Designing a beautiful digital experience for Bank Australia

Designing a relevant and motivating digital experience

Bank Australia is a customer-owned, purpose-driven bank that invests in renewable energy, the environment, social initiatives and not-for-profit organisations. As a B Corp, Bank Australia doesn’t invest in fossil fuels, gambling, tobacco, live animal exports or arms.

With such a strong purpose-driven brand proposition, Bank Australia needed a website that reflected those values, motivating new customers to join, and better serving existing customers with their daily banking needs.

Their previous website was outdated and no longer represented their brand voice. The information architecture was confusing, and certain user journeys through the site were unclear and inconsistent.

Articulating brand voice through layout

Bank Australia was already in the process of refreshing their brand identity, which we incorporated into the website redesign, giving it a distinct and appropriate approach for digital.

It was important that the website didn’t feel like a major bank, but still felt trustworthy. We made sure that product information was clear, transparent, and easy to peruse. Page designs were humanised by the inclusion of customer voice modules that added vibrancy and personality. We also added small content modules highlighting Bank Australia’s clean money positioning to make sure customers could see the direct connection between their investments and the bank’s positive impact.

Making complex information approachable

Improving the user experience of the website was paramount. We iteratively redesigned the information architecture through multiple rounds of user testing with 16 people from a diverse cross section of our community, as well as through close consultation with Bank Australia.

We were also informed by the visitor traffic data and customer feedback they provided. As a result, we were able to create a streamlined and straightforward information architecture that directs customers to where they need to be.

We focused on getting page hierarchy right, especially on key product and brand pages. There was an important balance to be struck between pragmatic financial information and effective brand messaging. By improving and systematising page hierarchy, customers now easily engage with what can sometimes be intimidating information (in the case of home loans), making for a much more pleasant and motivating user experience.

Building a modular, scalable design system

To ensure the future adaptability and scalability of the Bank Australia website, we devised a thorough, modular design system that can be used by designers and developers to systematically compose, design or build new elements as required.

The modular design of the website also enables Bank Australia to easily create their own page templates in the future by combining their suite of existing, flexible components.

Supporting a consortium approach

Bringing the Bank Australia website to life took a combined approach between multiple organisations: Paper Giant, Harvey, Words for Things, Portable, Good and Proper, Melorium and Widget Works.

Each organisation worked collaboratively to ensure the best outcome for Bank Australia, with Paper Giant leading the website design portion of the project. The website was then built by Portable in Webflow, making page layout changes quick and easy for the internal Bank Australia team going forward.