Case Study
A bank reborn online.
Introduction
RAKBANK, one of the UAE’s leading financial institutions, partnered with Gravitas to completely reimagine its digital presence. The brief was clear: transform a legacy platform into a modern, high performing, fully compliant and personalized banking experience that reflects the bank’s bold, innovative spirit and appeals to a new generation of digital first customers.
The Problem
Years of digital underinvestment left RAKBANK with an outdated website. The wrong design, wrong technology, wrong experience. It wasn't converting, wasn't engaging, and wasn't reflecting where the bank was heading.
The mission
Build a best in class digital banking experience with a bold design language and modern technology stack, one that engages, converts, and signals the bank's next chapter.
This wasn't a redesign.
It was the digital relaunch of an entire bank.
The approach.
The brief was a new website. The answer was a new creative language and a new digital operating model. A website that looks like the future and works within the rules.
Transform the brand.
RAKBANK wanted a younger, more digital-native customer. But they didn't know who they had to become to earn one. The website project became the room.
Our role wasn't to write a new RAKBANK. It was to hold the room - with the right questions, the right pressure, the right honesty - while they decided who they wanted to be in voice, in visual and in personality.
Not a brand we delivered. A brand they chose.
Transform the experience.
Most bank sites are built around what the bank wants to sell. We built RAKBANK's around what the customer is trying to do.
Benchmarked. Researched. Tested. Every decision earned, not assumed.
Sharper content. Tools that actually do something. A strategy that starts with the user and ends in conversion.
An experience that converts because it earns the click.
Transform the business.
A bank that can't move fast online isn't really online.
So we built RAKBANK a platform their marketers can actually run - without us. Integrated account opening, end to end. A design system and DevOps model that controls quality and scales output, without scaling team.
The keys, handed over.
Powering growth with Optimizely.
Platform
Headless Optimizely on React.js. A Storybook-powered design system giving developers and designers a single source of truth.
Integrations
~117 APIs connected across the experience. 75 calculator APIs. 22 forms. 12 CRM. 5 chat. One seamless front end. No seams visible to the customer.
Content
2,000 pages migrated across English and Arabic powered by a bespoke migration tool built to move fast without breaking structure.
Analytics
Google Analytics and Tag Management configured from the ground up. Every click, scroll, and conversion tracked and attributable.
Cloud
Full cloud migration. Faster. Scalable. No legacy infrastructure left behind.
Impact.
Awards
Website of the Year. 20th Asian Banking & Finance Awards, UAE.
Traffic
Uplift in organic search traffic within the first six months post launch.
Engagement
Increase in engagement time per session.
Conversion
0.05% → 2.5% Conversion rate uplift on key product campaigns. A 70x improvement.
Leads
Increase in leads generated directly from the website
Winning Website of the Year was the headline. But the real win is a platform our teams actually want to use and customers actually respond to.
Tristan Brandt, Chief Innovation Officer, RAKBANK