MUMBAI, November 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

- User Experience Leaders are ICICI Bank, Tata Capital, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and State Bank of Hyderabad

- On Many Other Websites, Online Customers are Neither Engaged nor Converted due to Poor User Experience

In the first-ever syndicated user experience research report in India, Kern, a global user experience company, benchmarked the user experience of 32 prominent banks and financial institutions' websites in India. The research report 'Acquiring Car Loan Customers Online' throws shocking insights about the user experience of banking websites in India.

User experience (UX) is a specialized field dedicated to 'ease of use' of online products and services. In the recently concluded 6^th Economic Times Banking Technology Conclave, RBI's Executive Director G. Padmanabhan, during the keynote address, highlighted the importance of user experience in online banking, "Banks need to examine how they can make electronic transactions safe and secure while providing customers equal or more ease, comfort and convenience compared to branch banking."

According to Ripul Kumar, Director of Research at Kern, "Western banks reap good customer engagement and conversions online as many have embraced good user experience practices over the past two decades." "Despite Internet evolving as an important channel for customer acquisition, banks in India neglect the user experience of their websites. Apart from the leaders like ICICI Bank, banks turn away significant chunk of online customers everyday," he adds.

According to the report, the leader ICICI Bank has a UX Index 75.31 out of the maximum 100, a 30% lead from the runners-up Tata Capital at 58.32. ICICI Bank leads the UX Index because prospective customers are able to find relevant pages easily, get complex information in a user-friendly way, and can become a customer-all easily online, without human intervention.

The other user experience leaders are HDFC Bank at 54.76 and Axis Bank at 51.34. The only public sector bank in Top 5 is State Bank of Hyderabad with the UX Index of 49.93. The worst performing bank has a UX Index score of 18.07.

Contrary to popular belief, public sector banks actually provide overall better user experience than private banks. Overall, new private banks lead the user experience with an average score of 52.51.

This 100-page report analyzes the relative user experience of competing websites. Illustrated with more than 110 annotated screen shots of featured websites, graphs and tables; the report provides more than 60 major UX insights. Banks can instantly use these to increase online engagement and conversions. Supplemented the insights are over 70 design recommendations along with industry best practices.

This benchmark UX report will be useful for product owners, customer experience managers, marketing heads, and digital channel owners of financial institutions. Institutions planning to improve or launch their online services will significantly benefit from the research findings. Research companies will find this specialised report useful for banking industry analysis. Financial regulators will find benefits in forming guidelines about great online user experience for member institutions.

The report comes in at a time when the volume of car financing is increasing rapidly at 40% per year and active Internet users in India are more than 11.1 crore. Banks and leading financial institutions now consider the Internet as an important channel to offer loan services to customers.

The 32 financial institutions covered in the research report are Andhra Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India, Corporation Bank, Dena Bank, Federal Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, Indian Bank, IndusInd Bank, Karnataka Bank, Karur Vysya Bank, Kotak Mahindra bank, Mahindra Finance, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of India, South Indian Bank, State Bank of Hyderabad, Sundaram Finance, Tata Capital, The Saraswat Cooperative Bank, UCO Bank, Union Bank, United Bank of India, Vijaya Bank, and Yes Bank.

About Kern Communications:

Kern Communications is a global user experience consulting company. Headquarted in India, Kern has been improving the user experience of banking technology, medical products, mobile phones, enterprise software, online gaming, and aviation services for the past one decade.

Kern's user experience consulting services are:

- Expert usability reviews

- Lab-based usability testing

- Ethnographic user research

- User experience design

- Innovation consulting

Kern consults with global clients like Nokia, Research in Motion (Blackberry), Samsung, Sony, Google, Philips Healthcare, Lufthansa, ESPN, Standard Chartered Bank, and others to innovate and improve the user experience of products and services. Kern also works closely with leading user experience (UX) research agencies across the globe.

To know about Kern, go to http://www.kern-comm.com

Kern is a part of International User Experience Partners (IUXP), a global alliance of leading UX companies. Together, IUXP provides UX services across the globe.

Primary Media Contact: Amit Kumar, amit@kern-comm.com, 91-97-04501135

Secondary Media Contact: Ripul Kumar, ripul@kern-comm.com, 91-98-66342166