Bank of the West San Francisco Strategic Research In 2020, Bank of the West asked propelland for help creating a compelling and intuitive digital banking experience that would convey, vividly, what makes Bank of the West a special place to bank. Bank of the West had two main goals for its new website:
To create a more intuitive front-end experience, the propelland team needed to first reconsider how the back-end worked. We understood that a new back-end platform – anchored by a comprehensive and intuitive design system – would enable the Bank of the West website to grow sustainably and deliver an elevated front-end experience for customers. The propelland team had four strategic imperatives for our work with Bank of the West: We conducted an audit on the full range of the existing customer experience to create a benchmark assessment of their offerings. Using our research, we worked with the Bank of the West teams to overhaul their design system into a more flexible and adaptive platform. For the platform, the propelland team designed a responsive component library enabling marketers to quickly build new web pages with pre-approved elements and templates. After creating the design system, we implemented it to create key areas of the site and refine site structure to ensure it was accessible, transparent, and trustworthy – all while bringing Bank of the West’s unique brand values to the fore. We improved the overall content layout and navigation experience with a responsive and mobile-first mindset. The new design system is a comprehensive framework that defines user requirements and provides a common library of pre-approved design assets to shape all future design decisions. Importantly, the design system is also reflected in the website code, ensuring that future coding work evolves the website without breaking it. As product offerings continue to grow, the design system will scale to support the portfolio. Bank of the West has the strongest environmental policy of any major U.S. bank. They created 1% for the Planet, a membership program in which the bank donates 1% of net revenue from the account to environmental non-profits through 1% for the Planet organization, at no cost to the client. We integrated their corporate values across the design system, elevating the Bank’s strong commitments to sustainability and diversity in an easily digestible and highly impactful format. -- Hisham Salama Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer, Bank of the West The overall result is a complete evolution of the Bank’s digital offerings and branding that clearly differentiates Bank of the West from other more traditional banks in the market. propelland is proud to have helped Bank of the West introduce a new generation of customers to a different kind of bank – one that understands their financial needs and aligns with their values. BANK OF THE WEST
An innovative design system humanizes the digital banking experience
CLIENT
STUDIO
SERVICES
Social Impact + Sustainability
Design + EngineeringThe Challenge
A core problem with the previous Bank of the West website is that it had become difficult to use, both internally and externally. As new products and features were added over time, site navigation became more difficult for customers, while the back-end platform became increasingly complicated for the bank to manage.
The Solution
An infrastructure for future marketing efforts
Improved product discoverability
A Scalable Design System
Bringing the Bank's values to life
“Bank of the West is already deeply committed to its values around planet and people, and so the bigger question becomes: how are we getting that message out across all touchpoints? It’s about embedding it across all of our digital properties.”
Impact
Since launching the new site, the bank has experienced:
