BBVA’s new face, getting closer to our readers
BBVA is a global brand. BBVA’s purpose is to “bring the age of opportunity to everyone.” And today, opportunities lie in the digital world. And this is where we strive, trying to tell the best stories about our journey. That is why we’re reinventing ourselves and introducing the new bbva.com
We live in the age of fake news. According to the 2018 Edelman trust barometer, 60% of respondents can’t tell whether a story is true or false. Mistrust has become part of the mental landscape, regardless of where you get your news from. And in a world where keeping up with the news is a priority, being a reliable news source is and will be one of the conditions that will really make a difference. In a world where, as Francisco González explained a few days ago, overabundance challenges people to “find their way in an ocean of disparate sources and purposes.”
And it is in this context where the need to renovate our website, bbva.com, became clearer than ever. And so, we have decided to renovate and modernize our window to the world. We’ve made it mobile. Almost 60% of our audience is mobile. And this figure attests to the robustness of a project that started in early 2016. The UX and elements displayed on the website have been validated based on the ‘mobile first’ parameter.
“The customer comes first.” This adage sits atop the list of values that BBVA has defined to guide its digital transformation. And for us, customer means reader. With the redesign we’ve tried to boost our website’s usability. If users are used to browsing in a specific way, it’s best to adapt your product to this same way of browsing. And since there are very few examples that can compare to bbva.com in the corporate world, we wanted the redesign to mirror the latest trends in global leading media websites.
Cutting-edge journalistic techniques
This overhaul aims to better contextualize the content we offer. Our relationship with our readers is already fluent, but we need to take it to the next level. Large formats; digitally native narrative techniques; more image and video content and a new layout to streamline and enrich our reader’s user experience.
The creation of our own content and its direct dissemination among our stakeholders has been one of the priorities for the BBVA Communications team. We have many stories to tell. In 2017 alone, we published over 4,000 pieces of our own content.
Podcast, BBVA’s voice grows stronger
At BBVA we want to bring our message straight to wherever people are. We want to be part of their conversation. And be helpful. That’s why we have also expanded the presence of our content with the podcast format. A new way of disseminating the content that so many at our bank help create, with care, love and dedication.
Teamwork
A big part of the project has been developed in-house, following agile work methodologies. With BBVA design and tech teams. BBVA has been working as a digital company for some time now. As a result, the bank has been able to attract a broad range of top talent and just as our banking app has been recognized as the world’s best, we want our company website to be recognized as a global benchmark.
A website that, through its content and telling things differently, has already been singled out as a case study in several masters programs and courses in communications.
Over the past two years, we’ve been learning together. We have developed an algorithm that recommends related news based on each particular user’s browsing profile within bbva.com And this algorithm is going to help us keep learning to improve browsing experience and put out the best stories for our readership.
A common and global path
We’re a global organization built on local linchpins, where each geography’s accent is equally important. And we all share a single purpose.
But this is just the start. We want this to be a living project. We want it to grow with you, our readers. To offer the best information about BBVA and helpful content on issues about which we have something to say.
But not only that: with a team consisting of more than 50 communications professionals in Argentina, Colombia, Spain, the United States, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, you can rest assured that we are going to publish some of the best financial, fintech, innovation and responsible banking content that you are going to be able to find online. Made of such fiber, we can be nothing but global. And we love it.