The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc. provides financial products and services to millions of personal and business customers through its brands such as NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank and Coutts. As a FTSE 100 company, its corporate website sees a huge volume of traffic from investors, the media, customers and the wider public.

The Challenge

RBS asked us to redesign rbs.com to create a new responsive site, meeting the needs of the growing number of visitors using mobile phones and tablets. The previous site was designed for desktop, leaving mobile visitors frustrated with the need to ‘pinch and zoom’ to read content.

It was also vital that the new site better surfaced relevant content to the site’s distinct audience types, creating shorter user journeys and a more rewarding browsing experience.

The Solution 

Understanding the audiences

Understanding the different needs of the site’s user groups was vital to the project’s success. Our UX team conducted customer research and developed a suite of personas, which identified the core user journeys. We structured the site around these user journeys, making it easy for each audience group to find the content they were looking for; task-oriented investors need quick access to share price information and corporate announcements, while the press require up-to-date facts, figure and images. Data also told us that some customers came to the corporate site mistakenly, looking to log in to their online banking. The new homepage design helps to orientate these ‘lost’ customers, by giving clear links to the personal banking sites.

Promoting RBS’ thought leadership content

RBS publishes a variety of insight content, from weekly economics analysis to updates about the activities of the brands, as well as regular corporate announcements. To help visitors find the right articles for them, and to encourage them to explore related content, we created a tagging structure which allows users to aggregate all content on a particular theme, creating topic hubs.

Rapid content migration

The deadline for launch was tight, but we successfully migrated and QA’d several thousand webpages to the new platform within just a couple of weeks.

A continuing partnership

Over the two years of engagement we worked closely with the team at RBS to make continuous improvements to the site. This included launching a new brand centre, showcasing the breadth of the markets RBS operates in and the variety of customers the group serves.

In 2014 we also designed the RBS Remembers microsite. The site is a 4 year project which commemorates RBS staff lost in World War One, and uses the bank’s extensive archives to provide educational content about banking and the economy during the Great War. Tagging is used to suggest related content and encourage users to explore the stories of RBS staff and their wartime experiences.

Moreover, we also supported the team with day to day updates to RBS.com, as well as making CMS updates to other microsites owned by the group.

At the end of 2019, we worked with NatWest, the largest bank within the group, on a hackathon event. This was a partnership between ORM, NatWest and The Prince's Trust, to drive more young people on to the charity's digital platforms. The hackathon provided an environment for quick innovation through rapid prototyping, where six ideas were presented to a panel of judges at the end of the one day event. You can read more on the hackathon here.

The Impact

• We successfully launched the FTSE 100 corporate website, just 8 weeks after our initial briefing, ready for its annual results day
• The site is now easy to use on all devices
• The site’s success was recognised by the industry, winning the Silver Award for Communicate Magazine’s Best FTSE 100 Website 2014