UX Guidelines
Responsive Design
Swedbank’s web platform is developed with a responsive design. This is to make sure we optimize the user experience across different devices such as mobile devices, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. When designing we start with the mobile device experience since it naturally includes prioritizing the page content.
Design System
We want to provide a great user experience for our users and a website that is well structured and guides the users to find information and act. Our design follows Swedbank’s six digital experience design principles.
Component library
To secure and future proof a consistent look and feel and interaction pattern across Swedbank’s digital channels it is good to have a component library. For the websites using Adobe Experience Manager, we have a component library that is used for our external public websites including the savings banks and our intranet. We own and maintain the library and development is done by the Web Content Management Team. The component library follows the digital design guidelines from Brand but is also constantly being revisited and harmonized with Swedbank’s other digital channels such as the Internet bank and the App.
Breakpoints
There are two key breakpoints in our design where the layout can change based on screen size. Simplified means that we optimize for mobile devices (0-599px), tablets (600-904px) and laptop/desktop computers (905px and above).
-> IMAGE HERE!
Mobile first approach
When designing and developing our websites we always start with mobile devices in mind. This ensures that the layout and content are optimized for smaller screens and can easily be scaled up for larger devices.
Navigation
The navigation is one of the most important design elements on our websites and plays a crucial role in providing an overview of our services and a smooth and intuitive browsing experience. It should be easy for our users to find the information they are looking for independently if they are using our navigation or using our search functionality. Keeping the navigation well-structured, intuitive, and consistent on every page is key.
Accessibility
It’s important that our websites are accessible to all users by incorporating inclusive design principles. For Swedbank, being a financial institution, there is also legislation and regulations enforcing us to be accessible to all citizens. We follow these accessibility guidelines when designing our website’s to make them accessible for users who may be accessing our site through assistive technologies.
Performance optimization
Website load time is a critical factor for the user experience and its impact on conversion rates. We must always ensure that our websites load quickly by, for example, optimizing our design components, content and minifying our codebase.
Mixed methods
By applying a mixed method approach to our research it gives us different perspectives but also better and deeper understanding of our users' behavior and needs. Quantitative methods, such as analytics data and A/B-tests, and qualitative methods, such as usability tests and user interviews, work the best when using them together. We therefore collaborate closely with the Data Analytics team and for example we plan and run A/B test to verify our hypothesis. All our design decisions are always based on data insights.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization plays a key role for our public pages. Organic traffic to our websites is key and there are many factors to take into consideration to boost our visibility and competitiveness in search engines. These factors are for example heading hierarchy, links, meta data, and content.