From September 2012 to November 2013, Filene and Amazon.com gave credit unions the opportunity to win new cardholders on Amazon’s new online storefront. During this pilot initiative, less than 2 applications were approved for every 100 leads from Amazon’s credit card marketplace.

Although the results weren’t great from a new business perspective, the experiment yielded valuable information about where credit unions are falling short when it comes to online conversions. With consumers relying more and more on digital channels both for information and for completing transactions, it’s essential to make sure your website is good at driving conversion.

Here are 4 takeaways from the Amazon initiative that can help you improve your own online conversion rates.

1. Invest in your website.

Once upon a time, the standard practice was to budget for large-scale website redesigns (amortizing them over a period of years) and not make many significant changes until the next large website redesign. Back in this medieval period, websites were often treated like online brochures. Today, smart businesses have realized how barbaric both of these approaches were. You should invest regularly (if not continuously) in updating and upgrading your website, treating it as the interactive engagement and sales tool it’s capable of being.

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