TowneBank

Since being founded in 1999, TowneBank is now one of the largest banks chartered in Virginia and is backed by more than $14 billion in assets. Its 1,200 employees offer customers an array of business and personal banking solutions at over 40 locations across Central Virginia and Northeastern and Central North Carolina.

Challenges

TowneBank’s editors were struggling with being able to publish content in a timely manner and were frequently requiring the help of developers in order to update the site. Their content management capabilities were limited by the complexity of the Sitecore platform and third-party integrations were anything but simple. The annual licensing fees were also mounting up.

The bank teamed up with long-time partner Americaneagle.com, a web design, development and digital marketing agency, to migrate its digital presence from Sitecore to Kentico.

To the bank’s marketers, the admin interface of Kentico appeared similar to Sitecore, meaning a shallow learning curve, but it gave them much more direct control over content management and marketing tools. This would reduce overall costs for IT support and increase the speed of content publishing. What’s more, the lower annual license cost would amount to significant savings.

Solution

The new site retains the TowneBank brand in look and feel but has a more modern and audience-focused information architecture. The Americaneagle.com team implemented various features to enhance TowneBank’s functionality and user experience.

Location search now allows the browser to read a user’s location and automatically plot nearby TowneBank locations. It also enables users to pin their favorite location to the header or in searches for easy access.  

Since TowneBank’s locations cross city and state lines, they need to ensure users were seeing the correct information on pages based on their location. Some content blocks require a ZIP code entry before loading, so the information can be customized according to explicit personalization rules.  

Online Banking Enrollment process was redesigned to improve user experience and make modifying data easier for editors. The new form submissions create contacts during a multi-step process, allowing users to return to their in-progress submissions to complete when convenient. Users can see personalized helpful tips and are guided in their choice of online banking products. They later receive customized emails based on their chosen account and products as well as reminders to complete any saved forms.  

Americaneagle.com also integrated several external systems to ease content authoring while also increasing the amount of content and resources for frontend users. Third-party integrations include:

• Dinkytown to power the calculators on the site
• DocuSign for electronic as well as print and scan enrollment forms
• Google Mapping APIs to power location search features
• Several online banking providers  

Results

Through various features and third-party integrations, the user experience has been significantly enhanced for both frontend and backend users.  

For TowneBank, Kentico Page Builder has the biggest impact. Editors can build pages from the ground up, pulling from a library of dozens of widgets to meet their needs. Everything from callouts to listings of biographies, from FAQs blocks to related resource widgets, can now be used to build out pages. This opens up opportunities to have flexible page layouts and messaging. They can easily add a dozen different callouts, change color schemes, and even add videos to hero callouts.  

This flexibility, including managing previously un-editable areas of the site, as well as cutting down on duplicate data entry really won the marketers over.  

Widgets with various configuration settings have given them the variety they wanted, including the ability to choose data sources for the widget display and to change the presentation layer to add exciting visual elements.  

By reorganizing the site with usability and UX improvements in mind, the most significant measure of success was reducing the number of calls to the call center. And while TowneBank doesn’t have ‘traditional’ conversions via the site, the ease with which Kentico allows for the creation of contact forms and other callouts, ensures they’re laying the groundwork for further upgrades including lead tracking.  

Site of the Year 2021

Delivering an outstanding digital experience for its users, TowneBank's website won the Finance category of the Kentico Site of the Year 2021 award.