Nationwide: Standing comparison

Adaptation of a comparison tool to woo customers away from competitors.

The Site

Nationwide, the UK’s largest mutually-owned financial services provider, has a website that reflects its development beyond its traditional area of home loans.

The site’s Banking section includes a Current account area that opens on an invitation to visitors to “switch today” from their existing bank. As well as four bulletpoint reasons for moving to Nationwide, the Introduction page has a ‘Compare us’ feature. Using a dropdown menu visitors can pick one of 16 other providers’ current accounts to see a table comparing its and Nationwide’s standard features such as overdraft and interest rates, and service charges. The menu selector is retained as part of the presentation of a comparison table, but the Apply now button included on the Introduction page disappears.

The Takeaway

Product comparison tools are an established feature of consumer websites, especially those of electrical goods retailers, and there are several successful comparison sites that provide service or information about financial products. Most are found, however, on third-party retailer or broker sites. Nationwide’s use as a primary provider is rare and communicates a confidence in its product that consumers will instinctively pick up on.

Nationwide has cleverly adapted the feature to tie in with its objective of persuading individuals to transfer their accounts. While most comparison tools allow several product profiles to be viewed simultaneously, Nationwide’s allows only a direct comparison between its own and one other current account, so encouraging visitors to question the value of their existing deal. The loss of the Apply now button is a mistake, though ‘Apply’ is an option in the section’s left-hand menu.

Less directly, the feature encourages loyalty in existing Nationwide customers by letting then see how good a deal they are already getting – dangerous if it didn’t have faith it could stand the comparison.

First published on 22 November, 2005