Malaysia largest bank off and on the internet, having nearly one million active users on their banking portal, is finally making a step into Web 2.0 arena.

Maybank have just launched a blog, and more importantly a revamp of their existing cluttered Maybank2u site, being branded as M2U 2.0 (currently in beta).



It is great to see that they are focusing on their customers rather than products in this makeover. Web 2.0 self-claiming sites would be just pathetic if user interaction and usability are being neglected.


(Image Source)

Generally, M2U is a clean and less cluttered site which it claims to undergo usability testing. Four-columns layout is quite congested though, which I think the "Help" column (at rightmost) should be placed some where else instead. This is because the content within the column does not really change much across navigation, and it might not the most important content to be presented. Most importantly, where is the search box?

One interesting feature that caught my attention is their friendly financial buddy, introducing... Agent M! You can add this creature (monkey?) to your Windows Live Messenger:



Perhaps they are one of the first from local corporates to implement chatterbot, an artificial intelligence monkey it seems :P