The Bank of Rogers Web Site: Three Mice

www.thebankofrogers.com

When it comes to comprehensive local Web sites, The Bank of Rogers certainly offers a wide variety of links and services. But that’s exactly why www.thebankofrogers.com didn’t get a higher rating from our team of reviewers.

One of our technicians said it best: “The site needs to figure out what it wants to be. Its portal makeup is all over the board in focus and its core banking section gets lost in the shuffle.”

It offers stock quotes, maps and directions, local weather reports, horoscopes, airline tickets, access to e-commerce and retail sites, news briefs, financial calendars and, oh yeah, online banking. We got so distracted by all of the portal’s links that we forgot what type of business we were reviewing. We understand the point of a portal is to be ubiquitous. (Actually, the point is to collect surfer data, but you know what we mean).

The truth is, The Bank of Rogers has a lot of marketable attributes that should get better exposure on the site. The portal is handy, but a stronger focus on banking would be a better online complement to the locally owned firm’s bricks-and-mortar locations.

We treated the portal page as the site’s home page, because the online banking section was so plain. A photo of the bank or a map of Rogers would be much more appealing than the menu bar and keyboard shot there. Both would also take better advantage of the bank’s highly commercial name.

One comment on the site’s look was, “It’s part cookie-cutter and part poor design.” That may be a little harsh, but the consensus was it could use a little sprucing.

We love the loan and investment sections, which offer real e-commerce services, and thought the site is doing a good job of requiring registration for its sensitive areas. There’s also a financial services section we would recommend to anyone minding their credit report.

Fundsxpress.com Inc. apparently administers the portal, and should be commended for its online suggestion box. But the Austin, Texas, firm was fairly uncooperative. We’d like to suggest taking a media relations course if the university there offers one.

We did learn from the bank that its site debuted in 1996 and underwent upgrades in 1998 and 1999. From November to January, more than 500 customers used the institution’s Internet banking services at a rate of 40 new customers per month.

The site is obviously good, but the design could be better.