Comparing the User-Interface Design of Banking Websites; A Survey on the Sri Lankan Banking Sector

This paper reveals the results of a survey covering all licensed banking sector organizations in Sri Lanka in order to compare the user-interface design of their Web sites and proposes a methodology to compare the design elements of these Web sites. The sample selected for this survey comprised of 23 licensed commercial banks (LCB), 31 registered finance companies (RFC) and 14 licensed special banks (LSB) recognized by the central bank of Sri Lanka as institutions permitted to accept public deposits under the Sri Lanka banking act and the finance companies act. Based on the Raypot and Jaworski's 7C model for the analysis of user-interface design elements in e-commerce applications, a ten factor checklist was developed in order to compare the design elements of the sites and rank the sites with regard to the design elements used in designing the user interface of each site analyzed. Availability of each factor in a Web site was given an availability score of 1. The total score was named as the user-interface component availability rank (UCAR). The average availability score (AAS) values were calculated for all factors with regard to the three institutional categories. Results showed that the LCBs were superior in the usage of design elements in comparison to RFCs and LSBs. It was revealed that community and customization elements were totally ignored by almost all the bank Web sites revived, whereas the e-commerce activities were also not popularly used by the reviewed financial institutions.