Banco de México : Making a home page clean and busy

Excellent visual design helps to please several different audiences.

The Site

Mexico’s bilingual central bank site contains a mass of data for financial specialists – including statistics going back to 1980 – as well as publications, speeches and other material relevant both to specialists and more general visitors.

Its home page is minimalist: mostly white space, with an image of the bank’s headquarters as a faded backdrop and a blue stripe running vertically down the centre. The only text is a paragraph defining the bank’s role. Links are arranged in an unusual curve to the left, while latest interest rates and other key indicators are set to the right under a New and Noteworthy flag.

The Takeaway

Central bank sites are serious information sites, and thus have much in common with many business and government sites. Like these, they must try to please a number of different audiences with one home page. Professionals (or instant information-seekers) must be able to find what they want fast, while less knowledgeable visitors must know where to go, and also not be repelled by a forbidding exterior. The Mexicans show how excellent visual design can achieve much.

Specialists are served in the most economical way possible – interest and currency rates are quoted without percentage or dollar signs, because the intended audience will know what they are. Other visitors will be impressed by the stylish minimalism of the site (even central banks need to build their image), and find it is easy to locate information from the clear (if curving) navigation bar. Imaginative design not only burnishes an image, it can also help usability.

First published on 04 September, 2003