Content area
Full Text
Abbey was slow to make serious use of the web, but for the last two years under Adrian Homer its site has been afforded major investment and is on its way to being a class leader
Banks are like supertankers: big and slow to turn around. Weighted down with legacy systems, integration issues following takeovers and competing commercial imperatives, trying to change direction can be a Herculean task. So when Adrian Homer, head of online delivery for Abbey, arrived in 2007 tasked with totally renovating the bank's website, he had his work cut out. But he was ready for the long haul.
"When I joined, the site had more than 1,200 pages. There weren't even any global footers, so if you wanted to change the information at the bottom of the page you had to do it separately for each page," says Homer. "There hadn't been a redesign for four years. The navigation didn't make sense and the design showed its age. So I scrapped it completely, re-templated the whole site and introduced more logical left-hand and horizontal tab navigation. The site has now been reduced to 250 pages."
Fortunately for him there was board-level recognition that an overhaul was long overdue. "I was pushing at an open door," says Homer, who has been a judge for the new media age Effectiveness Awards. "To be given a blank piece of paper was very exciting. It was a joy, to be honest." Backed by the Spanish banking giant Santander, Abbey was spared...