How can bank’s website optimisation permanently increase conversion by 10%? Video Case Study
Santander Bank Polska’s cooperation with e-point on the bank’s website optimisation shows that continuous work on improving efficiency can significantly increase sales results. See how the process went ‘behind the scenes’, and what measurable results it brought.
For digital customers the website is the key point of contact with the brand. Still, many companies and institutions avoid investing in the further development of the website, being content with the site already established and the results achieved. However, the business environment, customer requirements, and the way website indexing algorithms work are constantly changing. Therefore, it is worth continuously monitoring the results of the website and, to react and make improvements accordingly.
Long-term cooperation with Santander Bank Polska
e-point SA has been a technology partner of Santander Bank Polska for over 6 years. At that time we started working on the santander.pl information website, built on the basis of our proprietary technology – e-point CMS, in the e-point Private Cloud environment.
During the development of the website, we worked according to the paradigm prevailing at the time, which stated that all libraries and styles should load immediately with the first page opened by the user. However, this meant that the first page would take the longest time to open, which could consequently discourage customers from staying on the website.
| According to Google, 53% of users abandon websites when page load times exceed 3 seconds. |
In recent years, Google has been modifying its objectives and gradually changing the algorithm that indexes and positions websites. Currently the sites that open the fastest during the first launch have the greatest advantage. Based on our recommendations together with Santander Bank Polska we decided to adapt to the new requirements and optimise the bank’s website.
A dedicated e-point team, together with the Santander Bank Polska SA team, carried out a detailed business analysis. It indicated the directions of development that could bring the best results.
The bank’s website optimisation
The result of the joint analysis was a multi-stage strategy aimed to significantly reduce the loading time of the santander.pl website pages, adjust the site so that it can safely accommodate up to twice as much traffic, and increase the computing power of the application servers. All this was meant to make santander.pl a Digital Experience Platform in line with today’s standards.
"We keep investing in the digital experience – our goal is to have the most cutting-edge and the fastest online platform on the Polish banking market. We want to offer to our users the best digital experiences".
The changes affected all elements of the website, from hosting, through back-end, to front-end. The hosting environment was extended to accommodate the increased traffic on the site. We also optimised database queries and implemented caching of data frequently retrieved from the database.
On the front-end side, we reduced the size of the page displayed in the browser by rewriting the page code from JavaScript to TypeScript and using the WebP format to display graphics. Thanks to the Lazy Loading technology and loading the most important page resources first, we have increased the speed of loading the content. All of these measures also provide an excellent foundation fohr the WCAG 2.1 project, which is implemented this year. Read the full project case study below:
Results of Santander Bank Polska website optimisation
Optimisation of the website based on recommendations quickly brought measurable and lasting results:
A steady 10% increase in conversion
Conversion on selected pages increased by as much as around 10%. This is a steady result, remaining consistent from the moment the changes were implemented. A faster website means more applications submitted and, consequently, higher sales.
Reduction in page speed loading time by 300%
Measurements taken in February 2021 indicated that the load time of the homepage was around 6 seconds, and of the product pages – even 7–8 seconds. After the optimisation of the website, the load times dropped to 2–3 seconds in September 2022 – a reduction of up to 300%.
Better position in performance rankings
Before the optimisation, in February 2021, website performance measurement tools mercilessly ranked santander.pl in 4th place among Polish bank websites. After reducing page load time and optimising the technology in September 2022, the bank’s website has been continuously ranked number one.
e-point CMS – an enterprise-class system
Santander Bank Polska has decided to use our proprietary content management system – e-point CMS. This decision allows us to control the entire ecosystem of customer’s digital experiences while meeting local security regulations, so important in the financial industry.