The new brand we developed for The Bank of New York provided the framework with which to promote new capabilities and capacities to the world. Now their Web site needed to change to deliver the new image and define those capabilities for their online audiences.
With it’s 200-year history, most banking industry people felt like they knew The Bank of New York. Consequently, the new organization, brand architecture, and new capabilities had to be communicated in a way that enhanced perceptions of the bank without destroying existing brand equity. But at the same time, the Web experience needed to overcome a legacy of specialized individual offerings to present a clear picture of a more integrated financial partner.
We developed an information architecture that let users determine their own way through the site along three major paths: defining themselves, aligning themselves with a particular industry, or exploring offerings within a category of services. Each path presented easy ways to find specific content while keeping other potentially relevant subjects close at hand.
Our solution also elevated the prominence of some most-common user tasks, and aligned them more closely to the new brand attributes. The former “contact us” function become an “expert finder,” giving the users the opportunity to refine their search for information and get to the most appropriate person faster. We took disparate links to specialized functions and combined them in a single set of online tools, giving any user a better picture of the full set of online capabilities.
The page designs we created took every advantage of the new visual style, but in a simplified hierarchy that would be easy to replicate. We provided design templates and guidelines for their implementation, both of which are included in the Online Brand Center we created for The Bank of New York.