| By Jim Bruene on January 2, 2008 5:32 PM | Comments (6) |
As I was holding my family's place in a long line over the holidays (note 1), I took the opportunity to look at the 20 largest U.S. retail banks through my iPhone. They are all passable as long as you are willing to take the time to zoom in and navigate with your finger on the touchscreen.
The best-looking sites are those with relatively simple hompage designs, notably ING Direct and HSBC and to a lesser extent Wells Fargo. But the hands-down winner is Bank of America, the only top-20 U.S. bank with an iPhone-optimized homepage.
This provides BofA with several short-term advantages:
- Bragging rights as the first major bank to design for the iPhone
- A spot on Apple's directory of Web apps for iPhone (here) (screenshot below)
- Several mentions in tech and personal finance blogs
- An entree to the 1.4 million, decidedly upscale, iPhone users
Note:
1. Survey of 20 largest U.S retail banks, by deposit size, made at 4 PM on Dec. 24 from Seattle IP address through iPhone browser on AT&T Edge network.
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Excellent news! I'm glad to hear my bank has 'Bragging rights as the first major bank to design for the iPhone'. Now that I know, I'll add that to my growing internet habit on the iPhone.
"the hands-down winner is Bank of America, the only top-20 U.S. bank with an iPhone-optimized homepage"
Did you use their mobile banking site?
The only iPhone optimized page is the splash page shown in the screenshots.
The rest of the pages are the same old bofa.mobi pages optimized for the lowest common denominator. You have to jump through 6 ugly screens just to see your balances.
adk
By the way, I am slightly biased, as I just got done building a truly "iPhone-optimized" mobile banking app:
http://iBank.virtualbank.com
@adk
Well, the sign in page for iBank.virtualbank.com looks great. I suppose I have to be a customer to login and tour around. Consider developing to us? - commercelab.ipcommerce.com
I can't wait until every organization has mobile optimized versions of their webpage.
I agree on your BOA mobile assessment. Even the bank balance area is a bit basic.
Mint.com also works on the iPhone, including all the AJAX, transaction tagging, splitting, etc. Granted, it is not iPhone optimized, so it does involve a bit of zooming in and out. That said, with Mint.com, you can see all of your bank balances regardless of whether your bank supports iPhone/Safari or not. Just aggregate on Mint.com and off you go.
Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com
@Marshall
Yes, unfortunately, you have to be a client.
A demo account would be nice, right? Unfortunately, the banking platform the bank used offers no easy way to do this.
As we near the public release, we will be releasing screenshots of all the pages.
We support balances, history, transfers (internal + external) and bill pay.
adk