Characteristics required for the websites of the banks: A case study on Kazakhstan

Leaving its mark to our era, the internet has become the source of substantial changes in economical, social, cultural and political terms. The word "net" from which the internet is produced of, is translated to Turkish as "net" or "network". As a term internet means "the networks of networks". The web page may be defined as follows: it is the HTML page consisting of all composite data transferred at a time by the Web Browser (internet Explorer, Netscape etc.) after being connected to a Web Service, it is obvious that a website designed well in terms of its technical content, aesthetics and functionality, is extremely important for the marketing activities of any company.Bank is a commercial institution which collects the savings of the public as deposits, gives credits to the people who needs or makes investments, mediates for the payments and has services such as bill collection and accepting safety deposits. Bank marketing has to take the special requirements of the banking services into account. These requirements of the banking services are as follows; to be intangible, to be difficult for the evaluation, to have integrity to the place it is given, to be received as soon as it is produced, to have variety in its inputs and outputs, to have a form in a intensive knowledge type, its inability to be stocked up, to be contracted, to be related to money, to have a crucial time factor, to need a continuity in the relationship between the supplier and the customer and to meet a minor need.Besides the physical branches, banks may also provide service through diversified electronic channels. One of these channels is internet, internet Banking ensures the banking transactions to be realized by providing accessibility to the banks through their web sites whenever it is requested. The access of the banks to the internet reveals itself in three ways; extending from the basis on the brochures to the personalized sense of marketing together with the commercial activity. Nowadays almost every transaction that is carried out in the branches of the banks, may also be fulfilled by the internet banking.Regarding the companies desiring to operate in the internet, the tool that is required first is a website where they present their products and services. Web sites are quite useful in terms of informing the customers about the products and penetrating to the global market. By means of a well prepared web site, the banks may enable themselves the distribution of the banking services in the most efficient way.In this case study, the characteristic required for the websites of the banks have been listed under the categories of knowledge, access, ergonomics and habits and according to these characteristic the websites of the banks operating in Kazakhstan have been studied by content analysis method. As a consequence of this survey, the websites of the Kazakhstan banks, 29 of which have active websites, have been analyzed according to the 80 characteristics determined and the 10 most and least used characteristics have been ascertained. Furthermore the 3 best and worst websites have been chosen. Within the scope of the survey, the descriptive analysis method has been used whenever needed and the frequencies and the percentage distributions of the data in the tables have been examined. On the basis of the acquired information, in order to overcome the deficiencies determined in the websites of the banks and to keep up with the more efficient and contemporary banking; some constructive proposals have been put forward.