The banking website is a unique animal. Part account management. Part service. Part sales. Part consumer. Part business. And it all must pass muster with the CEO, IT, marketing, customer support, heads of business lines, the board, and about 2,000 regulatory agencies. It’s no wonder that it can be difficult to keep up with ecommerce Web-design standards. 

When I started this post, the intent was to show how American Express had overcome typical banking shortfalls and was doing ecommerce right. I liked what I saw at first glance. But after diving in and actually using the gift card site, I have to say that the company still has quite a ways to go to equal Amazon.com, Buy.com or even Etsy.

My take: Overall, it’s a good structure for selling gift cards. But there are a number of things to clean up, mostly in the purchasing and fulfillment process. And the mobile option didn’t work at all, at least on the iPhone 4. For now, I’ll give it a B+ for layout/design and a C- for execution.

Let’s start with the good parts:

• New virtual gift card costs $1 less ($2.95), has no shipping charges (which range from $2 to $8.95 per order), and can be emailed in near real-time
• Option to create a “gift card account” to save payment info and make purchasing into a “1-click” process (only available to AmEx cardholders though)
• Easy to find business or personal options by choosing the correct tab near the top
• Shopping process uses cart system to order multiple designs and denominations
• Ability to shop for cards for specific occasions (birthday, wedding, etc.)
• Signup for email offers (bottom of main page)
• Mobile shopping link to open a mobile-optimized site (bottom of page…which actually didn’t work on my iPhone 4, see below)
• Personalization options including uploaded photos and recipient name embossed on card
• Click-to-call (powered by Oracle) offered when arriving via Google AdWords ad
• Link to purchase gift cards with Membership Rewards points
• Unlimited next-day shipping option. Pay $99, and for the next year, all gift cards will be delivered for no charge via next-day shipping
• Link to buy Gift Cheques for old-school users

What needs to be improved:

• Inconsistent fee disclosure: Although the site discloses the $2.95 to $6.95 processing fee as items are selected, this fee is NOT shown in the cart totals before checkout. And I couldn’t find an answer on the site to the simple question I had: Is it $3.95 per card or per order?  
• Card terms not explained: There is lots of confusion in the gift card market about expiration dates, monthly fees and such. In the traditional plastic gift-card area, AmEx does virtually nothing to help users understand what they are buying; however, it’s new virtual gift card is explained well.
• Lack of direct customer service: When navigating to the site through organic search, there is no way to get a quick question answered via live chat or email. Users must follow the Contact Us link in the upper right to find contact info.
• Obtrusive banners: The banner section (in upper left) is too large for a focused microsite and distracts from the task at hand. And one of the three is way off topic, touting an AmEx award from PayBefore for the “Best Web Sales Channel.” That has absolutely zero interest to buyers and is one of the odder banner ads I’ve ever seen run on a major financial website (although I expect AmEx tested it and found some sales lift). 
• Clunky checkout process: The form-design itself is adequate, but is missing a few features such as an immediate error message if you type in a dollar amount that does not work. I also found myself clicking Continue at the bottom of the page which won’t work until you first press Add to Cart.
• Slow website: I tested the site several times over a two-day period and consistently had trouble completing an order. Without more research, I don’t know if it’s an AmEx issue or just unfortunate timing on my part; in either case, it was pretty frustrating. 
• Too many navigation options: The top of the gift card page contains AmEx’s normal page navigation options: My Account | Cards | Travel | Rewards | Business
  While those are helpful for cardholders looking to access other services, they distract from the task at hand, selecting a gift card(s). 
• Boring gift card email (screenshot #3): The email went out right away and there was nothing technically wrong with it. But I would have expected a little more excitement and design pizzazz. After all, it’s not every day that someone sends you real money. Also, I was really surprised that the email did not contain the amount of the gift card or the personal message that I composed. That info eventually shows up during the activation process.
• Bizarre activation screen using Google Chrome for PC (screenshot 4): At first the page came up with a congratulations message, and an error message, even though I hadn’t completed the authentication step of entering the captcha info. However, after the page fully loaded, all the extraneous messages disappeared. Also, it looked fine on Chrome on my Mac (I didn’t test other browsers).
• Virtual card itself is a “low-tech” PDF (screenshot 5): I’m not sure what I was expecting at the end of the process, but having a PDF version of my virtual gift card seems anti-climactic. And the PDF popup (again in Chrome) doesn’t have the usual save/print function along the top, so initially I was stuck as to how I would remember the card info to actually use it. By accident, I found that if I moved my mouse over the lower right part of the popup, that the print/save functions all of a sudden appeared as floating controls. It would be a whole lot better for the user if the card info was simply contained in the original email or if you could at least email the info to yourself after activation. I think a lot of these cards are going to end up lost as PDF files on the hard drive, the modern equivalent of the old paper travelers cheque being socked away in a drawer for decades.
• Mobile site was unusable (unless logged in): On the online site, there’s a link promoting mobile ordering of gift cards by navigating to <americanexpress.com/gift> on their phone. I manually entered that URL in my iPhone 4 and was taken to a site dominated by a login screen (screenshot 6). There is a link to gift cards below the fold, but pressing it just reloaded the same page (evidently you have to log in first). This was a total mobile fail.

———————

1. American Express Gift Card landing page <americanexpress.com/gift-cards> (8 Sept. 2011)

2. Personalized photo gift card order form
Note: Shipping fees are disclosed at the bottom, and the purchase fee pops up after you select a dollar amount.

3. Recipient email notification they’ve received an eGift Card

4. Activation process starts with a bizarre screen that eventually renders correctly, but not before thoroughly confusing the user
Note: Eventually the lower half of this screen disappeared and only the top activation portion remained

5. The virtual card is downloaded as a PDF which can be printed or saved by the recipient

6. The American Express “Gift Card site” as seen through an iPhone 4