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Online Services
Hürriyet Gazetecilik, constantly expands its readership via websites with different content and mobile communications applications.
One of Hürriyet’s chief business goals is to expand its leading position in print media to online news coverage. With this goal in mind, hurriyet.com.tr was launched on January 1, 1997, representing one of the earliest instances of an online newspaper in Turkey. Moving beyond the function of appearing as the online version of Hürriyet newspaper in October 2000, the website grew into a full-fledged news portal offering a continuous stream of the latest news 24-hours each day. According to data from Alexa, hurriyet.com.tr was the most visited Turkish news portal in Turkey and the world’s 350th most visited website in 2009. The number of registered users reached 1,370,000 in 2009. hurriyet.com.tr continued to enhance its contents and sections in 2009 and added many novelties in the websites. The new features are as follows:
In 2009 the housing supply in the real estate sector grew on an average of 10% whereas the number of new houses decreased 20% over 2008. The number of ads in the second hand housing market almost doubled and prices of houses on sale declined by an average of 5% and that of houses on rent by 11%. According to these indicators the housing supply increased whereas the demand contracted. Hürriyet Emlak managed to attain significant increases in operational indicators in 2009, a difficult period for all businesses. Hurriyetemlak.com attained the following figures as of end-2009:
In 2009, Hürriyet Emlak consolidated its leadership and boosted customer satisfaction and loyalty with value added services. During 2009, Hürriyet Emlak cooperated with Netron to launch the Gayrimenkul Danışmanlığı Sertifika Programı (Certified Real Estate Consultancy Program), approved by the Ministry of Education and allowing real estate agents to better adapt themselves to the requirements of the sector. In addition, the Emlak Endeksi (Property Index), prepared in collaboration with GFK in order to bring together the values of the real estate in the market, had a face lift and was launched at www.emlakendeksi.com. Hürriyet Emlak launched a new search/filtering infrastructure in 2009 to allow users to make more rapid and efficient searches. Additionally, 2009 became the year of initiation of mobile projects when it was possible to check ads via SMS. Mobile services will be further enhanced in 2010. In 2009 Hürriyet Emlak solidified its quality as a vertical portal focused on the real estate sector by the Sana Ne /Bana Ne (“What do you care; what do I care?”) campaign and during the campaign the number of individual users soared by 30%. These efforts bore fruit among consumers, too. In Turkey’s Digital Lovemarks survey carried out by IPSOS KMG, Hürriyet Emlak came first in the real estate website category, confirmed to be the most popular brand in its category. In 2010, Hürriyet Emlak shall continue to reinforce its leadership with new services and user friendly structure.
The automotive sector shrank 20% in the first quarter of 2009; however, from the second quarter onwards, thanks to a temporary reduction in the Private Consumption Tax (ÖTV), the sector picked up and closed the year with an overall increase of 13%. As sales of new automobiles picked up, second hand sales started to struggle, nevertheless with the termination of the ÖTV reduction, the second hand market, too, started to recover. Hürriyet Oto changed strategy in 2010, to focus more on individual sales. As a result of this strategy, the year 2009 was designated as a period of change and user friendly practices were geared up. The search and filtering infrastructure in the website was brought to the highest level possible, screens for posting or listing ads were enhanced with user friendly practices and a vehicle rating system was launched in order to allow consumers to share their experiences on a common platform. www.hurriyetoto.com has been renewed in parallel with this change in strategy; re-launch is planned for the beginning of 2010. Inline with the portal Hürriyet Emlak, Hürriyet Oto also chose searching ads via SMS as a strategic introduction to mobile services; such services will be diversified in 2010. In 2009, Hürriyet Oto attained considerable increases within all indicators, except the category of corporate customers with packages. Especially the 98% increase in the number of ads and the 152% boost in the number of individual members, all remarkable achievements for the general strategy, financial returns, as well as the vision of becoming sector leader in two years.
Launched in December 2009, for the purpose of raising consumer awareness by helping them find the most suitable options rapidly, Hürriyet Kıyasla (www.hurriyetkiyasla.com) currently brings together sector wide data regarding consumer loans, allows for user friendly calculations and comparisons and finally, prepares loan applications for the end user. The website was inspired by websites abroad and its short term business plan includes the incorporation of more consumer financing products (time deposits, credit cards etc) and other services (insurance, telecommunications, tickets etc). The number of online personal loan applications increased in 2009; this trend is predicted to strengthen in 2010. Hürriyet Kıyasla aims to become first among all such comparative websites active in Turkey since 2006.
Yenibiris.com offers 54,000 firms - from large scale multinational companies to medium and small scale firms - online personnel selection and evaluation services. Yenibiris.com has more than 10,300,000 resumes registered. Yenibiris.com’s vision is to become the main address for job seeking in the business world. Its mission is to provide added value to the business world by applying its innovative ideas via up-to-date technology to shape the labor market. Yenibiris.com constitutes an interactive platform among employees and job seekers and thereby facilitates the recruitment and job seeking processes. It functions as an intermediary for corporations trying to access the labor force that they need and to develop appropriate human resource selection and evaluation strategies. In 2009 yenibiris.com attained;
In 2009, the employment market was one of the sectors worst hit by the crisis. The total market for job and HR sites contracted by 26%; nevertheless Yenibiriş closed the year as the website least influenced by this contraction. According to the results of the Selas Turkey Internet Use Habits Survey November 2009, Yenibiriş is the first website that comes to mind and the most used website. Yenibiriş transformed the crisis into an opportunity for improving business processes and restructured its Product Development, Software Development, Marketing and Sales Departments.
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