1. Banks worldwide in general are never particularly ‘daring’ when it comes to website design.
I recently was asked to undertake some quick, one-day research into a few international banks visual language. I looked at RBS (one of the largest financial organisations in the world), CitiBank, Barclays and Dubai Islamic. The one area which let them all down was the lack of imagination contained within the websites. There’s a formula and all banks stick to it.
2. The Gulf region is particularly appalling for websites overall (with some banks and multi-nationals beginning to buck the trend slightly, but slowly)
3. Having worked with NBK in the past (I hang my head in shame to admit I was responsible for the 2007 Annual Report) I know they are not an easy client and this website is a quantum leap for them.

One funny thing was I looked at the little icon which allows you to download the 2008 Annual Report and thought it looked interesting – some nice info graphics, use of shape and space, a hardbound case… etc. When I clicked on the link and viewed the PDF, I found it was (more or less) exactly the same as the 2007 report! Nice cover treatment though.

Since I’m not a customer and not used to using the existing NBK site I can’t comment on the usability compared to the old site, but it seems clean and adheres to a sensible and clear grid.

Works fine in my default browser (Safari on a Mac)

There seems to be a lack of content, with almost all of the pages I clicked on containing PDF files which need to be downloaded to view. Couldn’t some of that information be included in the site itself rather than necessitating downloads to find the information?

Overall, a thumbs up from me and I hope that the usability issues other people have highlighted can be resolved and things move ahead.

Great work.

1- Use Saved Online ID
2- SiteKey show Your SiteKey Image Title from your choice
3- passcode.

You don’t need ur ATM card nu.

The website looks nice and clean, although they need to make some major imporvements to their online banking pages they look like win 3.1 compatible editions!!
The drop-down menus on the new website need to be enhanced.
As mentioned by most of the people here, the “call us” banner needs to be fine tuned.
There are a few glitches while using the website on IE 8, the transition animation when u click on the options such as accounts, NBK cards, loans etc comes after the option shows up on the centre screen
The product comparator is a nice interactive add on.
The section on education users on ‘security’ should be made more prominent as it should be a primary concern (not under support).
For a novice web user the site is a little overwhelming, it needs to be tuned to allow easy navigation and allow easy navigation.