They say a lot of Malaysians use the Internet for banking…and Maybank has 60% market share. Who doesn’t have a Maybank2u account nowadays?
Above: Stats on Malaysian Internet banking & Maybank Domination
Its just been a few hours since the Maybank2u version 2.0 preview at Delicious @ Marc Residence in KL. I was attending the event with other Advertlets bloggers. Given that the current site has had minor revisions only since launching 7 years ago (most noticable being section seperators and odd pages), it was quite a long overdue revamp. Given that they have been pushing a lot of innovative marketing with Maybank (What is M, etc), I think it was great that the website itself would finally catch up to at least the same level with with their marketing campaigns.
A few quotes from the press materials provided:
For M2U’s revamp, Maybank and their web agency AGENDA invested in more than 350 hours of usability testing over three months, talking to different Malaysians and observing how they organised content, interacted with the initial site structure on paper and navigated through online prototypes to complete given tasks.
And more…
While the most obvious change in M2U 2.0 is its design, perhaps the most important change is the shift of focus from the business to the user. Maybank2u.com functions great as a business vehicle that features a multitude of products from Maybank’s different divisions. However, as a consumer banking portal, it falls short and users find themselves with a disorganised website. Basically, Maybank2u.com was a victim of its own success. The more popular it became, the more cluttered it grew.
And of course, they had to remedy it. You should already be familiar with the current Maybank2u.com.my
And…here’s a screenshot of new Maybank2u 2.0!
This is the main page. I can assure you it really looks like this in a browser, and its not a nice screenshot con la.
From A Web Developer Geek-Self Perspective
- I have been developing for the web even before Internet Explorer came out, so yes - I WILL CHECKS YOUR SOURCE CODEZ AS WELLS!. The agency in charge of doing it did not disappoint, and the code is quite clean and structured.
- Different stylesheets for print, mobile & screen are referenced, but contain no code. Nice to know that this is earmarked. I want to be able to access Maybank2u on my mobile (with proper stylesheets) the same way, no a better way than I can access my HSBC account on Opera Mobile on my Sony Ericsson W910i. (I can access most functions, but its not a mobile specific site).
- Kudos on the usage of Nifty Corners, an elegant way to generate rounded corners without the use of heavy code.
What lies behind this?
From A Designer Perspective
All in all, its pretty straightforwardly nice and well organized. The grid layout is consistent, and makes things easy to find.
- Yellow text on gray is unreadable. While there’s definitely a branding element to the decision, I would recommend a higher contrast color for the benefit of older customers or those with monitors with lousy color reproduction.
- Tabs & breadcrumbing (look it up) are implemented nicely, and is mostly clear.
- Ticker breaks on two line news items
- Login can utilize the rather empty right sidebar on the main page instead of being placed on a seperate page.
- Internal login design is a bit too spartan, could use some well placed icons like how it was implemented on the main page.
- Note to the team: please never put MIDI files and Javascript falling Ang Paus ever on the main page, even if its Chinese New Year (yes it has happened before previously, serious). As a person of Malaysian Chinese descent and a discerning web user, I believe a simple banner to wish me “Happy CNY” would do. Thank you in advance. 
This is the landing page after you login. Note the test message - this is strictly a preview and I believe that they will be touching this up further
Notes as a consumer who uses Maybank2u quite often, to Maybank:
- I would love it if Maybank can also implement some functions ala mint.com where I can keep track of all my credit cards (assuming I had some la - I don’t), average spending, ability to group and seperate my expenses as well as get some financial advice on how to save it. Of course, this is a tall order, and this is like, cutting edge But hey, gotta start planning for version 2.5-3.0 right?
- SMS TAC notification can take very long to arrive, and occasionally never does. An alternative way of generating and sending an authentication code would be good. (IM? E-mail?)
- For the past 2 years, I have been aware of a way that I can lock someone out of their account as long I know their username (I don’t need the password). And yes, I can inconvenience thousands of people the same way as well. The method of which I will not share here to prevent grief to fellow Malaysians. But I know that I did it to myself by accident and I will be sharing this personally with the Maybank team.
- Loading speed needs to be improved. Server needs to be able to handle lots of concurrent requests and allocate for “bursts” where multiple users access at the same time (peak hours are at the start of work day perhaps?). Bandwidth for images etc should not be a lot, but its mainly the processing of requests that are causing the slow down I think. (Yes, I know this is a preview. Though, even with a couple of hundred people using it of now (I am estimating), it is still slow. I hope it is a problem with the staging server that will be resolved before the full launch).
- Sue the people who are squatting on Maybank.com. Serious! Take it back! Okay la. Maybe sue is the wrong word. Use the UDRP on them.
Anyway, overall, I am impressed with the level of effort and planning that went into this.
As someone with a history of stepping in to just fix the interface design for large web dev projects (even where the design & dev of project had been fully awarded to an large company…whose strength was development but unfortunately had little design competence), its nice to see an agency get it right in more ways than one.
The agency that put this together for Maybank (together with Maybank’s internal team of course) is Agenda Asia (formerly Delirium Cybertouch). I had a brief chat with the team, and its good to see a team get both the design and development aspect right.
Disclaimer: Maybank bought me (and quite a few others dinner), and also gave us a nice thumbdrive. Basically extending the same courtesy to bloggers as they would professional reporters. Very thoughtful, thanks. I was idiotic enough not to collect the goodie bag early before it ran out (although I arrived on time), so I have no idea what it contains.
Congratulations to Maybank, Agenda and the event planning team. Its not easy to hold an event where half the people are hungry (its Ramadan after all), and perfectly timing everything so that people get to break fast and test out the system, all within a short & impactful event. It even made it worth it to miss the first three quarters of my good friend Dennis’s birthday dinner which unfortunately coincided with the event. (To give you a sense of perspective, Amber Chia was at my good friend’s birthday dinner, with other hot chicks as well). I managed to go eventually after the M2U event, its all good
You can be assured that your effort will be rewarded by bloggers (or at least myself la) furiously stress-testing/trying to break your system using obscure Mozilla beta distributions, the too new Google Chrome, random versions of Safari on random Mac OS versions, the may-or-may-not-work Opera browser, or worse, old versions of Internet Explorer All to make sure you have the best banking system for Malaysians! Which I am eventually going to be using! You will be sure I have more suggestions to send over, which may either be helpful, tiresome, anal or useful…or a bizarre combination of two or more. Hehe.
Thanks for the chance to test it out, and I am greatly looking forward to the fully launched, polished Maybank2u 2.0. Debuting September 15th to the public AFAIK.
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