My first critique post.

My wife showed me that BPI has finally redesigned their site. BPI is one of the local sites we use the most since we do most of transactions online like payment of bills and transfering funds. We were very frustrated the first time we went to the site a couple of years back. They did not have support for non-IE browsers, we were already using Firefox at that time. What ticked me off was the only reason it didn’t support Firefox was because they opted to use an IE only “drop-down navigation” system. I didn’t think it was a critical feature to alienate non-IE browsers. In time they added support for other browsers but still kept the design the same.

I’ve been wanting to do a redesign to their site and post it somewhere their people might see, and maybe eventually pay me for it. But I guess I was too late since they have their new site up and all and all its a good redesign. Great way to start the year. :)

What I like about their redesign:
This was a real step forward for BPI, the overall feel of the site is lighter and more user-friendly. There is some grid/structure to their layout. There is a clear separation of their different brands, but they keep their overall BPI brand. For example their “express online” brand has a different logo than their home site “BPI”, but you know that you are not in a different site all together.

What I don’t like about their redesign:
What? is that an i-frame I see? That doesn’t really help their usability. Their links within the page doesn’t work in firefox. And most of their links click to open a new tab/window. How come? The log-in page to their consumer banking area looks great and well balanced. But once logged in, you get the same page as before, except for the navigation area. And I think they are still using frames for that. I guess I can forgive them for the consumer banking part. It must take a lot of work to revamp that back-end heavy site.

Posted in Crit, Design |

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