The yearly Webrazzi conference in Istanbul (Turkey) is a vital Internet event for the industry. With around 750 business insiders visiting and 4 parallel conference-tracks; the event acts as a magnet for IT industry news and has the indirect effect of attracting the interest of investors looking for new businesses and ideas to develop.
The Turkish market has with great success adapted ideas from some of the more developed markets of the IT industry, such as dating sites, private sales platforms (such as eBay) and even a Turkish spinoff of Spreadshirt is present as a “.tr”.
Discussions about social media aspects and mobile phone applications were hot topics, but as well business oriented speeches and discussion rounds on how and where to invest most effectively had a great impact on the agenda.
As the Turkish people love innovation and technology, the atmosphere of the conference exuded this innovative spirit. From my experience, people here are quick to adapt and are open to new ideas, why everyone were quick to engage in discussions to exchange information and experiences. The innovative spirit in Turkey has a great effect throughout the various networks, and as the mid-size eCommerce market is heading for the fast lane, these networks are more important than ever.
Today we are experiencing a market, where a few larger players have dominated the industry for a long time and the SME’s are therefore eager to gain market share.
Private shopping in Turkey is one of the largest sectors, stressed by a C2C platform having the most traffic of all sites. Price comparison sites are also widely popular, as the Turkish people (as we have discovered in Poland) mostly do their online shopping in order to save money.
In terms of traffic, the big names have managed to maintain a high flow on a daily basis. Now, they are starting to think about what to do with these visitors. Terms like “conversion” are already at the tip of the tongue and ways to increase very low conversion rates are highly sought – and with a ravishing 35M internet users companies are waiting in line to tap in on the potential of the Turkish market.