Revenue is not our focus; it’s customer service, says ikman.lk head
While celebrating two years of performance in Sri Lanka, ikman.lk, the country’s largest online classified business website has long term business plans in the country. Within the course of two years ikman.lk never focused on revenue, but on the customer service and now plans to move forward, said Alexander Lowback, head of ikman.lk.
He made this comment to the Business Times on the sidelines of the media briefing held at the ikman.lk office in Colombo last Tuesday. Adding to that he said, “We have planned a step-by-step long term business in Sri Lanka. Create a well established brand and make all our buyers and sellers use our platform in a flexible manner.”
Stefan Beekmeyer, Director Marketing of ikman.lk told the Business Times that the number of visitors (2.5 million a month) at ikman.lk measures the performance of the website in Sri Lanka. 95 per cent of the visitors are from Sri Lanka and the rest from overseas which makes ikman.lk the no. 1 local site in Sri Lanka, he said.
“ikman.lk creates the platform for the buyers and sellers where the transactions are made independently by themselves. We don’t get involved in the transaction. Today our main source of revenue is digital banners and main featured advertisements,” added Mr. Beekmeyer.
Due to the huge prominence the site gained, ikman.lk introduced special features targeting both corporate and individual users. Banner ads would allow companies to directly interact with a specific user group. Features specifically for the individual users, such as ‘bump up’ and ‘top ad’ would allow them to give more prominence to their ads over others.
ikman.lk commissioned an independent research agency TNS to assess the websites’ success in Sri Lanka. ikman.lk had the best top of mind recall in awareness for categories in buying and selling used cars and vehicles, electronics, houses, land and apartments. For categories such as home and personal items, leisure, sports and hobbies, ikman.lk obtained the top position in top of mind recall, however was closely followed by other methods, he said.
The site had very high awareness in the region of Colombo, Anuradhapura, Badulla and Trincomalee. The research also indicates that browsing online for purchasing or pre-purchase information is amongst the top five things Sri Lankan Internet users do online.