Community West Bank
Services we provide:
- Discovery
- Strategy
- UX/UI design
- Website development
- Xperience by Kentico implementation
About Community West Bank
CWB is a large community bank in southern California with over 20+ locations and a track record of financial strength, security and stability gained over its 44 years in business. CWB has set itself apart from other banks by its people, dedication to client advocacy, exemplary "relationship banking," strong community support and a mission to exceed expectations. With a passion for providing customized solutions, the merger drove the decision to revamp their digital services to better serve their customers.
The Process
In an era where digital presence is critical to financial institutions and mergers are frequent, the successful merger of Community West Bank (CWB) and Central Valley Bank (CVB) depended on a robust and well-executed digital strategy, critical to providing a seamless user experience for customers and employees. SilverTech, leveraging its expertise in Xperience by Kentico website development, customized a digital solution that unified the brands of these two banks into one cohesive user-friendly digital experience in just 4 months from start to launch.
The Challenges
The merger of CWB and CVB presented unique challenges, particularly in integrating two distinct digital landscapes into a single cohesive website. The biggest challenges included:
- Differing Content Strategies: CWB's site was optimized for SEO with a rich content library, while CVB's site focused more on detailed product pages. Balancing these different content approaches was crucial.
- Short Timeline: The project needed to be completed with a demanding timeline, delivering a high-quality, functional website, from planning to launch in less than four months.
- Outdated Technology: The old CWB site suffered from poor mobile optimization, slow speeds, outdated information, and a lack of interactive features. This hindered customer engagement and usability.
Goals for New Site
SilverTech identified four main goals for CWB's new website with the main goal of unifying the brands. The merger of the two banks presented a unique opportunity to take advantage of the best from both brands.
Solution and Implementation
Based on the insight gained, SilverTech devised a comprehensive strategy roadmap to address the challenges and deliver a seamless digital experience for the bank merger. It was SilverTech's recommendation that Kentico's newest hybrid CMS platform Xperience by Kentico would be the best solution for the new website. Xperience with robust features and functionality allowed SilverTech to create an exceptional digital user experience efficiently for CWB.
The Key components of the solution include:
- Unified Content Strategy: SilverTech developed a content migration plan that combined the SEO-rich content from CWB with the detailed product information from CVB. This approach ensured that the new site would benefit from both banks' strengths while avoiding duplication and inconsistencies.
- Modern Design and Functionality: The new website was built with Xperience by Kentico, featuring a modern, responsive design to enhance user experience across all devices. Key features included:
- Enhanced Interactivity: Interactive elements and engaging content to improve customer interaction and retention
- Improved CTAs: Clear, strategically placed CTAs to guide users through the site effectively
- Technical Upgrades: Faster loading speeds, improved reliability, and mobile optimization to ensure a smooth user experience
- New Functionalities: Inclusion of essential tools like product comparison tools, branch locator and more
- Accelerated Development Timeline: Despite the tight timeline, SilverTech employed agile development practices to ensure timely delivery without compromising quality. The team worked in sprints to continuously test and refine the site, leading up to a successful launch within the four-month timeframe.
HIGHLIGHTS
SilverTech CTO Shares Insights on Xperience by Kentico's Workspaces Features
By: Derek Barka | 1/8/25
SilverTech works in a lot of regulated industries like financial services, public utilities, and government and website governance is frequently a hot topic. As a Kentico partner, we got notice of Xperience by Kentico’s (XbyK) latest features in the December release, and I was excited about how easy it can make content governance with Workspaces.
Workspaces serve as role-based views within your content management system, allowing you to tailor access and functionality for different users. You can create as many workspaces as you want and apply different roles and permissions to those workspaces. When users log into XbyK, they only see the workspaces and corresponding content their assigned role permits them to access.
In the case of a bank or credit union, for example, they have lots of subject matter experts that need access to website content but should only be accessing that specific content. For example, a Community Outreach Manager should only have access to community content, or the Small Business Product owner should only have access to Small Business Content.
Most web content management platforms do allow you to limit access to certain folders or even content types like Rates, or Branch Locations, but that can become a permission management nightmare and force content admins into creating complicated folder hierarchies in order to enforce permissions. Content should be organized in a logical and semantic manner that makes sense for the content’s purpose and not based on permissions.
Workspaces allow users to organize the content logically and then grant access to it by assigning it to a workspace. Now, all content can be organized logically and in the same manner, but content editors are only seeing the content that is in their workspace.
Kentico has also made it really easy to move content from one workspace to another. This is key because, unfortunately, permissions change or content governance plans are not finalized before development starts. This way, the developers can begin building out the site logically and governance can be applied as content is added to the system.
I will say that I was disappointed that a content item can only live in one workspace. I do see use cases where a content item may need to exist in multiple workspaces. However, that’s not a showstopper and our Kentico developers can certainly work around that by adding distinct roles to different workspaces. I also made sure to let the XbyK Team know so hopefully we’ll see that in a release soon – that’s the beauty of monthly release cycles!
