Overall Rating:
Ranking: #4 of 5 sites
The middle of the page is filled with a few pictures and ads. There is a place to login to your account on the right-hand side. The tabs are labeled “Personal”, “Business”, “About WAMU”, and “My Accounts”. There are more links within each tab. In the top right-hand corner there are links to “Find a Location”, “Contact Us”, “Help”, “Security and Privacy”, and “Careers”.
The blue, white and orange pattern is easy on the eyes, but the site seems to be repetitive in some links and confusing to navigate. However, once I navigated some more I realized this site has a lot of helpful information that other sites do not. The website is more sales-oriented and also concerned with educating its customers than other bank websites are.
There is a big focus on online banking and educating the customers to sign up for it. There is even an interactive demo to try out online banking (which does not work for me unless I do it as html). There is also a big sales focus on the main page advertising free checking and giving helpful hints to make the switch to their bank. The planning center information link is a helpful resource.
There is no link for interest rates on the home page. Also, there is no Spanish translation. Furthermore, there is no link to get common forms for customers like for automatic payments and direct deposit. In addition, the pages take longer to load, and the home page is too long (too much scrolling). The site links are down sometimes when I click on them, and there are errors in the layout and text of the planning center link. Also, the Careers site has bad search engine capabilities for finding specific jobs. Also, when I tried to login to view my account the site was down for maintenance.
| Criteria Area | Number of Gold Coins | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 3.5 | Overall, the site is relatively simple to use, but the links take forever to load and sometimes do not work. Also the navigation is confusing because it is repetitive and there are several links to get to the same place. |
| Completeness of topic coverage | 4 | The site does have a lot of information even though it is confusing. However, there is no Spanish translation. |
| Use of web enhancements (graphics, sound, and video) | 4.5 | The graphics are relevant. There was supposed to be sound and video on the demo of online banking but it did not work for me. This is the only place with sound and video. It is a good start, but needs to be fixed. |
| Usefulness and quantity of links to related sites | 3 | There are no external links provided, but most banks do not provide this service. |
| Created ©2006 Last updated 04/08/2006 | Questions? Send an email to the webmaster Jessica Jeffress |
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