Wells Fargo rolls out new website

Wells Fargo's new website has gone live, with a streamlined design centered around goals like home ownership, college savings, retirement and information security.

Shannon Lundgren

The new design is the culmination of about two years of work, which began shortly after Wells Fargo fully brought on Charlotte-based Wachovia onto its system, Shannon Lundgren, Wells vice president for product management, digital sales and service told the Observer on Monday.

That meant the combined Wells Fargo had a number of new products to integrate onto the website, which now gets about 60 million unique visitors per month.

The bank decided to go with an approach less product-centered and more information- and solution-centered, Lundgren said. For example, a section devoted to going to college will have pieces on budgeting and financial aid, as well as products ranging from renters insurance to student loans. Before, all of that would have been much more dispersed across the site, Lundgren said.

The site is also optimized for tablet computers. When viewed on a tablet, more features will use swipes over clicks, and have larger click targets, Lundgren said.

A fairly large team worked on the site, including employees in Charlotte and San Francisco. Wells Fargo has been preparing for the roll-out for a number of weeks. Last month, Wells had promised "sweeping changes" to the site in the coming weeks. Some of the bank's communications staff have been tweeting about the site with the hashtag #WFNewSite.

Bank websites, including Wells Fargo's, have most recently been in the news after strings of cyberattacks that have slowed them down to a crawl. Lundgren said this new design dealt with user experience, not infrastructure, but said that the bank has been steadily improving its security.