CD Deals Summary
Latest Liquid Bank Account Rates
Fed Holds Rates Steady For Second Straight Meeting - Strategies for Savers
New November Savings Bonds Rates - I Bond Fixed Rate Rises to 1.30%
Ally Bank Tweaks Its New Online Banking Platform
Ally Bank appears to have listened to its customers who didn’t like the redesign of its online banking platform. Ally Bank has changed the opening page that you see when you first log in. This shows a consolidated snapshot of all accounts. The new default snapshot excludes the circular graph, and it shows all of your accounts in a tabular format that allows you to see more of your accounts when you’re logging in from a desktop PC. In addition, the new snapshot page can be printed. I used my browser print function, and the summary page was displayed perfectly for printing. If you liked the other format with the circular graph, you can see that by clicking on the "graph view" link. Click on the "hide graph" link to see the tabular format.
I wrote about Ally’s new online banking platform in January. After my post, Ally issued a press release about the change. Much of the change appears to be Ally wanting to maintain a consistent look for both smartphones and PCs. According to the press release:
Whether on a smartphone, tablet or via the web, Ally customers will recognize the consistent look and feel of the account dashboard that highlights important balance information at login. With fewer elements per page and larger fonts and buttons, the new design also provides improved touch-screen interaction for customers accessing online banking from their tablets.
Having larger fonts and buttons may make it easier to use the website on an iPad, but it doesn’t provide any benefits when you’re on a PC. This change appears to be the main complaint for the readers who commented in my January post. One anonymous reader had the following comment:
I have 30 accounts, checking, saving, cd, ira, etc. It's a complete mess. If I could just turn off that stupid wheel thing so the text expanded across the screen and I could see more accounts on the screen it would be tolerable.
In addition to comments, many readers took my poll which asked Ally customers what they thought of the new design. Most of the readers who took the poll (66%) said they thought the new design was not better than the old design.
These complaints must have had an effect. It’s nice that Ally listened and responded with this change. How do you like the new Ally account snapshot page?
Thanks to the readers who emailed me news of this change.
Any Ally website visit should commence with a sniffer able to determine the nature of a website visitor's access device. The design should then present a page optimized for whatever device type the visitor is using, be it PC/laptop or phone/tablet. Thus would be avoided the undesirable compromises anathema to so many Ally customers thus far.
However, it used to show my accrued interest from my CDs on the first page. Now, it does not.
Not a huge deal.
BUT, they still need to fix their mobile app. A previous user mentioned it worked fine on iOS, but I can say that's not the case under Android. Android is a bit of a mess, there are two separate Ally bank apps on the google play store, each with their own look and feel, which kind of calls into question the "making things the same across mobile and desktop" redesign work.
Regardless, like the bank web site did, both mobile apps have the wheel when you login. If the wheel was a waste of space on my 24" monitor, how big of a waste of space does Ally think it is on my 7" tablet or 4.5" phone?
Ally, keep the ball rolling and fix your mobile apps now!!
Penfed displays the beneficiaries for regular accounts but never have figured out why they will not show the beneficiaries assigned to IRA accounts?
Select "More Account Information and Actions" on My Accounts and on Ownership Type, click "Display Account Owners". Your beneficiaries then will be displayed.