Stone Soup of an Online Business

I’ve always wanted to ask a brand consultant how are they going to brand a company to- offering good services, making their customers feel good…
Branding is modern-day fortune telling.
They talk to people who believe in them only. I was never approached by a street fortune teller because I doesn’t look like their customer. Perhaps, I [...]

Results are what count…it’s not how you start, but how you finish.

I had talked to one of the largest cruise operator in Asia-Pacific about revamping and promoting their business online. To them, the so-called big ideas would be converting their existing website into accepting booking online.
Yes, comes the standard story…
Several web agencies were invited to present a mockup. The best one was chosen. A brand new [...]

Maybank2U team has never learn the lesson. Apparently, the case reported today is nothing new but a classic ‘phishing’ case which Maybank2U are well aware of it. Clearly enough, the poor victim was not able to tell if a website is real or fake. His login information was intercepted and someone just transferred RM4,935 from [...]

Today, Youtube is popular. You can find almost any video you want there. The platform is free, the user base is large and contribute enough ‘interesting’ video clips to make it the most up-to-date channels than any other medias.

Think about this classic Chicken and Egg question. Visitors to Youtube are looking for video clips uploaded by other visitors. Which come first, visitors or video clips?

Many online business owner do not want to touch this. It is no doubt a tough questions to answer, yet so important that one should be aware of this and has a plan!

They appear like a dream project to me. They are different from conventional business which involved only selling of services of products. I doubt dream project is unplanned (like many stories you have heard from those successful Web 2.0 owners).

Plan it now!

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A product in its final stage limits the way users think. The almost-done Maybank2U website will sure get lot of useful feedbacks, but I bet not much on the fundamental which is crucial to get the magic numbers mentioned by Shareza.

Just look at my earlier post on Jo-jo’s Challenge. We have collected about 33 feedbacks for just one form, extracted from an online hotel booking website.

This is the current website of Maybank2U. The Maybank2U team done a great work to build this from scracth. It is not easy, especially when you’re dealing with large number of users and important data. The decision to revamp come at the right time. If the old website was built to attract more visitors (during those days when it was new), the revamped version should have focused in the conversion rate or meeting goals. In short, to increase Maybank’s revenue and to decrease Maybank’s operating cost!

I managed to take this picture showing some important practices during the presentation. Too bad, the pages in the new website are still fighting for space :)

Allow me to quickly go through some of my humble and nothing-new feedbacks. I would love to jump to the end of the post which I am going to propose and touch the painful part of the change - The Fundamental!

Don’t be surprised, many visitors can not tell the difference between the two pictures in quick.

I couldn’t find the login box in the main page like what we have in Paypal? A touching personalization can be redundant. Quick math, if you will to login 100 times to Maybank2U in your lifetime, that means the New User link will appear 99 times to you unused. Not just that, you have just forced someone to make 99 decisions of not clicking on that particular link. Don’t make a choice.

Most often, user experience has a lot to do with the Contact us form. Imagine, it serves as the best time and place where you can turn someone’s experience of using your website better. They can be your best friend who promote the website for you, not of fancy technology but some little nice experience. A good form receives fewer support request, saving operational cost greatly. I have reviewed the Contact us form of Alliance Bank in the past, check it out. An example of Contact us form in good use.

Sign up form - one of the most important page where visitors are converted into Maybank2U users. Yet, too many options, and I wonder why the online method should not be given priority as like the big button in WordPress. Yet, this is not much different from the first version. This explains why 1,500 pages are way too difficult to focus your bullet (budget and time) on. Probably that answer to Yowchuan’s question on how much is the cost of revamp during the preview launch today.

I would love to have location map if this is not too much of work :)

The Fundamental Feedback?

My Maybank2Me directs me to a secure page with big login button. There is a clear instruction to tell people how to ensure they are landed in the non-phishing page. I don’t have to choose if I am a new user, the system will do this dirty job for me. My online system reminds me if there is a recurring payment to make such as rental and the list go on…

The rest of information such as banking, credit card, lifestyles updates, promotions, sign up instructions and contact us form are separated from the online banking system.

Who knows, I could have one version for people like my dad? Lite, easy to use, and probably they could belong to the last group of users who will continue ’supporting’ the physical banks :)

Keep it up, Maybank2U Team!

I must be kidding. Yes, I don’t have a Maybank2U account.

Some related posts I have written in the past. They have a lot to do with UI.

- Truly first come first serve system must be discriminative!
- Acmamall.com, more stones needed
- What’s system design to do with marketing?
- I Hate Big Pencil

“People would have said they want a faster horse (Henry Ford, 1903)”

You would probably get the same answer if you are asking someone before a car was invented. The Maybank2U website has about 1 million active users now. This is the best real data one can have when come to revamping a website. You have all the answers, from percentage of people who never change their password, to average amount of transaction in details.

I was skeptical especially when there are too much user involvement during the user experience studies. Various test are included but this can eventually turn out to be a faster horse. Yes, everyone fancy about uploading and sharing videos, but no one will tell the founder of YouTube to build it that way.

When asked about the estimation of the increase of conversion after the revamp, I was told by Shareza that they are expecting the current active users to grow from 1 million to 1.5 millions in three months. In layman terms, this means an additional 500 thousands users will become active with the new design, if number of visitors remains the same (or 50% increase of visitors while conversion rate remains).

Few groups of potential active users come into my mind, including my dad who is computer illiterate, locals who speak just Bahasa, Mandarin or Tamil, international users who are not speaking English, my brother-in-law who want everything from font-size to input box big… Not to mention myself who just want to get my transaction done with shortest possible click, doesn’t really care if it is PBEOnline or Mayban2U.

The new revamp reduces number of pages from 3,000 to 1,500, which is still way too much to digest. Why not 10 or 20 pages? To me, Google search engines has only 2 pages: main page and search result page. It is about getting things done.

According to Ahmad Shareza, the head of Virtual Banking, the new Maybank2U is now officially under private launch to invited people. I was lucky to be invited by Yowchuan to attend the preview in Marc Residence this evening.

Together with Maybank2U team and their partners, they are some famous bloggers who are invited to try out the system. As for two of us, probably thanks to Yowchuan’s post on Maybank downtime earlier.

I was thinking that is would be some serious user experience testing there but it turns out to be too-good food and goodies bag which I’m less interested :)

One good thing about inviting bloggers are, you get your press releases out faster than any other conventional media:

snsBlog: Maybank2U 2.0 Preview
RedesignMalaysia: Exclusive Maybank2u 2.0 Preview
Earnestly Speaking: The new M2U: Impressions

10,000 residents take C to B now because A to B was closed for ’study’.

If you read today’s paper, you will notice the news of closing the tunnel of Taman Emas, Kelana Jaya, the shortcut between Subang Airport Road and LDP. This could be just another news for you, but a real pain to the people staying there - I’m so happen to be one of them.

The tunnel closed for a month, from 1st to 30 September 2008. Alternate road takes extra 3.5km though a winding and small road with at least 5 road bumps. The notice board from Datuk Bandar says it was closed for study.

I’m not sure what kind of study they are doing, but I’m sure it is burning RM7k of Petrol a day, with over 10,000 residents affected, taking a RM0.20 per km rate. Not including the the time spent…

Latest update: 10 September 2008 8.00pm

A lorry crashed into the pole just now, blocking the whole road, the only road - after the closing of another tunnel. Worth mentioning, I saw lot of Malaysians there just now, not Malay, Chinese or Indian!

Are you affected, post your comment here. Let’s give our Datuk Bandar a more realistic studies which costs them free!