Making online forms as easy as possible

I’m in the process of writing an article for CUES’ CU Management magazine, about KickStart Online Lending Generator and Holy Rosary CU’s results. Editor Lisa Hochgraf had some excellent questions for me which prompted me to do a little bit more research into the universal conclusion that removing barriers and streamlining online forms from the user’s perspective leads to better results and increased sales.

So I thought I would share with you some of the eye-popping research that I discovered (and thus why Carol and Holy Rosary CU are getting wonderful results with KickStart – i.e. 10.49% growth in their loan portfolio over the past 6 months):

• Google’s Marissa Mayer: Speed Wins

• The $300 Million Button

• How Amazon’s website usability affects consumer product choice (This is a lengthy research paper)

In addition to the above research on the importance of streamlining the user/member/customer experience to improve sales, we’ve done some streamlining of our own. One item that proved to ourselves that we get better results when we make things easier online is that when we took the step of pre-filling out our own Online Switch Kit demo for you, dozens and dozens of you tried it out, compared to nearly no one trying it out when it was not pre-filled. It seems simple, but often times the little things can make a BIG difference!

So in our continuing quest to make our own forms and demos even easier to try out, we’ve now also pre-filled out the already-simple KickStart Loan Request form to make it even easier for you to test that for yourself. Kick the tires on KickStart yourself right here: KickStart test site

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – did you find you got better results when your streamlined your online processes, forms, applications, and navigation? Was there ever a time when making things easier for your members online was a bad thing?

Announcing the EverythingCU.com Loan Report

Exciting news…. we are proud to launch a brand new product here at EverythingCU.com. Building on the long-running success of our Marketing Budget Report, we’ve now built a super-dandy Loan Report.

This Loan Report has all of the same great peer group comparisons as the Marketing Budget Report (virtually any number of peers from 10 to 5000, compare by Assets, Number of Members, or Total Loans), and compare by State, Region, or the USA.

But this new Loan Report has FAR more comparison data because the NCUA 5300 has much greater detail about loans.

This nifty new Loan Report lets you view these loan breakouts:

• Total Loans
• Mortgages
• Other R.E.
• New Auto
• Used Auto
• Credit Cards
• Unsecured
• Business Loans
• All Other Loans

And in addition, for each of these loan breakouts, we offer a full variety of View Modes:

• Rate
• Average Size
• Percent of Total
• Loans per Member
• Growth Rate
• Charge-offs
• Total Expense
• Net Worth ratios
…. and several more

But don’t take my word for it, try out the demo! In demo mode, you will be able to view only the Total Loan category in the “Current” View Mode. But all of the data is there if you would like to purchase it.

We think this report will be especially valuable for CEOs and VPs of Lending, but it is also great for CFOs, VPs of Marketing who are concerned with the CU loan portfolio, anyone on the ALM or Supervisory commitees, board members, and branch managers. So be sure to tell everyone at your CU who would benefit!

As with all of our products, purchase of the Loan Report makes it available to ALL registered employees at your CU. If they are not already registered, you can Invite Them Here.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

KickStart results are in… and they are outstanding

KickStart is EverythingCU’s new online lending product. Carole Wight, President of Holy Rosary Credit Union in Kansas City, MO is using KickStart, and is thrilled with the results.

With the release of the latest 5300 NCUA report through the Third Quarter of 2012, we now have some hard numbers that show Carole’s outstanding loan growth improvement with the help of her new KickStart Lending tool.

Holy Rosary’s Total Loans (Acct 025B in the 5300 report) over the last several quarters looks like this:

Dec 31, 2010: 4,758,649
Mar 31, 2011: 4,647,966
Jun 30, 2011: 4,623,701
Sep 30, 2011: 4,719,143
Dec 31, 2011: 4,918,250
Mar 31, 2012: 7,623,506 <– Merger with a smaller CU
Jun 30, 2012: 7,607,091
Sep 30, 2012: 7,906,605 <– 1st full qtr w/KickStart

So as you can see via the numbers above, aside from their merger, KickStart has helped them see significant growth in the loan portfolio for the first time in quite a while. Besides the 4Q of 11, and the merger in 1Q 12, loan growth has been almost non-existent or even negative. Now armed with KickStart, Carole and her staff are able to serve members who want loans who can’t make it into the branch for whatever reason, or who want to apply for a loan during non-business hours. This most recent quarter represents loan growth of the portfolio by $299,514, which is a 3.94% increase. If that rate of growth continues, the CU will see a $1.2 million increase on a yearly comparison basis, which translates to a 15% increase on a starting loan portfolio of $7.6 million.

You can understand how excited we are for Carole to be having such fantastic success with KickStart, and for her members that are being served even better than they were before. It’s a joy for us to see Carole’s happiness with the service backed up by the proof of the NCUA 5300 report.

Thank you Carole for being such a great KickStart client! We are so thrilled that it’s working excellently for you, your staff, and your members! We are eagerly looking forward to more credit unions adopting KickStart and helping even more members apply for their loans online quickly and easily.

For more information about KickStart, just click here.