Project Goals

ING Bank Śląski is one of the biggest Polish banks, offering its services to both business entities and individual clients alike. The bank is oriented towards 24/7 professional customer service. It invests in integrated financial services, improving tie-in sale, developing distribution channels and hi quality of its services.

Because of the growing popularity of mobile Internet, resulting from its functionality and flexibility, ING Bank Śląski, along with launching its mobile banking channel (ING BankOnLine) has also launched a website dedicated to browsing using mobile phones and other portable devices. The mobile Internet website - lajt.ingbank.pl - has been designed and prepared by e-point SA.

Customizing the website has been done in multiple areas:

• Browsing – while designing the mobile website, a new user-service interaction approach has been proposed. The system designed by e-point S.A. offers its users positive experience, sports an attractive look, is functional and ergonomic,
• Content – customized for mobile browsing,
• Other Applications - the mobile website offers location services (thanks to the "Banks & ATM's" application) and access to the "Currency Exchange Rate & Fund Quotations" – also in the form of easy to interpret tables and charts,
• Browsing Speed and Compatibility – the application has been designed in xhtml, which gives a higher probability that the website will be displayed correctly on a larger amount of mobile devices. Many interaction delay prevention techniques have also been used,
• Costs – the data downloading costs have been minimized thanks to a light layout.

The new ING Bank Śląski mobile website has been launched June 22, 2009.

System Description

The mobile version of the bank's website - lajt.ingbank.pl - has been designed for ING Bank Śląski to be property displayed by browsers installed in mobile phones and other portable devices.

The lajt.ingbank.pl website is dedicated to displaying content on mobile devices. Because of that, the mobile version is an autonomous system, independent from other bank systems and has its own administration panel, which can be used to create and administer the site's contents and documents. This is because mobile devices require content, that is customized to being viewed and browsed on smaller screens. That is why e-point SA designed a special, "light" version of the site, so that the user viewing it from its mobile phone doesn't have to see the ads and long, unclear texts, that distract the attention from the transaction-oriented content – all that to conquer the limitations of a small screen. It is very important for the bank that its clients are not excessively charged for data downloading.

The client does not have to remember the website's address, because www.ingbank.pl has an integrated mobile device detection. After such device has been detected, the website automatically redirects to lajt.ingbank.pl. Of course, one can switch to the classic version at any given time by clicking the proper link. If the user decides to do so, he will remain using it until the end of the session.

Besides the standard bank- and its offer-related information, the mobile website, supporting Google solutions, offers:

• Location services - thanks to the "Banks & ATM's" application, the user can quickly find the bank's branch office or an ATM. In the basic "find closest" mode, after typing in the address (city, street, number), a list of nearby offices will be displayed. It is, of course, possible to see all the ING Bank Śląski offices, e.g. in Warsaw. The list is then sorted alphabetically according to street names.
• Currency Exchange Rate & Fund Quotations – available in the form of easy to interpret tables and charts. Example: A client wanting to check the monthly Euro exchange rate sends such a request, and Google generates a proper chart. Additionally, the chart can be customized for viewing the change of offered rate, rate of return or exchange rates.

All these applications have been designed on the basis of the classic version of the website, but their appearance and functionality have been customized for mobile devices.

Despite the site content being largely simplified, it is still possible to promote products by inserting a short information on the home page. It is accompanied by light graphics and a link to the complete offer. Such form of promotion effectively substitutes standard banners, which are much less legible and incorrectly scaled on smaller mobile devices, and they make the sites longer to load.

Additionally, to make browning even faster, especially on smaller phones with alphanumeric keyboard, many menu items have quick access descriptors (holding [1], [2] or [3] keys results in choosing that link).

Implementation of the mobile website has been synchronized with the launch of a new mobile version of the banking system. Thanks to this, ING Bank Śląski now offers its clients a fully mobile access to their accounts and most of the bank's services.