South African online banking usability : comparisons between niche and traditional banks : research article

Online banking is one of the most utilised aspects of the Internet in South Africa. In an earlier unpublished survey we found that respondents from the smaller, niche banks held more positive attitudes towards the niche banks than respondents utilising the larger, traditional banks. In this study, we wished to investigate how the usability aspects of these two types of banks might contribute to the differences in attitudes we found in our earlier survey. A questionnaire was posted on a prominent South African portal. A total of 1690 usable questionnaires were completed during the three weeks that the survey was active. The results of this study showed that there were statistically significant differences in the perception of 10 usability dimensions between respondents from the niche and the traditional banks. In addition, there were also statistically significant differences in the perceptions towards online assistance between respondents using the two types of banking. These results are discussed in terms of the different approaches of the niche and traditional banks, and the usability recommendations that the traditional banks might wish to adopt for their online banking services and products.