Most people who open a new checking or savings account today do their shopping on a phone, often in a few spare minutes, before they ever set foot in a branch. They compare a handful of local banks and credit unions, look for a rate, look for a reason to trust you, and try to figure out how hard it will be to switch. Your website answers all three questions whether you planned it that way or not.

The good news is that winning that comparison rarely takes a flashy redesign. It takes a site built around the decisions a new customer or member is actually making. Here is what that looks like, section by section, and what to fix first.

Put rates and fees where people can find them

The first thing a shopper wants is a number. If your current CD, savings and money market rates are buried three clicks deep, or only live in a PDF, many visitors will assume they are not competitive and move on to the next tab.

• A rates page in the main menu. One page, one clear table per product, with the APY, the minimum to open and the date the rates took effect.
• Rates on the product pages too. Someone reading about your high yield savings account should see its current rate right there, not a link that says “see rates.”
• Fees in plain sight. Monthly service fees, how to avoid them, overdraft terms and ATM access. Being upfront about fees reads as confidence, and it saves your call center from the same questions every day.
• One source of truth. Pull every rate on the site from a single place your team updates, so the homepage banner and the rates table never disagree.

If you are not the highest rate in town, say what you offer instead: no minimums, local decisions, fee refunds at other ATMs, a person who answers the phone. Shoppers weigh more than the rate when you give them something else to weigh.

Make opening an account possible from a phone

A visitor who is ready to open an account should be able to start right away. If the only path is “visit a branch” or “call us,” you lose the people who are shopping at 9 p.m. on a Sunday.

1. Put an Open an account button on every product page, not just the homepage.
2. Tell people what they will need before they start: a photo ID, Social Security number, funding account details and roughly how long it takes.
3. Test the whole flow on a phone yourself. Many online account opening platforms are run by a vendor, so the handoff from your site to theirs is where people drop off. Check that the branding matches, the page loads quickly and nothing asks for the same information twice.
4. Give a fallback that still feels like progress: a short form to book a call or an appointment, so someone who cannot finish online still leaves a way to reach them.

Your digital banking provider can usually tell you where applicants abandon the process. Ask for that report every quarter and fix the worst step first.

Show the trust signals people look for

Trust is the whole business, and new visitors look for proof quickly. Most of it is simple to show.

• Insurance and lending notices such as Member FDIC or federally insured by NCUA, and Equal Housing Lender where it applies, displayed the way your regulator requires.
• Real people and real places. Photos of your actual branches and staff, branch hours, addresses and a phone number that reaches a human.
• Security that is visible. A secure site, a clear page on how you protect accounts and how to spot fraud, and an honest note about what you will never ask for by email or text.
• Local proof. Community involvement, local lending stories told with permission, and how long you have served the area.

Behind the scenes, keep the site itself maintained. An out of date plugin or an expired certificate is a bad look for a financial institution. Our piece on whether an outdated WordPress site is a security risk walks through what to check.

Build accessibility in from the start

Bank and credit union websites are expected to work for everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboard navigation, magnification or captions. It is also simply good service: an older member reading rates on a small screen benefits from the same work.

• Follow WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 at level AA as your target, and say so on an accessibility page with a way to report problems.
• Use real text, not images of text, for rates, disclosures and promotions, so every visitor and every screen reader can read them.
• Check contrast and font size on buttons and fine print, which is where sites most often fall short.
• Label every form field on applications and contact forms, and make sure errors explain how to fix them.
• Caption videos and give PDFs an accessible version or an HTML page instead.

Automated scanners catch some issues. A short manual test with a keyboard and a screen reader catches the rest.

Write copy your compliance team can approve quickly

Marketing and compliance often slow each other down because copy arrives full of claims that need checking. You can write clear, persuasive pages that move through review faster.

• Describe, do not promise. “Earn 4.00% APY on balances of $1,000 or more” is easier to approve than “the best rate in Texas.”
• Keep rate terms next to the rate. If a rate is promotional or variable, say so in the same sentence, not in a footnote at the bottom of the page.
• Use a shared disclosure library. Approved disclosure text for each product, reused everywhere, means compliance reviews it once.
• Avoid comparisons you cannot document. Talk about your own strengths instead of other institutions.
• Plain words over banking terms. “Share certificate” and “money market” deserve a one line explanation for people who are new to them.

A simple review workflow helps too: draft, compliance review, publish, and a dated record of what was approved. That record matters when someone asks later why a page said what it said.

Make the path from visit to account easy to measure

Once rates, account opening and trust are in place, you need to know whether it is working. Track a small set of numbers rather than everything.

• Visits to rate and product pages, so you know which products people are shopping.
• Clicks on Open an account, and applications started versus finished from your platform’s reports.
• Calls and appointment requests from the site.
• Search terms people use, from Google Search Console, which show the questions your pages should answer.

If you are planning a larger rebuild, protect the traffic you already have. Our guide to redesigning without losing search traffic covers the redirects and checks to plan before launch.

Where to start this month

You do not need to fix everything at once. Start with an honest look at your site on a phone, as a stranger would see it.

1. Find your current savings rate from the homepage and count the taps. Aim for one or two.
2. Start an account application on your phone and note every place it slows down or looks different.
3. Run one product page through an accessibility checker and fix the top issues.
4. Gather your approved disclosures into one library your web team can reuse.

Those four steps will show you where new accounts are slipping away. If you want help rebuilding the site around them, Circles Co has spent 20 years building websites for banks and credit unions, and we are glad to take a look at where yours stands today.