Open Access

Andrea Müller, Oliver Korn, Christina Miclau, Selina Anke, Sabrina Herrmann, Pia Katz, Christina Leuchtweis, Sandra Wörner

• Bank and trust – two words but one meaning in customers’ minds. When interacting with financial service providers, customers are consistently looking for “trust signals” that comfort their decisions and “distrust signals” which create doubt. Therefore, service providers need a deep understanding of the customers’ requirements and wishes. To identify trust and distrust signals, we combineBank and trust – two words but one meaning in customers’ minds. When interacting with financial service providers, customers are consistently looking for “trust signals” that comfort their decisions and “distrust signals” which create doubt. Therefore, service providers need a deep understanding of the customers’ requirements and wishes. To identify trust and distrust signals, we combine established user experience research methods with a new testing procedure to gain helpful recommendations for optimizing the online appearance of banks. The contribution is divided into three parts: Firstly, we investigate current approaches in the financial service industry. Secondly, we provide a corpus describing the relationship between the customers’ perception of a bank’s website and trust. Thirdly, an empirical study based on qualitative user experience testing with banking website customers shows the value gained by optimizing the banks’ virtual interface by enhancing “trust signals” and avoiding “distrust signals”.…