ARE BUSINESSES SUCCEEDDING IN SRI LANKA

THROUGH ONLINE MARKETING?

Authors:

Arjun Rajeswaran

Virtusa (Pvt) Ltd

Nishanthi Raveendran

University of Peradeniya

Online marketing…

Introduction Online marketing is a form of marketing and advertising to

deliver messages to customers in attractive and effective way and

keeps communication via internet. It includes email marketing,

Search Engine Marketing(SEM), social media marketing, many

types of display advertising , and mobile marketing.

It is the new trend of marketing in all over the world in last

couple of decades and leads to a new world that is so small that we

can buy anything with touch of our fingertip.

Due to the improvements in the web designing and other

technologies with regard to the internet, the internet advertising

methods and online marketing are getting improved day by day.

Factors behind online marketing1. New trends and developments for online marketing

• Mobile friendly web sites

• New business strategies

• Pay per click advertisements

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• E- mail marketing

• Google facilities

• Social media

• Rotating testimonials, forums and blogs

Contd…..

2. Internet Penetration in Sri Lanka

• The number of internet users in Sri Lanka is growing rapidly and at

present Sri Lanka boasts of a total population of 21 million. From these,

over four million of Sri Lankans have online access.

• Since there is a vast expansion of internet facilities, Sri Lankan internet

users spend much amount of time to surfing the net for various

purposes continues to increase.

• According to the latest published report by internetlivestats.com, Sri

Lanka is ranked 74th among 198 counties, in terms of internet users. It

is having 4,267,507 internet users with 19.9% penetration. And it is

expected that it will reach the mass of 50% penetration in few years .

Internet penetration by year

User platforms

Methodology

According to the web sites ranking of Alexa.com top 500 web

sites are taken and within them top 41 web sites which are

providing online marketing services in Sri Lanka are selected.

It is divided into 6 major categories such as online shopping,

shopping classifieds, finance and banking, internet and

telecom, government and career education.

Mainly considered the traffic that directed to each online

marketing site. To get traffic detail, we used similarweb.com.

Find out top 500 websites of Sri Lanka

Find out 41 Sri Lankan sites which are providing the online marketing

Divided into six major category

online shopping

finance and

banking

shopping and

classifieds

internet and

telecomgovernment career

education

Find out the traffic of each sites

Contribution of social media

Find out the traffic

source

Number of websites in each category

Getting traffic details through Similarweb.com

• We used similarweb.com to collect traffic details which is

directed to each web sites by using similar web chrome

addon.

• We could get six month traffic data (From September

2014 to February 2015 ).

• It could able to analyze each category and sources, from

which, the traffic is directed to each site and details

about social media on online marketing.

Traffic from each category( monthly)

Monthly average traffic

Average traffic

CategoriesAverage monthly traffic

for each website

Shopping Classifieds 55,207.81

Online Shopping 11,512.32

Internet and Telecom 38,834.65

Finance and Banking 50,179.47

Government 15,030.43

Career and Education 67,402.67

Traffic from each category (monthly)

Internet-

Telec

om

Finan

ce an

d bankin

g

online S

hopping

shopping -

Classifi

elds

caree

r - ed

ucation

Govern

ment

0

1000000

2000000

3000000

4000000

5000000

6000000

totalAvgl

The traffic of shopping classifieds is remarkable. And online shopping also shows the higher degree of traffic. At the same time, government service shows the lower value of traffic.

Average traffic from each web site

Most popular websites in Sri Lanka in each category

Shopping classifieds – ikman.lk

Online shopping – wow.lk

Internet and telecom – dialog.lk

Government – dlb.lk

Finance and banking – combank.net

Career and education – topjobs.lk

Top 500 websites in Alexa.com

How to get website’s rankAlexa AddonSimilarWeb Addon

Getting details from Similarweb.com

Add-on’s is used for data collection

(Add on available at Google chrome store)

Traffic SourcesThere are mainly six sources are influenced on traffic to each web site.

Direct traffic

Referrals

Search traffic

Social traffic

Mail

Display

Out of all sources, search traffic and direct traffic are main

contributors to whole traffic of each web site.

Traffic from each source

Social media on online marketing

Some social media sites…..

Some facts on social media

Social media channels are fast growing in Sri Lanka with a

substantial growth in internet connectivity .

Face book is outperforming than any other media and it is

more popular in Sri Lanka than advertising on Google Ad

words.

Face book with approximate 2,900,000 users which is

about 13.52% of Sri Lanka’s total population and 67.96% in

relation to number of internet users. In other words more

than half the internet users have face book accounts.

Contribution of each social media

Traffic from each social media (%)

Challenges in online marketing in Sri Lanka

Cont….. Compare to retail market in Sri Lanka, internet market has a smaller share. Reaching the online population which is approximately 20% at this moment is not enough for a business. Sri Lankans still show some degree of hesitation when it comes to making a purchase online for the following reason.

A lot of people still do not believe thing that are not tangible. Postal service and courier service are sometimes unreliable delivery. Companies may not be able to guarantee prompt delivery.

The traditional consultants and advertising agencies in Sri Lanka are too don’t know much about these latest trends in online marketing.

Limitations and suggestion for future studies….

This study was examined only 41 online marketing sites due to

the time and availability since there are not much online

marketing in Sri Lanka. It is suggested to increase the number of

web sites as to get more accurate results.

Considering past 3 or 4 years data will give more accurate

results.

Consideration of online sale per year will also give more details

about the trend of online marketing.