The web service provider is finally seeing the results of its massive makeover exercise
Yahoo India grew twice as fast as the market last year. The reach (measured as the number of unique users visiting Yahoo in India as a percentage of total internet users in India) increased from an average of 65 per cent to 81.4 per cent during the period, according to latest comScore data.
That should come as a great relief to Yahoo India bosses, as the once dominant player was losing its grip over Internet users gradually, which was evident from the sliding market share. Besides Google and its affiliate sites, which continue to lead, Facebook and YouTube were also posing a serious challenge in the social networking space.
In 2009, Yahoo decided enough is enough and launched one of the most ambitious makeover exercises in corporate India: a brand campaign called “Yahoo! It’s You” which went hand in hand with its new strategy: simplifying online experiences and making them meaningful, relevant, and fun. For that, it even decided to understand the location, demographic profile and what the consumer had been using in the past so that it could give the users what they wanted.
Yahoo India Managing Director Arun Tadanki says in a bid to ensure that the campaign is accompanied by change in content, Yahoo also introduced some key innovations in its core consumer products like Home Page, Email, Search and Messenger. Yahoo also launched new products like a celebrity gossip site called OMG.
But the first thing Yahoo did was to rework the homepage to let users choose what content they want to see; it has simplified Yahoo Mail, added video calling to Yahoo Messenger, and launched new mobile apps, including Yahoo! Finance and Flickr. Yahoo also made some impressive moves to differentiate its user search experience. For example, Yahoo Search Direct, which places instant results and page previews right in the query box.
Yahoo India Managing Editor Prem Panicker says, the tendency everywhere is to lump “entertainment” into one category, not differentiating between the serious side of it (movie reviews, stories about production houses, box office performance, etc) and the softer side (personal stories about the stars).
OMG, he says, is also spot-on in terms of relevance to the targeted consumer. “Though these are early days yet, the surge in unique users and page view count leads us to believe that we have understood the needs of a particular class of consumers,” Panicker says.
Targeted content and targeted marketing seems to be at the core of Yahoo’s strategy. In 2011, as smartphones and mobile browsers become the norm, Yahoo has tuned in to make access easier to its content and services while on the go. “We are focusing on simplifying and enhancing the experience and have developed more robust mobile experiences like our mobile homepage, which is available across more than 95 per cent mobile phones in India,” says Tadanki.
Mobile platform is key to the future of the Internet in India and the momentum is accelerating. At present, Yahoo estimates that India has about 20-24 million mobile internet users but most of them are “dual users” (using both PC and Mobile).
Tadanki says that the mobile internet user base will double every year for the next three years, driven by affordable smart phones, improving quality of access and reducing data tariffs. “In less than two years, there will be more people accessing the Internet on a mobile phone than on a PC,” he adds.
Moving ahead in the mobile sphere, Yahoo has forged partnerships with over 90 per cent of India’s mobile service providers. The global alliance with Nokia, wherein Yahoo will power Ovi mail and chat, is expected to be a big driver in a market like India. Besides, the company has tied up with a number of large Indian OEM brands to provide bookmarks and Yahoo launcher links on the home menu of the data devices shipped.
Yahoo’s closest competitor, Google too has its eyes on the mobile platform. Google is tackling that opportunity with mobile search with fast-penetrating Android operating system, which comes with Google search built-in as the default. Already 350,000 Android devices are being activated every day, giving Google the push to thwart Yahoo.
Yahoo, meanwhile, has also made some right moves to improve its monetization rates. It shut down under-performing sites social bookmarking service Delicious, search engine AltaVista, online news aggregator Buzz, and social network MyBlogLog. Yahoo is also leveraging Facebook’s large user base to attract more traffic to its own sites by installing tools such as “Like” and “Share.” These tools will enable Facebook users to share Yahoo content with their friends, and create a viral effect through which Yahoo can attract more traffic.
Social integration too is a big part of Yahoo’s overall strategy this year. The company has integrated social features across all Yahoo properties. For example, with the new Yahoo Mail Beta, users can flip photos and view videos, which make the experience more interactive.
One can play Zynga games along with friends in Yahoo Messenger or read a cricket match report on Yahoo and post that on Facebook. “Users can successfully share and retrieve all Facebook updates and news feeds in their Yahoo mail inbox or messenger. Users can not only view their Facebook Wall but can also connect and communicate without going into their respective Facebook accounts,” says Tadanki.
