Re-brand and responsive redesign of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi website – a journey towards digital transformation by redefining the customer experience
The site was delivered in both English and Arabic.
Role: Lead UX
Helping the National Bank of Abu Dhabi on their journey to digital transformation across their business.
A completely new Experience
A customer centric, mobile-first website redesign encompassing a completely new technology platform, improved user interface and experience, new visual identity and tone of voice.
The new NBAD website delivers a standout market and region digital experience and signals the intent of a complete digital transformation for the brand that allows them to reconnect to their customers.
Creative process
The site works on a fully responsive template and component framework.
The experience sets a precedent for banking in the UAE.
Built for greater control and flexibility
The existing website was built using Sharepoint, it had taken three years to get to where it was and had afforded little in terms of flexibility to the organisation and those updating and managing content, but at the time, that’s where the money was going.
The new site is built on Adobe technologies and the experience maintained through Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). It enables our clients to maintain the digital experience very easily, and without lengthy IT involvement – update, add and remove from the site, as well as bringing enhanced digital asset management and social collaboration…building the next steps on NBAD’s digital and content strategy transformation.
Digital Strategy
Evolution of the NBAD brand for digital included adding emotion through photography aswell as a new brand font specifically designed for digital.
The site is now lifestyle centric and will connect with customers on an emotional level. It is conversational in all interactions and creates a differentiated brand that customers want to bank with beyond rational points, such as price.
The Journey
We started with the customer, to define a new site structure and identify what content would resonate and drive better engagement and sales. This helped inform the content strategy and tone of voice work, which included developing a consistent tone and language, that could be flexed for different audiences, and which could be localised without any loss of meaning or impact.
The approach to the site design and experience was mobile-first, we designed and developed a series of responsive templates, fully optimised to give the same experience across every platform and touch-point. The new visual style was an evolution of the brand identity, which is well known in the region, maintaining elements from the original livery and palette, but adding accents of secondary palette to define the experience for key audiences, and adding a more lifestyle feel to imagery.
A conversational approach to finding products
An active-listening approach to marketing. Helpful and lifestyle-orientated. The experience mimics a conversation in branch, leading to a quote, a product or service, or content, with an invitation to continue the conversation through other channels.
Personalised landing pages for key target customer segments
Provide a differential experience, for example Private banking customers have a full-screen carousel to welcome them, with heavy use of imagery to convey the elite milieu that comes with PB
Book an appointment (callback/email me) form is embedded in the carousel to make contacting the bank a convenient experience for the user
Providing an efficient delivery framework
Asset consolidation enables a framework for rapid delivery and content production.
Inform through insights: the ‘always-logged-on’ experience
This approach was explored to provide a closer integration of the website and online banking.
High level of personalisation, showing some personal data, if the customer has opted-in. The content strategy focusses on targeted insights & data for Business and money advice for Personal Banking
Louise Winters 