While @Hoc appears to be the only major firm building custom toolbars, most of its work is in the intranet and B2B/extranet area. Its six-figure licensing deals generally include just 20,000 to 30,000 seats; a consumer bank with hundreds of thousands of potential users would need a more cost-effective solution. (However, we’d expect @Hoc to be flexible if a financial institution walked in with a six-figure check.)

For a fraction of the cost, you could contract with one of the dozens of shareware/freeware vendors building browser plug-ins and toolbars, or put the project up for bid at eLance.com. Kyle Dusang owner of Harmony Hollow Software, publisher of Add-A-Button, told us that it would cost just a couple thousand dollars to develop a proprietary bank-branded toolbar. This was echoed in our conversation with Six Cube Technologies  www.sixcube.com  in India, who quoted us a price of US$1,950 for a bank-branded toolbar (see screenshot at bottom).

Download.com offers 44 toolbars available for download, most from small software publishers. We tried one from AppPlus  www.appplusonline.com  that was easy to use, and had some great features like docking anywhere along the edges of the screen, and the option of minimizing to the system tray (see above).

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A better-looking toolbar, one that we did not try ourselves, is available from Six Cube Technologies (see above). The company’s IE Bar  www.sixcube.com/products.htm  features shortcuts to your Web pages, a search function, custom skin (background on the toolbars), and a popup blocker button, a potentially useful customer service benefit

Finally, on a lark we typed “toolbar” at eBay (using its toolbar of course), and found UK-based developer  Christopher Ridings  christopher.ridings@ntlworld.com  with a custom toolbar listed for $49.99. He provides a toolbar-building kit and a license to distribute the results directly from your Website. For more information, refer to his Website,  www.iebar.com  It sounds too good to be true, but it might just work. We downloaded the free trial software and in less than 10 minutes had thrown together a passable toolbar that connects to various areas within U.S. Bank (see screenshot above).

These low-budget toolbar kits don’t offer the level of integration and interactivity as the multi-million dollar versions from eBay/Google/Yahoo. But for a bank, they provide 80% of the benefits for less than 1% of the cost. Not a bad trade-off.

The Google and eBay toolbars are good examples to follow. While banks don’t have time-sensitive auctions to track or billions of Websites to search, they do offer “content” that consumers wish to track closely: bills, payments, loans, credit cards, and bank balances. Following are mockups of potential banking toolbars.                                                        

One of the more promising new developments for companies with extensive Web offerings are custom toolbars, now relatively easy to build with Internet Explorer 5+ extensions. Several top Internet companies have already deployed toolbars including Google, eBay, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves. Many more are in the planning stages. Also, numerous companies have deployed the toolbars internally to better navigate company intranets.

Our first practical experience with a custom toolbar began last year when we downloaded Google’s version (above). Since then we’ve used it thousands of times and have found it to be a great time saver. Instead of going to its Web site, you simply enter your search term directly into the Google search box embedded in the browser. The toolbar also has a number of other features that we rarely use, such as page rank and site info. It’s currently available in 15 languages, with more in the works.

Ebay is the newest entrant, officially launching its toolbar a month ago following a six-month beta. It was officially launched July 11, but it’s still not widely promoted on the site http://pages.ebay.com/ebay_toolbar . Ebay spokesperson Kevin Purseglove declined to provide usage figures but told us that initial feedback was very positive and the company was thinking about promotional ideas to get the word out. With 43 million users, eBay is rolling out the service slowly so as not to overwhelm its resources.

Like Google, the key feature is the embedded search box. But for power users, that’s just the beginning; you can elect to receive popup alerts whenever a flagged auction is about to end. Users needn’t even be online to receive alerts, they are triggered by the auction end-time. Assuming its acquisition goes through, it shouldn’t be long before PayPal is incorporated into eBay’s toolbar.

The eBay toolbar is the result of a yearlong project by @Hoc  (pronounced at hoc), the Burlingame, CA-based company that has also built toolbars for Wired Magazine, Dreyfus Brokerage, HSBC’s Bourse, Multex Investors and a couple dozen others.

Privately held @Hoc  www.athoc.com  was founded in mid-1999. At that time a number of other companies were building proprietary toolbars they hoped would attract end users and ultimately advertisers to pay the freight. By the time @Hoc launched its product in mid-2001, those efforts had gone by the wayside, victims of the Internet advertising downturn. @Hoc has survived by focusing on private-branded toolbars for company intranets.

Initially the company targeted financial services, experiencing an early win with Dreyfus Brokerage Services. But the Dreyfus toolbar is gone, a casualty of its acquisition by Brown & Company. Other promising discussions with banks such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Bank One were scuttled post-911.

@Hoc believes the best opportunities in banking are on the commercial and small business side. Co-founder Ly Tran sees little need for a consumer-oriented banking toolbar. While we agree the B2B application makes sense, we think a consumer toolbar is just as useful, especially if combined with popular search applications such as Google .

One limitation of customer toolbars and buttons is that most users do not want to hassle with changing browser settings. And for those that attempt to make changes, your tech support lines may be overloaded with questions from novice users. A less labor-intensive, but more expensive, approach to keep your name on the desktop is to ride on the coattails of the Web’s sixth most popular site, WeatherBug. This turnkey program requires little user involvement, reducing confusion and tech

The browser wars may be over, but the battle for space within the browser is just heating up. In the past 30 days alone, two major Net companies, eBay (July 11) and Ask Jeeves (July 29), have launched proprietary Internet Explorer toolbars. They join Yahoo (2000) and Google (2001) as purveyors of a “persistent presence” through browser extensions.

While eBay spent millions developing its toolbar, several alternatives can provide a similar desktop presence for a fraction of the cost, in many cases no more than a couple thousand dollars. There are eight ways to give banks one-click access from the browser/desktop.¹

One

Windows Shortcut

One of the simplest and most powerful ways to maintain a desktop presence is to encourage users to create a shortcut to the bank’s Web site. The shortcut can reside on the PC desktop, the lower task bar, or both (see screenshot below). Simply instruct users on how to create a shortcut by dragging your URL to the appropriate area, or better yet, program the function for them so that all it takes is a click of the mouse to make it happen. Google does a little of both, posting instructions on how to “Googlify” your browser www.google.com/options/defaults.html  and providing a downloadable toolbar

Advantages: Understandable and easy to use

Disadvantages: May go unnoticed among the clutter of desktop and taskbar buttons

Cost: Very low; zero to a few thousand dollars

Tech Support: Negligible

Bottom Line: Highly recommended for all

Two

Bank as the Home Page

We think financial institutions make an excellent choice for browser start pages, [1] especially if you offer something that users want to see every day such as the weather forecast. Users will appreciate the speedy download of a start page devoid of  advertisements and annoying pop-ups.

Tell users how to change the home page by tweaking their browser settings, or better yet, program the change for them, so all they have to do is select a “make us your home page” button from your Web site. To improve customer uptake, you might run a sweepstakes and give a DVD player to every thousandth user that makes you their home page.

Wayne County Bank provides great instructions for making it the start page on virtually any browser still in use www.waynecountybank.com/start_page.html .

Advantages: Unparalleled visibility every time your customer goes online; plus the built-in home button takes users directly to your site with a single click

Disadvantages: It’s easy for the user to change the browser setting to a different home page

Cost: Very low; zero to a few thousand dollars

Tech Support: Negligible

Bottom Line: Highly recommended for all

Google helps users create a button on their Internet Explorer Links toolbar through a simple drag-and-drop procedure www.google.com/options/winexplorer.html

Three

Bank Icon on the Link Bar

One of the three main IE toolbars is called Links. This toolbar comes preloaded from Microsoft with links to its company sites. There is also a button called “Custom Link.” This function allows users to drag a URL to the link bar to create a shortcut to any Web page (see our customized links bar below). You can simply instruct users on how to create a link to your company, or create a small program to automate the process (see Google screenshot above).

Advantages: Great visibility for customers that use the Links bar

Disadvantages: Many users don’t display the Links bar, or don’t know how to customize to show Web sites other than the Microsoft default links

Cost: Very low; zero to a few thousand dollars

Tech Support: Negligible

Bottom Line: Highly recommended for all

Four

Bank Icon on the Main IE Toolbar

Since many users don’t use, or even load, Internet Explorer’s Links bar, you can create a program that will add a bank link to Internet Explorer’s Standard Buttons bar (the toolbar with back, forward, and stop buttons). This option requires users to run a small program downloaded from your site. Many Web developers could build this for you for a few thousand dollars or less.

To see it in action, check out Harmony Hollow Software’s Add-a-Button freeware program  www.harmonyhollow.net/aab.shtml  This program lets users easily define new buttons for the IE toolbar (see screenshot below).

Advantages: Easy to use and stays with the browser forever unless deleted by the user

Disadvantages: Can be lost among the clutter of the toolbar; may require the end-user to tweak toolbar settings in Internet Explorer to make the new button visible

Cost: Low, a few thousand dollars

Tech Support: Requires good instructions on how to make the button visible; may result in calls from confused users, but the calls shouldn’t be too difficult to troubleshoot

Bottom Line: Highly recommended provided you have the tech support resources to explain it

Five

Full Bank Toolbar

Microsoft created this opportunity when they built added functionality into IE 5.0 that allowed outside developers to create custom toolbars for a relatively low cost. Many companies are deploying custom toolbars to navigate their intranets. Top consumer Web sites such as Google, Yahoo, and eBay have created toolbars for their power users. A full custom toolbar provides users an entire row of buttons that load on their browser each time it’s launched. The toolbar makes your online banking program simpler to use and differentiates it from the competition.

Advantages: Very high visibility taking a whole row of browser real estate; easy to use and aids site navigation with a choice of buttons that connect users directly to desired functions; subsequent toolbar changes are automatically delivered to users during their next connection.

Disadvantages: Limited to IE 5+ browsers; higher tech support impact since this will be most users’ first experience with a new toolbar; users may not like losing screen real estate so you will need to coach them on how to move the bank toolbar onto the same row as their main toolbar.

Cost: Varies; low (a few thousand dollars) for a static row of shortcuts to defined banking functions; high (six-figures) for an interactive and database-driven toolbar such as eBay.

Tech Support: Varies depending on the complexity of the toolbar; but even the simplest toolbar will require good instructions and minor tech support.

Bottom Line: Top choice; recommended for anyone with at least a minimum level of tech support resources.

Six

Bank Icon in the System Tray

This is a clever trick that hadn’t occurred to us until we began using WeatherBug. Create a small application that places an icon in the Windows system tray (lower righthand corner). The low-budget approach simply loads a Web page shortcut and/or popup menu into the Windows system tray A far more pricy, but much more useful alternative, is to use your system-tray icon to alert customers to material changes in their account, such as an impending overdraft. For example, your logo could change colors to tell users they needed to check their accounts.

You could also give users with secure machines the option of displaying their actual checking or credit card balance with a single click of the system tray icon, thus avoiding a needless trip to your Web site for routine balance inquiries. Like WeatherBug, the bank statement would appear almost instantaneously because the graphics would already have been downloaded when the machine was first booted up. Only the text fields would be downloaded when the user clicked on the link.

Advantages: Easy to use

Disadvantages: May go unnoticed among the clutter of the system tray; increases boot-up time by a few seconds

Cost: Varies; low for a static bank icon, high for user-defined alerts and pop-up displays

Tech Support: Varies depending on the complexity of the program; but should be relatively low if the program is well crafted

Bottom Line: Recommended for innovators looking to differentiate their services

Seven

Bank-Branded WeatherBug

Instead of creating your own program to run in the system tray, use a private-branded WeatherBug that places real-time temperatures in the system tray and loads the entire weather picture each time the computer boots up. Every time your customer or prospect checks the weather they will see an interactive bank billboard. For complete information on this approach.

Advantages: Frequent contact with users each time they check the weather; turnkey system with little, if any, internal systems impact.

Disadvantages: High ongoing subscription cost; tech support for a unique program; increases boot-up time, especially if the entire program is launched.

Cost: High; up to $3 annually per user

Tech Support: WeatherBug has fleshed out most of the bugs in the support of its 13 million users; but as with any program, troubleshooting individual issues may be thorny.

Bottom Line: It’s a great program, one of the best on the Net, but requires a substantial marketing budget; recommended for those willing to spend money to differentiate their company and drive incremental sales.

Eight

Daily Instant Statement

Another interesting approach is leveraging instant messaging (IM) technology to deliver desktop messages whenever your customer logs in to the Web (but no more than once per day). Each time a registered user logs in, your instant messaging server would be notified and a message would be delivered to the user’s screen, such as their current balance, or a mini-statement of transactions that have posted since their last login. Regarding inherent privacy issues, we say let the user decide. The reality is that most users’ machines are more secure than physical mailboxes where paper statements sit for hours vulnerable to anyone who might walk up and remove them.

Advantages: Saves the hassle of logging in for routine inquiries; differentiates your online service

Disadvantages: May be overboard for many customers who would prefer not to hear from their bank at login; significant IT expenditures to stay abreast of the numerous instant-messaging systems.

Cost: Relatively high; varying from 5 to 7 figures depending on the complexity of the messaging system.

Tech Support: High tech support to troubleshooting user problems with their IM system.

Bottom Line: BLEEDING EGE WARNING! But could be an excellent way to differentiate your online banking and increase customer retention; but requires a large investment in development and ongoing support; email alerts are probably a better alternative for now¹.

For a strategic discussion of how to profit from instant messaging technologies, we recommend Paul Jamison’s recent report, Instant Messaging to be Recast in Marketing Role, available from Online Banking Report (see enclosed flyer or email info@onlinebankingreport.com ).                          

Private-branded browser extensions
can make online services easier to use and more prominent on users’ PCs

In late 1997, I spoke at a tech-company user conference in Santa Clara,
CA. Immediately preceding me was MECA founder and CEO Paul Harrison.
He was introducing a new online banking program MoneyScape, an
extension of the company’s pioneering, and now defunct, personal finance
software Managing Your Money (MYM). MoneyScape was an online banking
application that used so-called “push technology” to deliver banking
information directly to the user’s desktop. The innovative program died as
MECA changed ownership three times during the next three years.¹

Push technology was one of the first Internet ideas to experience a
consumer and media backlash. The streaming of unfocused news and advertising
content grew old quickly once the novelty wore off and the whole concept
fell to earth rather quickly.

Were Mr. Harrison to make the same presentation today, however, he would
have a much better chance of selling the idea.² Several of the
most successful Internet companies, including eBay, Google,
and WeatherBug, now push content via browser extensions and plug-ins
. The difference this time: a focus on delivering small, highly important
bits of information to users.

WeatherBug¾the sixth most-visited Web site with 13 million registered users³¾owes its success to a remarkable program that pushes weather information directly to the desktop. The current temperature, sourced from the closest of more than 5,000+ weather stations in its network, is displayed next to the time in the Windows’ system tray. Clicking on the temperature triggers a quick download of the complete weather picture. The resulting mid-sized window loads on top of whatever application you are working in.

Table 1

Companies Offering Custom Toolbars

Source: Online Banking Report, 8/02;        *For Internet Explorer only; Netscape version of Google’s toolbar available from third parties

Financial institutions should consider similar programs to position their brands directly on the browser, desktop, and/or system tray. The simpler concepts, such as providing a shortcut button that sits on the Internet Explorer toolbar, can be deployed for a few thousand dollars or less
Or, for those with larger budgets, ride the coattails of WeatherBug with a private-branded weather service. For those with even more resources, forget about the weather, create a “bank bug” that rides in the system tray alerting users to any changes in account status

¹MECA was purchased by Bank of America and NationsBank in 1995. NationsBank (now Bank of America) distributed Managing Your Money software extensively in 1996 and 1997 as its primary online banking platform prior to the launch of Web banking. The MECA unit was sold to Concentrix (formerly CFI ProServices) in 1999. John Harland subsequently purchased Concentrix in Aug. 2000, which quickly sold the Concentrix online banking assets to NetZee in Nov. 2000. Bank of America discontinued Managing Your Money support in early 2002.

²Microsoft Money and Intuit’s Quicken use many of these push features today.

³Unique users at WeatherBug and WeatherBug’s parent, AWS Technologies, for the week ending July 21, 2002 per ComScore Media Metrix.