BankAmerica Launches Second-Generation World Wide Web Site on the Internet: http://www.bankamerica.com/

Business Wire, Oct 19, 1995

She added, "`Build Your Own Bank' offers the personalization and ongoing updates that we believe will keep visitors returning to our Web site time and time again. If they're already our customers, we hope building their own bank will deepen their relationships with us. If they don't happen to be our customers, we hope the resources and convenience we're offering online will make it easy for them to become our customers."

Visitors who fill out the BYOB Personal Profile are automatically qualified as eligible to win a $5,000 grand prize in BankAmerica's "Build Your Own Bank Sweepstakes." And, for a limited time, visitors who surf through the company's BYOB game and solve its puzzle are eligible for a $1,000 prize to be given every two weeks. Located in the "Spare Change" area, the game takes about 15 minutes to play.

The company's first interactive advertisement is also in "Spare Change," where a total of $1 million is pictured in four different denominations. Browsers are asked, "How much should YOU save each year to have $1,000,000 by the time you retire?" and they can then hyperlink to tools and information in the "Savings and Investment" topic area.

The Personal Finance section features extensive home lending resources in its "At Home" topic area. The interactive tools, references, and daily loan rates available online will make a visit to the site "well worth visitors' time," Shapiro said.

Furthermore, real estate firms in all 50 states have agreed to swap hyperlinks with BankAmerica, meaning that its Web site links to agents' home pages for their real estate listings and they link back to BankAmerica's site for financing. These links are accessible in the "Net.cetera" topic area of "At Home." New sites are routinely added to "Net.cetera," which, as its name suggests, points visitors to "something in addition to" the bank's own Web site.

Shapiro said, "Over the course of its development, this Web site has grown and changed and taken our project team into some completely unexpected turns. In the process, the team itself has matured." "We've learned an incalculable amount of information about this place called the Internet, benefiting from the knowledge of the Internet community at large and from some brave multimedia vendors in particular. We also came to rely on the savvy, real-world input from our various user test groups." She said the project team "tried to use the very best of all this" in developing the new site.

To attract visitors to BankAmerica's Web site, the company is advertising on the popular Web sites of Netscape, InfoSeek, and Yahoo, and, beginning next week, advertisements on select outdoor billboards in Northern and Southern California will feature the BankAmerica URL address.

In first quarter 1996, the bank's proprietary homebanking network will be available on the BankAmerica Web site as well as through America Online, the largest online service provider. By mid-1996, this homebanking network will be fully integrated with Meca's PC-based "Managing Your Money" product to provide a comprehensive personal financial management tool.