hsbc website Vs. Citibank website

www.hsbc.co.id  Vs www.Citibank.co.id

Hi all, this is my e-business assignment for week 4 J the lecturer told me to make a differentiation between 2 different companies’ website in the same industry, or competing websites. In this assignment I choose to compare the websites of 2 foreign bank giants. Citibank and HSBC are playing in the same field, banking and financial industry. Internet banking nowadays is a very essential tool for the customers to do and complete their financial needs. The customers’ needs are fulfilled by HSBC and Citibank by making the domain website : www.hsbc.co.id and www.citibank.co.id. Both websites are specially designed for the banking customers in Indonesia; it can be seen by the domain “.co.id” behind both domain names.

More or less both websites offer the same service and products, including asset products and liabilities products. The similar asset products are credit cards, and personal loan, but Citibank has CitiFinancial inside its asset products portfolio. The similar liabilities products are including time deposit, investment, vanilla investment and other sophisticated investments. HSBC has a tag as “worlds’ local bank” created a local taste product such as HSBC amanah, which Citibank doesn’t has until now.

Both websites provide an easy-user interface, and very informative about their products. It can be seen, besides of offering their products, they also try to educate their customers about financial management. Also, in Citibank Indonesia website, they also provide the good corporate governance action at Citibank Indonesia. Furthermore, HSBC using red as their color, since they come from Hongkong and Shanghai, where red considered as lucky in Chinese culture. In contrast, Citibank uses blue color, as called the blue wave.

Generally, they have a very similar website design, the main page filled with a Java player, with 5 options, then log in links on the right of the page. Also, different products link at the bottom of the page. They use almost the same website design because of they have same target market, and same business. It is considered to use a very informative and easy user-interface for banking products. They have also same feature for “apply online banking products” on their websites.

The only difference from both websites is when the customers get inside the website deeper, the customers will see that the products detail that Citibank and HSBC offer are different. Citibank has the most product lines for credit cards, starting from metal cards (Citi Silver, Citi Gold, and Citi Platinum), specific segment cards (Citi Clearcard, Citi Cashback, and Citi Choice), until co-branding cards (Citi Garuda, Citi Telkomses, and Citi Giant). Where in contrast, HSBC only has 4 card types; they are Platinum HSBC, Premiere HSBC, Advance Visa, and Airasia HSBC. In conclusion, The ultimate differentiator from both websites is the product details.

Below is the HSBC Indonesia website design as of 12 December 2010:

Below is the Citibank Indonesia website design as of 12 December 2010: