Modernising the website and member portal for the Customer Owned Banking Association

At a glance

• Engagement: website and member portal inherited from a previous agency
• Scope: design and code review, component library, responsive rebuild, Find a Bank, CI/CD and environment configuration, analytics and SEO
• Now: ongoing support contract covering the portal and continued improvement

The problem

COBA is the industry advocate for Australia’s customer-owned banking sector, and its member portal is the primary channel for sharing information and communicating with members. The website and portal inherited from a previous agency weren’t meeting anyone’s needs: members struggled to locate information, and the administration team couldn’t easily manage the content that needed regular updating.

Our approach

We began with a full design and code review — identifying the pages to rebuild, creating a website design language and component set, and implementing feedback from internal stakeholders. Development followed: configuring application environments and CI/CD scripts, building a responsive site, delivering Find a Bank functionality, and configuring analytics and SEO to support attracting new members.

The outcome

With the fixes and enhancements delivered, Shakewell moved into an ongoing support contract — managing the member portal and continuing to implement new improvements.

What a portal takeover involves

Inheriting someone else’s build starts with finding out what you actually have. We ran a full design and code review before proposing anything, which is what told us which pages were worth rebuilding and which were fine. A member portal is not a marketing site: the people using it are looking for something specific, and the people maintaining it are not developers. Both halves have to work, and the second is the one usually neglected.

Why it stayed rather than restarted

A rebuild is the most expensive recommendation available, and it was not the right one here. The work was a review, a design language and component set, a responsive rebuild of the pages that needed it, and the environment and CI/CD groundwork to make future changes safe — followed by an ongoing support arrangement rather than a handover and goodbye.

Related services: Website Development, Support and Maintenance

Industry: Membership & Associations