Ever helpful in my attempts to improve the profitability
of Australian banks, I fired off the following missive
to the CBA netbank 'helpdesk'.
Why do I bother?
Jamie
----------------------------------------
to :[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I was also surprised to learn that I couldn't access your system
until the next day after I had registered by phone. I also
have an account with ANZ, this was available instantly.
> We acknowledge the browser based design of the latest version of
> NetBank does impact on transaction speed. There are a number of
> initiatives we are working on to improve this situation.
>
> We have minimised the number and size of graphics appearing within
> NetBank to maximise transaction speed. We continue to monitor the
> performance of the NetBank system and we will continue to make changes
> to further enhance its speed in the future.
Can I suggest that your web design team has a read of Phil Greenspun's
dead trees book, available for free online
at http://photo.net/wtr/dead-trees/. Phil Greenspun, although very
opinionated, has some very good ideas on database backed web sites.
The first chapter is very pertinent: "Envisioning a site that won't
be featured in suck.com"
> The speed of NetBank is also dependant upon a number of factors
> outside of the control of the Bank, including:
> 1) the speed of your
> computer processor;
> 2) the amount of memory you have installed in your
> computer;
> 3) the speed, quality and reliability of your Internet
> connection
>
> For best results we recommend using 200mhz (and faster) processors
> with 56k (and faster) Internet connections to access NetBank. Under
> these conditions, access to NetBank Web pages should be comparable in
> speed to accessing other secure Web sites.
I have all these, and your site is still slow.
One of the worst things is to have Java. I'm not sure if you have this,
but if you do, it would go towards explaining a lot.
In addition, have you checked your site for accessability for the
following users:
for people who are hard of sight (e.g. legally blind)
for people who turn graphics off (I have heard estimates of 10 - 15%
of users do this)
for people who use text based browsers such as lynx and w3m.
Jamie
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