UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2019. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s website came first in the rating of websites maintained by banks with HQ in the Urals and Western Siberia (based on Expert Analytical Center’s research findings), the bank’s press service reports.

The website scored the most for its cleverly designed user interface and visual appeal. The content itself also got evaluated higher than the content of other banks’ websites.

Expert Analytical Center looked into online platforms run by independent banks operating in the Urals and Western Siberia. The evaluation criteria got chosen based on the testing of both local and large national banks. Twelve websites got assessed along thirty different parameters groupd along four categories: Structure/Graphics, Navigation, Information, and Services.

‘The top position in the rating results from our tech platform upgrades team’s one year’s worth of work. The renewed website now has much higher growth potential and can evolve much faster than before. This means we can adjust to changes quickly and be the local trend-setter rather than a copycat. In addition to boosting the website’s technological and aesthetic capacity, we managed to turn it into an efficient business development and customer service platform. We are available for queries and feedback 24/7, and we can see our customers are quite happy with the improvements,’ says UBRD E-Business Director Vadim Belopolsky.

Also, the correlation between a bank’s financial performance and its website’s quality did not go unheeded: according to analysts, the top five websites in the rating belong to banks whose profit margins rose by 68% (median value) in the last five years; the lowest seven websites in the rating belong to banks whose profit margins only rose by 41%; and the remaining twenty-four Ural banks that were not featured in the rating at all only had a profit margin increase of 21%. The same applies to commission-based profits: +20%, -40%, and -28%, respectively.