64.17%
increase in Quality Assurance score
61%
increase in clicks to their Business Credit Card page
13%
increase in SEO score
Multi-faceted customer support
In business since 1927, Valley National Bancorp, also known as Valley Bank, is a well-known commercial, retail, and private bank headquartered in New Jersey. Recognized as “one of the most trusted banks in the industry with a history of solid financial performance,” Valley Bank serves 559,000 customers across the U.S. today.
To best serve such a large customer base, Valley Bank knew they needed help improving their online accessibility. They began a diligent search for vendors with expertise in accessibility, focusing on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. In October 2018, the team at Valley Bank approached Siteimprove for help with ADA compliance, as well as a desire to understand the root cause of an identified problem with site speed.
Valley Bank began to use a variety of Siteimprove tools, including the Inclusivity package with Analytics as an add-on, which vastly improved their website’s accessibility, site health and score, and overall reporting and understanding of important metrics. Here’s how they did it.
Addressing accessibility, ensuring compliance
Website Content Administrator, Michael Pellegrino is in charge of Valley Bank’s websites and its subsidiaries. He is responsible for everything from overseeing the sites and their SEO metrics to laying out, scheduling, and monitoring new content and campaigns. When he joined the organization in 2018, Valley Bank was in the process of redoing its digital presence, and, as such, has been present since the beginning of their relationship with Siteimprove.
Pellegrino has seen firsthand the remarkable impact the Inclusivity, Analytics, and Performance tools have had on the quality and success of Valley Bank’s websites. When he encountered a challenge with their current content management system (CMS) process, for instance, Pellegrino had no way to easily identify core issues. Now, using Siteimprove he can quickly identify accessibility issues across color contrast, font usage, iconography, alt text, and heading hierarchy.
With all major accessibility issues covered, Valley Bank uses the same Inclusivity tools to ensure ongoing compliance with ADA standards and aims to maintain a minimum of 70% compliance at all times.
Day-to-day tools with long-term impact
A true standout for Valley Bank is Siteimprove’s Quality Assurance tool. When they first began working with Siteimprove, their Quality Assurance score was consistently hovering somewhere between 60 and 70 out of a possible score of 100. Today, that score sits proudly at 98.5, with ongoing monitoring and maintenance to ensure it stays that way.
Pellegrino cites the Broken Link tool as one of the most impactful—due to the laundry list of broken on-page links, images, and links within PDFs that it discovered. What was once an overwhelming issue for the Valley Bank team quickly became incredibly manageable.
“Before bringing on Siteimprove, I always had anxiety about the website. With the Quality Assurance tool, I’m now able to say with confidence that everything is up-to-date, nothing is broken, and everything is secure, which has been super helpful in gauging our success.”
Michael Pellegrino
Website Content Administrator at Valley Bank
In the same vein, Valley Bank found the Siteimprove Policy tool to be the exact solution they needed to counteract the limitations of their outdated CMS. Updating static content across the website went from tedious to seamless, as the Policy tool allows them to create custom policies to search for specific phrases, words, URLs, or pieces of HTML, as well as find every instance of them across the website and easily make updates.
“As you’re removing or fixing what you were looking for, you’ll see the Policy score [an indicator of how often the issue is appearing] drop,” said Pellegrino. “Being able to easily locate static content and see that your changes are correct and going live is so nice. The Policy tool saves so much time, effort, and headache on our side.”
Increased productivity with easy-to-use analytics
While Valley Bank has an in-house Analytics team, Pellegrino finds Siteimprove’s Analytics add-on to be the perfect time-saving solution. His most-used features are Behavior Tracking and Live Analytics, which help him get a good understanding of what’s happening on the site at any given moment.
In his role, Pellegrino needs to be able to see what’s generating the most traffic and having the most impact at a moment’s notice. Within the Behavior Tracking feature alone, he can easily see where people are clicking, what CTAs are most effective, and how users are getting where they’re going.
So far, between a 61% increase in clicks to their Business Credit Card page, a 47% increase in clicks from 2022 to 2023 to their Valley Credit Card site, and a 13% increase in their SEO score—traffic is coming in like never before.
“It’s been great for me to not have to go to other team members and have them put together a dashboard. I don’t come from an analytics-trained background, so to have this simple tool, it makes me more nimble and our metrics more digestible.”
Looking forward, together
At present, Valley Bank has a large, company-wide project in the works: a much-needed switch to a new content management system. And, the Bank just completed an update to its core banking system. Thanks to the ongoing relationship with Siteimprove, Valley Bank has been able to better monitor system upgrades and find additional products to help facilitate upcoming transitions.
“Siteimprove has been a great partner, not only in improving the site but also expanding how we work and operate here at the organization. It’s been a great experience so far.”
Michael Pellegrino
Website Content Administrator at Valley Bank
With each enhancement to the Valley Bank website, Siteimprove has been there to offer real support and new ideas to continue to improve its online presence. As our customers evolve, so do we. That’s why Valley Bank’s leadership knows they can count on Siteimprove every step of the way.
