Mike Escudero, a Filene 30 Under 30 member, makes an interesting observation about Credit Union web site design:

We only design our sites for existing members. Not a bad idea, as our number one mission is to serve members, but here’s the thing. We started tracking Web traffic at my credit union recently and found that people were really only visiting our site to log into Online Banking to check account balances, pay bills and move money around. Virtually no one was visiting our site to learn about accounts.

His point is, your existing members are already being served. Why not use your website to capture new members. Why is it so hard to sign up on our sites?

Currently, if you have it enabled in CU*BASE, there is an “Apply Online to Become a Member” button on both the It’s Me 247 Login Pages and the Online Banking Community Pages, but what about our websites? So I went and checked our Membership Application Snippet.

Yikes, that’s 2 years old, and its just a link. What can we do to make a badge, or graphic for your website to encourage new membership? (I am not asking for ideas about the application itself, that is beyond my control — Use an Idea Form.) Mike likes the ING approach.

What can we do to make it obvious on your website how to sign up a new member? Post in the comments.