Not yet the yellow of the egg
In the future, Yellowworld.ch aims primarily to be a central postal portal and will therefore scale back services unrelated to the postal system
Yellowworld.ch wants to be a centralized postal portal and reduce non-postal servicesBy Clemens Hörler Yellowworld has not gone as planned. Its owner, Swiss Post, therefore went over the books: Yellowworld is to focus more on postal-specific services in the future and become a central postal portal.
Swiss Post has decided to focus its Yellowworld.ch Internet portal more on services and information related to postal products. Yellowworld is to become the central postal portal. An important component will be the virtual post office with financial services from Postfinance and a large information area. However, new offerings will also be launched in which Swiss Post can showcase its core competencies (payment transactions, logistics, etc.). For business customers, a wide range of marketing services, fulfillment services (finance and logistics) and special industry solutions will be offered. In the B2B sector, Yellowworld AG is already operating in the black, according to Gerhard Schwab, CEO of this Internet portal.
The reorientation of Yellowworld is a consequence of the unsatisfactory business performance of the previous portal. Yellowworld had primarily focused on a broad range of news, shopping, games and e-mail services. However, the earnings situation in the portal business had been far below expectations and had not arrived on time, Swiss Post now had to admit. When Yellowworld was launched in September 2000, there was talk of investments of 350 million francs and revenues of 150 million francs in the first three years. These figures have since been revised downwards significantly. However, no jobs are to be cut at Yellowworld.
A retort portal has everything but easy on the Internet
The fact that Yellowworld.ch, with its current orientation, is not one of the top websites among consumers is not necessarily due to the quality of the content. The question is whether content in itself is a sufficient reason to visit a horizontal portal or whether users do not prefer to go directly to the website of their daily newspaper. Add to this the fact that Yellowworld is a retort portal. As such, it was not built around a central, well-known service such as a search engine or Internet access, but was more or less created from scratch. This is where Yellowworld differs from SwissOnline or Bluewin. Even the latter's users do not primarily click on the portal to read the latest news. But at least these portals have the possibility to lure the users with cleverly placed headlines right after dialing in or with the use of another service and to encourage them to stay.
Yellowworld would therefore do well to link the portal more closely to new postal services. These are also in demand on the web. According to MMXI Europe's Digital Media Audience Ratings Report, Swiss Post websites are among the top 20 properties among Swiss home users, with Yellownet.ch leading the way.
In the future, visitors who type the address www.post.ch on their keyboards will be redirected to Yellowworld. Other postal services on the Internet will also be integrated, according to Schwab. At the very least, the postal portal will now be more closely linked to the websites of Post Finance (Yellownet.ch, for example).
Swisscontent remains content partner of the postal portal
The reorientation of the content from a multimedia news and lifestyle portal to a postal portal logically also has consequences for Yellowworld's content partner, SwisscontentCorp. Swiss Post media spokesman Hubert Staffelbach said that content on the portal would continue to be supplied by Swisscontent. However, the type and volume would depend on future needs, he said. "There will be savings in horizontal content, as well as in non-profitable, non-postal offerings," Schwab specified. Multimedia content is also to be dispensed with.
However, Yellowworld does not have a completely free hand in the cost-cutting exercises, because Swiss Post must take into account the existing longer-term contracts with Swisscontent. Bendicht Luginbühl, CEO of Swisscontent, said he was open to market adjustments as long as they remained within the framework of the jointly developed content strategy.
Yellowworld is in good company for the realignment
Yellowworld is not the only Swiss portal that has had to go over the books in recent months. As already reported in WerbeWoche, market leader Bluewin was also forced to revise its portal strategy and reprioritized the portal's various offerings. The reason: the unsatisfactory earnings situation in the portal business.
A few weeks ago, Cablecom also announced that SwissOnline would have to tighten its belt. All business areas and projects of the "better world" are being examined for their profitability or cost-benefit ratio. Unlike at Yellowworld, the restructuring at Bluewin and SwissOnline will also lead to job cuts.
The cost-cutting efforts and realignments of the major Swiss portals show that many players have bitten off more than they can chew, especially in terms of content, and have calculated advertising revenues somewhat optimistically. The challenge for them at present is to develop new sources of revenue and to concentrate on those areas which are really in demand by users in the small Swiss market and which can also be reasonably financed.
Swiss Post has decided to focus its Yellowworld.ch Internet portal more on services and information related to postal products. Yellowworld is to become the central postal portal. An important component will be the virtual post office with financial services from Postfinance and a large information area. However, new offerings will also be launched in which Swiss Post can showcase its core competencies (payment transactions, logistics, etc.). For business customers, a wide range of marketing services, fulfillment services (finance and logistics) and special industry solutions will be offered. In the B2B sector, Yellowworld AG is already operating in the black, according to Gerhard Schwab, CEO of this Internet portal.
The reorientation of Yellowworld is a consequence of the unsatisfactory business performance of the previous portal. Yellowworld had primarily focused on a broad range of news, shopping, games and e-mail services. However, the earnings situation in the portal business had been far below expectations and had not arrived on time, Swiss Post now had to admit. When Yellowworld was launched in September 2000, there was talk of investments of 350 million francs and revenues of 150 million francs in the first three years. These figures have since been revised downwards significantly. However, no jobs are to be cut at Yellowworld.
A retort portal has everything but easy on the Internet
The fact that Yellowworld.ch, with its current orientation, is not one of the top websites among consumers is not necessarily due to the quality of the content. The question is whether content in itself is a sufficient reason to visit a horizontal portal or whether users do not prefer to go directly to the website of their daily newspaper. Add to this the fact that Yellowworld is a retort portal. As such, it was not built around a central, well-known service such as a search engine or Internet access, but was more or less created from scratch. This is where Yellowworld differs from SwissOnline or Bluewin. Even the latter's users do not primarily click on the portal to read the latest news. But at least these portals have the possibility to lure the users with cleverly placed headlines right after dialing in or with the use of another service and to encourage them to stay.
Yellowworld would therefore do well to link the portal more closely to new postal services. These are also in demand on the web. According to MMXI Europe's Digital Media Audience Ratings Report, Swiss Post websites are among the top 20 properties among Swiss home users, with Yellownet.ch leading the way.
In the future, visitors who type the address www.post.ch on their keyboards will be redirected to Yellowworld. Other postal services on the Internet will also be integrated, according to Schwab. At the very least, the postal portal will now be more closely linked to the websites of Post Finance (Yellownet.ch, for example).
Swisscontent remains content partner of the postal portal
The reorientation of the content from a multimedia news and lifestyle portal to a postal portal logically also has consequences for Yellowworld's content partner, SwisscontentCorp. Swiss Post media spokesman Hubert Staffelbach said that content on the portal would continue to be supplied by Swisscontent. However, the type and volume would depend on future needs, he said. "There will be savings in horizontal content, as well as in non-profitable, non-postal offerings," Schwab specified. Multimedia content is also to be dispensed with.
However, Yellowworld does not have a completely free hand in the cost-cutting exercises, because Swiss Post must take into account the existing longer-term contracts with Swisscontent. Bendicht Luginbühl, CEO of Swisscontent, said he was open to market adjustments as long as they remained within the framework of the jointly developed content strategy.
Yellowworld is in good company for the realignment
Yellowworld is not the only Swiss portal that has had to go over the books in recent months. As already reported in WerbeWoche, market leader Bluewin was also forced to revise its portal strategy and reprioritized the portal's various offerings. The reason: the unsatisfactory earnings situation in the portal business.
A few weeks ago, Cablecom also announced that SwissOnline would have to tighten its belt. All business areas and projects of the "better world" are being examined for their profitability or cost-benefit ratio. Unlike at Yellowworld, the restructuring at Bluewin and SwissOnline will also lead to job cuts.
The cost-cutting efforts and realignments of the major Swiss portals show that many players have bitten off more than they can chew, especially in terms of content, and have calculated advertising revenues somewhat optimistically. The challenge for them at present is to develop new sources of revenue and to concentrate on those areas which are really in demand by users in the small Swiss market and which can also be reasonably financed.
