With the speed of new fintech being released in the financial industry, it’s no wonder many banks and credit unions are looking to add guided technology walkthroughs to their websites.
But should you build those tours yourself? Hire a company to build them? Find a tool?
We’ll break down the pros and cons of each option in this article.
Completely House Built
One way to get interactive tech walkthroughs for your support site is to build them internally. This option allows you to build highly customizable tours — but those tours can also be resource intensive to build and manage.
PROS
Highly customizable. If you have budget and time you can make your walkthroughs as interactive as you want.
Exclusive to your brand. You won’t get the same “cookie cutter” technology walkthrough look you get with some tools.
Cons
Internal resources. You need a good development team in-house with the time to build your walkthroughs.
More work to update. If you release a new version of your app or service you’ll need to update your tour. This can get time consuming (and slow the process down) because you’ll need to engage your IT team every time you need to make an update.
Recommendation
Building tech walkthroughs yourself can be incredibly time consuming and make it hard to manage as you expand your digital and mobile offering. Only consider this option if you already have an IT team with the skills (and time) to do build guided walkthroughs, and the branding of your tours is extremely important to you.
Hiring an Agency
If you need customizable tech walkthroughs but don’t have the resources internally to build them yourself, another option is to hire an agency. This method is less resource intensive, but does tend to get expensive as you expand (and update) your digital products and services.
Pros
Saves time. Outsourcing your entire tech walkthrough creation process reduces the amount of internal resources you need to dedicate to the project.
Branding. You can get a pretty custom look when using an agency to build your technology walkthroughs. They might have a template they use to build them, but often they will customize the look and feel.
Cons
Expensive. Using an agency can get expensive — especially if you have a lot of demos. Some companies will charge per demo. Some by the hour. Some will ding you on hosting fees. So make sure you look into the pricing model before choosing this option.
Updates are cumbersome. Keeping interactive tech walkthroughs up-to-date is important to keep communication between you and your customers open. Engaging a vendor everytime you release a new version can be cumbersome (not to mention expensive)
Recommendation
If you have the budget and don't have the internal resources to build tours yourself, hiring an agency can be the way to go. Just make sure you have thoroughly researched their pricing model, so you don’t get dinged down the line as you add more services. Also keep in mind you’ll likely need different tours for mobile vs desktop which can significantly increase your costs.
Find a Tool
If you’re looking for a quick and inexpensive way to create technology walkthroughs, a tool is your best bet. While a tool will somewhat limit your ability to make highly customizable walkthroughs, it will also make producing tours and managing updates significantly easier.
Pros
Inexpensive. Often with self-serve tools you see economies of scale. You’ll typically pay a subscription for the tool based on the number of demos you create.
Easy to update. When you release a new version of a service you can update your tech walkthroughs yourself just by editing in the tool. Look for tools that let you revise a single walkthrough, then push out updates across all your sites.
Cons
Not all tools are equal. Keep in mind some tools will let you build a technology walkthrough, but you’ll still need to engage your IT team to add that walkthrough to your website. Other tools (like LemonadeLXP) let you auto-build a support site without your development team’s help. Make sure you do your research about how the tool publishes and hosts your tech walkthroughs.
Team resources. Although creating in a tool is still easier than building your tours from scratch, you need someone on your team to be responsible for building and keeping your walkthroughs up-to-date.
Recommendation
Finding a tool is probably the most cost effective way to add interactive tech walkthroughs to your website. Features you should be on the lookout for include:
Content management system, so you can easily update your tours when new versions of your products and services are released
Ways to publish your tours without engaging your IT team
Don’t forget about your employees! Look for tools that let you link individual technology walkthroughs to your online new technology training courses
Categorization. This is especially important for financial institutions as you want to be able to categorize your demo by mobile/desktop, ios/android, customer persona, and in some cases regions.
The Bottom Line
Guided technology walkthroughs are a great investment for your financial institution. They can reduce friction when onboarding new customers, empower frontline staff to recommend and/or support digital products — and even help reduce calls into your support line.
How you build walkthroughs should depend on your priorities and the resources you have. For most financial institutions, the best option will be finding a tool that allows internal teams to create and manage tech walkthroughs without engaging their IT team.
