Contents

• Introduction 2
• Triodos Bank 3
• E-Commerce Practices of Triodos Bank 4
• Evaluation Criteria 7
• Branding 10
• Marketing Strategy 13
• Recommendations 14
• Conclusion 14
• References 16

Description

E-commerce and E-business are slowly becoming integral parts of banking system since the last couple of decades. According to Crane and Bodie (1996), banking and financial industry is growing rapidly in unpredictable ways (Wu, Hsia & Heng, 2006). Some of the technology enhanced products and services are multi-function ATMs, tele-banking, online banking and trading of stocks and shares etc. (Wu, Hsia & Heng, 2006). Integrating E-commerce in banking system is probably the most challenging task since huge money rides the operations of E-commerce and a small bug or lapse in the application could lead to serious repercussions (Chaffey, 2002). E-commerce differs from traditional banking to a great extent. While traditional banking at the branches is slow and time consuming, internet banking allows transactions to be done with the touch of fingertips in no time. The flip side of the internet banking is that it is prone to hacking, data theft and even malicious transactions costing the bank and customers to a great extent. Nonetheless, E-commerce in banking system is inevitable feature in today’s fast paced world. The banks use their web site and internet banking facilities to build brand value and to attract more customers. Since traditional banking at branches is slowly giving way to online banking, customers judge the performance of the banks not by the helpfulness or lack of it of desk clerks but the facilities and the ease of operations of their online banking systems. Since these days the web sites and online banking systems are the face of the bank to the customer, utmost care is taken to project the image of the bank to the customers as well as to show their concern to the customers’ needs (Wu, Hsia & Heng, 2006). The Triodos Bank known as the ethical bank since it funds mostly to organizationas involved in green, iconological or socially beneficial causes (Triodos Bank, 2009). The bank is based in Netherlands and has branches in UK, Belgium, Germany and Spain (Triodos Bank, 2009). It uses E-commerce applications to enable its customers transact online. The Triodos Bank has a web site that allows online banking and uses highly segmented approach. This report analyses the online banking system and the web site design and presentation of Triodos Bank, UK. The report uses evaluation criteria such as content quality, performance of web site infrastructure, customer support and customer privacy and security to analyze the impact of the efforts of the bank on branding and internet marketing strategy. The report finally makes recommendations to the bank to improve their online banking system in those areas.