Agency Crosses the Equator to Develop New Website for MCB
Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) has
unveiled a market-leading
website, built in collaboration with creative agency Equator.
MCB has invested significantly in
modernising its customers’ digital experience - the user-centric platform is
one of the first of its kind in Mauritius, allowing customers to easily sign up
for accounts and other banking products online.
Over 18 months, Equator delivered the strategy, design and front-end
development of the website which aims to boost brand awareness while providing
a simple and visually engaging customer experience.
Working closely with the bank, Equator
created an end to end responsive journey enabling personal banking users to carry
out activity on the move on any device. Prior to launch, over a quarter of
traffic to the MCB website came from mobile, but this market was poorly catered
for by the previous website.
Patrick Bjorkman, creative director at
Equator, said: “We were asked to develop a true device-agnostic solution which
performed equally well across mobile, tablet and desktop. The mobile bounce
rate of the old website sat at 78 per cent, way above the industry average. This
was one area we were committed to significantly improving.”
The Mauritius-based bank chose to work with
Equator despite the fact the agency is based on the other side of the Equator
after being impressed by the agency’s proof of concept for the new site, which
was pitched over Skype.
MCB was established in 1838 and over the
years has pioneered many market firsts for the island including ATMs and mobile
banking.
Bjorkman added: “The customer behaviour in Mauritius is different to the UK – they are far more mature when it comes to using mobile. This allowed us to work on the basis of where we see the industry going, instead of planning for market growth, as we are doing with some of our UK banking clients. It was exciting to work with the company across continents, bringing something new to the market using the best thinking from around the world.”
With behavioural and cultural differences
to consider, Equator held several workshops enabling both parties to
collaborate effectively to achieve the goal of developing a website that boosts
MCB’s strong position in the market by putting customers first.
Although aimed at the domestic market, the website
opens the bank to new audiences in foreign markets. The enhanced digital experience also provides a
unique opportunity for MCB to cross-sell tailored products throughout the
online journey, based entirely on information provided by the user.
Stephanie NG Tseung-Yue, head of marketing at Mauritius Commercial Bank, commented: “Equator collaborated with MCB to do a complete design overhaul of the bank’s website. The new website offers a much better UX, features new functionalities for leads generation while being responsive. Equator’s project team listened and understood our requirements but they also stood firm on some design principles that they believed in, which is an important aspect from a Client perspective as you want to be challenged in your thinking so as to deliver the best outcome.”
