Contents

• Introduction 4
• Economy and the UK Banking System 6
• Barclays Bank 7
• E-Commerce Practices of Barclays Bank 8
• Bank of Scotland 11
• E-Commerce Practices of Bank of Scotland 12
• Triodos Bank 15
• E-Commerce Practices of Triodos Bank 16
• Marketing Measurements 19
• Marketing Effectiveness of Online Marketing 20
• Types of Marketing Measurements 22
• Digital Optimization 24
• Measuring Marketing Value of Internet Business 27
• Internet ROI 28
• Measuring Internet ROI 30
• Measuring the Value of a Web Site 33
• Tangible and Intangible Outcomes of E-business 34
• A Framework to Measure Intangible Outcomes of Online Banking 38
• Measuring Website Performance 42
• Poor Performance of a Website 43
• Performance Indicators 43
• Search Engine Rankings 44
• Search Engine Optimization 45
• Recommendations 46
• Barclays Bank 47
• The Bank of Scotland 49
• Triodos Bank 51
• Conclusion 52
• References 55

Description

Online marketing is the latest tool in the marketing efforts of an organization. Online applications are aimed at achieving marketing goals of organizations. Online marketing is becoming one of the most effective marketing channels in the recent years. While some companies realize the importance of having online presence to the growth of their business, there are many companies that invest in online infrastructure just not be left behind without realizing what the online presence can do to achieve the overall objectives of the company. It is a common belief that online marketing allows for easier measurement of outcomes of marketing efforts due to data intensive methods that normally constitute the online infrastructure. However, if the data thus obtained is not used effectively with the help of online marketing measurement tools then the data in itself cannot produce meaningful derivations on the performance of the website or online transactional application. One of the marketing measurement techniques used in measuring effectiveness of online marketing is marketing ROI or internet ROI. Online marketing ROI along with an efficient performance of the website should provide fairly accurate measurement of online marketing effectiveness. However, not many organizations are keen in measuring website effectiveness although, they might be using internet ROI as the sole measurement criteria to ascertain the success or otherwise of the online presence. Marketing audit using internet ROI serves the purpose of knowing the realization of tangible benefits of the online marketing efforts but they fail to measure intangible benefits such as creation and enhancement of brand value. Internet marketing ROI is single dimensional and does not take into account intangible benefits of the marketing efforts such as creation and enhancement of brand value, purchase intent etc. Banking is one of the first few industries that experimented with online marketing. Traditional banking system of late, has made way for online banking in a big way. The technological developments in E-banking or E-commerce have grown to such an extent in the past couple of decades that the banks might lose the customer base to competitors if they do not have an efficient and effective online presence. These days the customers expect efficiency of an online merchandising of the bank and the safety of online transactions devoid of any fraudulent activities. This dissertation discusses the operations of the three banks viz., Barclays Bank UK, Bank of Scotland and Triodos Bank and their online banking systems. While Barclays Bank and the Bank of Scotland have efficient online presence in the form of a neatly designed websites and transaction systems, the Triodos bank needs to improve on its online presence on the web. It is easy for the banks to use internet ROI to measure their online marketing effectiveness. However, marketing ROI provides measurement of just the tangible outcomes of the online operations. This dissertation makes a few recommendations to the banks to improvise upon their website performances and provides them framework for measuring intangible benefits such as creation and sustenance of brand value, creation of awareness, creation of sales inquiries for possible future business. The paper recommends all the three banks to incorporate the methodologies presented in this paper to measure the intangible benefits of their online marketing efforts and to make changes to their online marketing approaches.