Online Banking isn''t about Banking: It''s about Buying
Banking at a local branch is about banking. How long is the drive-thru line? Would it be faster to go inside? Is it before 2:00 p.m., so the check will be credited today? How much is the deposit for and will all the funds be available immediately? Do I have a deposit slip with me?

Banking online is not about banking. It''s about what banking facilitates: buying and investing. So then, why doesn''t my otherwise excellent bank, First Union, offer me the opportunity to interact with my money the way I want? I''m sure the designers of the site asked themselves: "How can we automate what bank customers do when they come to a branch?" They did a bang up job of letting me check balances, recent transactions, and statements, and transfer money between accounts with only one click! But when they stopped there, it was because they assumed that online banking was about the same things as offline banking. They were wrong!

Business Opportunities Missed
Where are business development and marketing? That''s the real question here. A banking Web site shouldn''t be left to the technology department and the accountants. Business development and Marketing (I never am sure where one ends and the other begins) are probably out negotiating a deal to get Bugs Bunny on the bank''s MasterCard cards. What they should be doing is negotiating affiliate agreements with the people who sell the things I want to buy with the money in my accounts.

Imagine if they permitted me to put notes to myself on my savings and checking accounts on their Web sites. On checking I would probably put one saying, "Transfer funds from savings on the 4^th," so that my directly withdrawn car payment money would be there. From this kind of note to myself, or (better yet) by permitting me to schedule funds transfers in advance and giving me a memo field on the funds transfer, they would know that I have a car with payments of that amount. They''d have a reasonable idea when I acquired the car, and when the car was two years old, they could start showing me ads for replacement vehicles that would incur only a comparable monthly payment.

Memos with E-mail Reminders
I''d also put a memo on my tax savings account (because I can''t have memos on my savings accounts today, I have four separate savings accounts for four separate purposes: tax, car, mortgage, and an anniversary gift) saying how much is due in estimated federal and state taxes and the dates they''re due. I''d love it if I could have my bank send me an e-mail a week before the due date reminding me to send in the money. I have all this information somewhere, but I''d like to have it with my money on the bank''s site, because that''s where I am when I''m thinking about it. Talk about fostering customer loyalty. Who could afford to leave a bank that made itself so invaluable by reminding you about when your estimated taxes (or some other periodic payments) were due?

Help Me Buy; Help Merchants Sell
Businesses with big-ticket items to sell - cars, furniture, computers - are hungry for qualified customers who are in a position to buy. Don''t you think they''d be willing to pay a hefty affiliate fee to have the bank deliver to them customers who are not only in the market for what they''re selling, but who have the money in the bank to make the purchase? Of course, banks that offer Web site access to view credit card and recent transactions statements (are there any?) would be in a similar situation if they could get customers to their sites often enough and give them some benefit from voluntarily providing information about their purchasing intentions.

Do Something with My Data!
Most consumer advocate groups would have you believe that consumers are up in arms about the way their personal data is being used and abused. I believe my opinion is more mainstream: Use the personal information you have colleted about me to make my life easier. I already have too much personal information to manage - remembering items such as "estimated taxes are due next on January 15" and "registration for the weight training class is on Thursday at 7:00 p.m." I don''t expect any one site to manage it all for me, but I would like it if the sites that I am visiting when I''m thinking about these problems would make it easier to keep it all in stream. Banking sites could send me timely reminders about financial events, upcoming bills, even birthdays and anniversaries. (As far as being reminded about the weight training class, that reminder should probably come from my favorite clothing site - but I digress.)

News Spiders Revisited
Thank you to all of you who wrote to me commiserating about the information overload and my suggested solution with an intelligent filtering system. Based on the thirty or so readers who were also looking for the same product, I''d say there''s definitely a market for this product. The number of replies wasn''t huge, but the enthusiasm for this product was enormous. Two readers suggested a couple of sites (www.moreover.com and www.spyonit.com), that will filter based on keywords. However, they it won''t learn from the effectiveness of previous searches, nor will they email you the results. I downloaded another tool called Gossip (www.tryllian.com), which is a very rudimentary start.

Alexis D. Gutzman is an E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant and author of The HTML 4 Bible, FrontPage 2000 Answers!, and ColdFusion 4 for Dummies. Her newest book, The E-commerce Arsenal: 12 Technologies You Need to Prevail in the Digital Arena will be out in December. She can be reached at agutzman@internet.com