I’m currently buying a house, it’s said that this is one of the most stressful things one can do in life (with the exception of divorce and I haven’t even got married yet so let’s not get ahead of ourselves!). The process is not made easier by having to use banks with greater frequency, and if you are like me then your preferred channel will be online.

Many of our most popular high street banks provide woeful service through their websites, often design and usability of sites seems to suggests that no testing has ever occurred (as if it had then obvious shortcomings in user experience would be addressed).

I’ve used a number of online banking websites over the past few years as I tried to chase rates from one organisation to another.

My top five gripes with online banks are as follows:

1) Hiding the ‘contact us’ link

This is such a common issue with websites in general, online banks are particular offenders. Surely one of the most common user journeys customers will be looking to take online is to visit the website in order to find other means or methods of communication. So why on so many sites is finding the contact us section so difficult?

Favourite tricks include burying the contact link in the footer and placing it in the middle of lots of other content.

2) Not providing an updated balance

Okay – this is a functional aspect but hey. When I log into my Santander account and it tells me a balance that’s 4 days out of date I do start to wonder why?

3) Making security checks as difficult as humanly possible

From the over complicated to the totally unfathomable, security checks for online banking are the bane of many people’s lives. Forgetting passwords and general inconvenience caused by convoluted solutions to serious security requirements are a real issue to many customers. There must be a better balance between security and usability that can be reached.

Nationwide have decided that their users must use a card reader for the majority of actions they perform through their online banking site, great for the bank – bad for the user. NS&I have decided to supplement their already terrible online service with telephone verification for transactions. Unfortunately they don’t tell you they are going to call you as you move through the process and if you miss the call they lock you out of your account – perfect. The only message displayed to the user states: “You will now be challenged by telephone”..all sounds a bit threatening to me?!

4) Hiding the account login

Lets not stop at hiding the contact us link, let’s hide the login to online banking link too! Incredulous but true for many online banking websites. Look at NS&I’s homepage, found it yet? Quite easy to miss I think.

5) Sacking their designer

There are some shockers in the online banking world in terms of site design. A few good examples include Santander’s total brand confusion template and First Direct’s black hole of Calcutta design – who turned the lights out?

But it’s not all negative! Nationwide provide a good example of an organisation who seem to take online banking seriously, their site is clean in design, the back end has a good level of functionality and from a user perspective all the round corners and colours are making the whole process of using the site is at risk of being quite pleasing!

But I still lament the fact that so many banks get it wrong. If the banks can’t get established website technology right now then I expect little of value to me as a customer to be developed soon for use on my mobile or TV.

So let’s hear your comments beneath – which banks are the heroes and which are the villains in your opinion?