Bank @LANTEC

Bank @LANTEC was first founded in 1952 as a credit union which served members of the military and their families. It later converted into a mutual savings bank, and has over $110 million in assets. But despite being such a vibrant local success, the bank's web page was oddly inconsistent, with a color scheme and design style appropriate more to a wedding planner or musical group than to a financial institution. The site was attention-getting, but not suited to a bank trying to instill comfort and confidence at a time of crisis. Plus the navigation was confusing, and there was no place to effectively make announcements, highlight specials, or direct customers to account logins. Some sample pages of the old site:

They requested a rapid turnaround on a brand-new template, which was created using easily-adaptable nested templates which the bank can access via a Contribute workflow to post announcements, change rates, and more. The redesigned homepage:

We consolidated all site content under easily-understood sections for Personal, Business, Mortgages, and About, rolled all important rate information into a single location for easy access and update, and otherwise tweaked site layout to make it entirely consistent and customer-friendly. Stock photos were judiciously added to personalize the site, simultaneous with a much more geometric layout and sober typography to inspire confidence. The home page gained very prominent links for online-account logins and other frequently-used functions so the site served its customers rather than its designer. An easily-updated sidebar now listed featured links and specials. Featured boxes in the main content area provide ample room for announcements. A clear sitemap right on the home page shows all common destinations, just as visitors now expect and demand from a banking home page:

The new design template was applied sitewide, and navigation became clear and unified, with major site sections denoted by tabs and subsections noted with clear submenus beneath:

The client was pleased enough with the redesign to commission a second phase, in which partner sites for mortgages and online banking were contacted and we managed and carried out the redesign of highly-secure areas of the site and partner sites featuring the new branding.

Accessibility and Standards

The site was coded to modern standards of accessibility, so that visitors who are visually impaired or otherwise viewing the site in a text-based format without the fancy graphics will still see a correctly-formatted, logically arranged, and very easy-to-follow simplified version:

Our website designs are always created to maximize their accessibility to the handicapped, to text-only readers, and to optimize their compatibility with different browsers and operating systems.

The site was much later reworked from the ground up due to new in-house design needs, but we are proud of having brought them into the modern age.