Ground Floor, 1919 Malvern Road,
Malvern East,
VIC 3145 Australia.
-
What are you looking for?
Qudos Bank originated with Australia's airline, Qantas. The credit union was established in 1959 as the Qantas Credit Union and initially served Qantas employees and their families. Over the years, it broadened its membership to include employees of other airlines and, in 1996, opened its services to the general public.
Over the next two decades, Qantas Credit Union grew to over 90,000 members, two-thirds of whom were not employed by Qantas. In 2016, it changed its name to Qudos Bank to reflect its broader appeal. The name is a play on "kudos," spelt with a "Q," to honour the Qantas heritage.
Eight years after the initial Qudos Bank launch in 2016, the time was right for a refresh. The goal was to give Qudos Bank a public-facing brand identity that better reflected who they are: a modern purpose-led bank that puts customers first. The new brand was to roll out in 2024, in the lead up to Qudos Bank's 65th anniversary.
An essential deliverable of the refresh was an on-brand, modern, and customer-centric website. Qudos Bank achieved this through their existing website on Ultracs CMS.
In today's digital-first world, a bank's website and digital channels are essential customer touchpoints. The brand refresh project provided an opportunity to not only uplift the brand identity but also significantly enhance the digital member experience.
Qudos Bank's Digital CX Manager—Transformation Olivia Matthews (Liv) led the website refresh project. Liv is part of Qudos Bank's Marketing team, which managed the refresh rollout across all the key digital experiences and customer-facing channels. Priority one was Qudos Bank's website, their digital "front door" and key touchpoint for customers to experience the brand.
"Our refreshed brand is more than just a new look. It's a reflection of our evolution and growth as an organisation over our 65 years. The website was the starting point for the brand rollout across the business. It's the entry to online banking, and all our communications lead there, so it's a crucial aspect of the customer experience. The goal was to turn an outdated product-led website into a contemporary digital experience that delivered a more impactful representation of our purpose-led, customer-focused brand."
In addition to expressing the new brand identity, Qudos Bank's website refresh project also included an enhanced UX/UI design.
Julian Cougan is the leader of Ultradata's Digital Services team. His role was to develop the existing website to align with the new brand while setting new standards in functionality and responsive design.
"Qudos Bank came to us with an extensive update to its brand—colour palette, typography, messaging, and UI. Our developers, designers and producers worked diligently to translate these visual and UX elements into a fit-for-purpose website that meets the new brand guidelines."
Qudos Bank has a longstanding partnership with Ultradata. The Qudos Bank website has been hosted on Ultracs CMS since 2021. Previously, they relied on Byond CMS, Ultracs CMS's predecessor.
"Since migrating to Ultracs CMS nearly three years ago, we've found it to be user-friendly and flexible when creating content. We were confident in the team's ability to deliver an updated website on the existing CMS in line with Qudos Bank's new brand guidelines."
Qudos Bank worked closely with Ultradata to manage a development plan that would deliver their requirements by the mid-2024 deadline. The redesign was a combination of updating existing functionality available within Ultracs CMS and developing some new features to deliver the enhanced UX design.
"The website was our most important channel for launch, so we had to ensure that our decisions were strategic. With Ultracs CMS, we didn't need to start from scratch; instead, we could work from what we already had and build additional design features where required.
We wanted a seamless transition from the old website to the new, while implementing an enhanced information architecture. Our goal was to minimise the number of back-end changes while maximising the front-end impact for our customers. The UX changes we made to align the website with the new brand were primarily driven by what was already possible to do within the CMS."
The new website featured new brand-led messaging and UX improvements that delivered on the bank's purpose and values, which put customers at the centre of everything.
Key to the new website's customer-centric focus was improved navigation and the consolidation of support, educational, FAQ, and product content into a centralised help centre. The help centre update embodied the rebrand's ethos: to make banking more accessible for its members.
"We're here to help customers to reach their full potential. We know banking can be complicated, so we want to simplify things as much as possible, and the digital experience is an important aspect of that."
Qudos Bank's new website was ready to go live in July 2024. With the website done, Qudos Bank launched its new brand across all channels on time and within budget.
According to Liv, the website delivered on the rebrand's promise of enhancing the customer experience.
"The rebrand was about realigning our purpose and reaffirming our commitment to customers amid changing market conditions and consumer expectations.
You can see that shift in the new design, and we're finding it's resonating with customers.
Just a month after its launch, the website has begun to deliver a return on Qudos Bank's investment.
There has already been an uplift in our engagement on key pages. Within the first week of launching, we saw a 65% increase in views of home loan pages, which is extraordinary. Everyone's just really positive about the new look."