Wall Street Crisis Seeps over onto Financial Companies' websites

The subprime mortgage crisis has morphed into what many are calling the greatest financial crisis to face America since the Great Depression. Whatever your feelings are on the mortgage/credit/financial crisis raging on Wall Street, its implications for Main Street USA, and the controversial $700 billion dollar government bailout plan, it’s manifestly clear that a new era has begun for financial companies, one in which their collective reputation as fiduciary stalwarts has evaporated, leaving them to contend with the twin dragons of heightened government scrutiny and unprecedented skepticism, if not outright suspicion, from people on the ground.

But it isn’t just on the balance sheets and on the stock exchange floor that these financial companies have taken a hit. The damage seems to be seeping over onto the web, as well. Website satisfaction and task completion for financials running 4Q have fallen markedly in the last few months.

The graphics below show how the industry-wide task completion index has fallen by 4 points since July, while the industry-wide aggregate satisfaction score has dropped by 3 points.

This is a telltale sign that site users are paying close attention to the foibles and failures of these financial services providers and that perceptions of site effectiveness are suffering accordingly. The data above yet again demonstrates the powerful link between brand equity and site perceptions. While it is far from being the most important or urgent story to emerge out of this mammoth crisis, the data above is evidence that interactive marketers in the financial services industry might soon be losing just as much sleep as their investment banking peers.