You know that cliché, “think out of the box”? Well, this post is about “thinking out of the universe.” What I mean by that is new ideas come from the most unlikely places – so let’s look in unlikely places for new stuff. Here are five way, way outside the banking world ideas you should consider when thinking about how you should advance your digital banking, and by “digital” I mean online and mobile.

1. Books Create a Lot of Traffic Online. Have you looked at Amazon’s traffic numbers lately? Amazon’s is the fifth-most-trafficked site in the US, and books remain the bedrock of the site. Sites like The Daily Beast, which is a Tina Brown project, have circled back to books as big drivers of traffic.
2. The Click Doesn’t Matter. If you are thinking about advertising online as being about the click, you’re not thinking about online advertising correctly. Today, so much reputation has been lost through the recession (banks have felt this acutely) and the web is uniquely positioned to help rebuild reputations. Many mainstream media sites are thinking along these lines today for their advertising clients. This reputation challenge is also why so many corporations are thinking about social media today.
3. The Twitter Effect. It is easy to dismiss Twitter as a waterfall of nonsensical random thoughts posted by 18-somethings. But what is missed is that Twitter has accomplished something dramatic: it is gotten a vast number of people comfortable with commenting online. That matters.
4. That’s Trillion With a T. Consumers created 9 trillion page impressions in 2009. You can look at this number in two ways: either it’s a sign that consumers love the internet or that consumers love so much of the internet that they are all over the digital world. I tended to gravitate to the former interpretation.
5. In the War of the Apps, Apple Wins. For some reason Apple apps sell much more than Android apps. In the Android store, apps just don’t move. What does this mean? It’s tough to say beyond that Steve Jobs is a legend.
6. Video, Video, Video. What’s the hottest type of content online today? Answer: not checking account information. It is video. The web is increasingly become a video-centric platform. And this trend doesn’t seem to be letting up.

So there you have it – six ideas to make you think. And if you’ve got some “out of the universe” ideas of your own, share them here!