FORTIS BOOSTS WEB BUSINESS WITH SPEED-TRAP

- Fortis credit4me reports 25% growth in customers completing web loan applications with Speed-Trap’s new customer insight software-

Newbury 29-November 2007: Fortis credit4me, the German Retail Business Unit of Fortis, the international provider of banking and insurance, reports a 25% increase in the number of customers completing their on-line loan applications, following their implementation of Speed-Trap’s unique customer insight software. The software license provided by Arcade e-Business, one of Speed-Trap’s European distributors, enabled Fortis to monitor its customers’ on-line behavior and experiences so it can make calculated and informed marketing decisions. Of its results with Speed-Trap, Fortis credit4me director of direct channels, Liesbeth Rigter states, “Following our partnership with Speed-Trap and our amendments to our site processes in the light of their discoveries, we have been able to detect improvement possibilities up to a 25% increase in the numbers of those starting an online application with us actually completing the process to become a customer.”

Since their foundation in 1990, when N.V.AMEV and VSB merged their operations, Fortis has been continually strengthening with a series of takeovers. The company, who rank among Europe’s top 20 financial institutions, hold a presence in over 50 countries world-wide. In recognition of its work, Fortis has won numerous awards, including the 2007Euromoney Award for Best Bank in Belgium and in Luxembourg, The Banker’s Belgian Bank of the Year Award, 2006, and the MAPIC Award for the innovative credit4me Retail formula, in 2006.

Rigter comments, “We originally launched into the German market in July 2006 without any customer insight software - we could see how many ‘hits’ we had on the site and little more. It became clear that we needed software to analyze our online customers’ behavior and compare this to their activity in our other channels. With Speed-Trap, we have full visibility of our customers’ routes through our site and any bottlenecks, thereby allowing us to remedy any technical issues. From a marketing perspective, we are able to see where visitors have come from – such as via a search engine, an affiliate partner or an advertisement on another site – and also specifically which marketing propositions within our site have the greatest effect.”

Fortis has primarily used Speed-Trap’s software to analyze the sales channel and pre-empt issues. For instance, repeated data entry problems indicated a lack of clarity on the data entry form. Rigter comments, “Seeing so plainly what errors are being made allows us to question why there seems to be a lack of comprehension – why do our visitors fail to check a certain box or see a certain link? This enables us to edit the functionality of the website wherever we see inconsistencies – ensuring consumers will trust us as a reputable brand that delivers what it promises.”

Rigter continues, “We have specifically seen benefits from monitoring and reviewing our data entry. Speed-Trap showed us that customers would become suspicious at being asked for certain information very early on in the process and consequently would not fill in the rest of the data entry form – resulting in a failure to complete. Even changing the simpler aspects of data entry which Speed-Trap highlighted has resulted in increasing out customer conversion rates.”

Rigter concludes, “The main advantage we have found with Speed-Trap is that their technology does not require us to be specific in which parts of the site we monitor – we can monitor every inch of the site in a single implementation. This allows us to see problems throughout the whole site, and crucially not just where we expect them. As a result, we have been able to improve many technical issues that we simply did not realize were there.” 

Ends.

About Speed-Trap

Speed-Trap is a provider of software that uses Web 2.0 technology to capture and deliver complete, real-time data on every individual on-line customer and prospect, based upon detailed analysis of their current and historic on-line behavior and experience – complete on-line customer insight.

Software solutions built using Speed-Trap are being used by businesses to drive, monitor and measure on-line marketing activity, business processes and real-time content management systems.

These include applications such as campaign management, customer segmentation, customer experience monitoring and online performance measurement. Other customers are using the technology to monitor key business metrics, to provide operational insight crucial for website design and development and for online fraud prevention.

Founded in January 2000 and based in the UK, with headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire, Speed-Trap’s customers include Alliance & Leicester, directgov, Betfair, Paddy Power, Yorkshire Building Society, PC World Business, moneysupermarket & travelsupermarket, Hoseasons, MoneyNet and WH Smith. Speed-Trap’s partners include the SAS Institute, Arcade e-Business, Detica and Intelligent Environments and it is represented internationally in Benelux, Scandinavia, Germany, South Africa and Ireland.

For further information, please contact:

Will Gardiner or Sarah Musselbrook
itpr
Tel: + 44 (0) 1932 578 800
Fax: + 44 (0) 1932 578 801
Email: willg@itpr.co.uk ,sarahm@itpr.co.uk