There are several ways to make it easier for business banking customers to find the right area of your website:

• Complete unique URL such as Abbey National’s <anbusiness.com>
• Business/biz appended to the URL such as Vancity’s <vancity.com/MyBusiness>
• Business added within the URL such as Barclay’s <www.business.barclays.co.uk> or LaSalle Bank’s <vip.lasallebank.com> for its private banking area
• Use cookies to automatically display the business area when users type your normal URL. Wells Fargo uses this technique. When homepage visitors choose the Small Business area, a small text link asks, Make this the first link you see on wellsfargo.com (click on inset for a closeup) which sets a cookie to redirect users to the Small Business area each time they go to the main bank site.

Analysis
All of these techniques are trivial to program and can help differentiate your business offerings from your personal product line. We especially like Abbey National’s unique business URL that can be a memorable device in print ads and direct mail. Also, anyone with a separate business offering should consider the optional user-set cookie approach of Wells Fargo.

—JB