Abstract

Since the development of Islamic banking, negative concerns prevail because of low customer awareness and understanding of Islamic banking and its financing methods. Trust and credibility factor for Islamic products are low. Operational concerns exist specifically about staff and scholars. A perennial challenge facing all Islamic financial institutions is how to communicate with customers in a way that will affects their behaviours or attitudes.

For developing relationship with consumers, it is imperative for Islamic banks to remove all negative concerns and doubts by developing educative and effective marketing strategy utilizing all their contact channels. Specifically, in reaching to the consumers effectively, Websites can be utilised in giving appropriate, sufficient, and relevant information. The distinctive aspect of this paper is that it analyses the Islamic bank websites which were evaluated against criteria developed through a literature review of existing Islamic banking challenges. Research questions were developed to investigate the issue. This research is Qualitative and descriptive in nature, as two Islamic banks websites of Malaysia were accessed in 2010 and 2014 in order to understand the differences and similarities with regard to website structures, content, information, colour theme and target audiences of marketed web products. By investigating these factors descriptively, this research provides practical suggestions to design effective webpages or promotional messages to educate and inform customers of the distinction between Islamic banking products and services, and those offered by conventional banks. Moreover, along with serving marketing purposes, this study also believes that Islamic banks can use their websites for recruiting, informing consumers about their social activities, and the Shariah board.

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