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) sites were evaluated for these studies.