Speaking Sensis

Company reporting season is a bit like report time at school. It’s a time to look back and assess whether you’ve achieved what you set out to do.

For most businesses, there’s ultimately two questions that really matter:

Did we deliver sustainable growth for investors?

Did we deliver for our customers? In Sensis’ case, that means have we improved the customer experience for Australian buyers and sellers?

Telstra’s recent financial results announcement answered the first question. It’s now time to consider the second.

So here’s a partial list of the initiatives Sensis has been working on and what they mean for our customers – Australian buyers and sellers.

Buyers can now find Yellow Pages® and White Pages® listings on major search engines. This initiative makes it easier for buyers to find local businesses while adding over one million extra searches for our advertisers every month(1) .

You can search new enhanced content in Yellow Pages® OnLine, including improved in-ad logos, attachments, photo galleries and video (which is currently on trial in Queensland).

White Pages® OnLine users can also enjoy vastly improved search capabilities and more detailed information. This has led to an 80% fall in failed searches on White Pages® OnLine(2) and a 13% rise in user satisfaction(3).

And you can use a whole host of simple new ways to take your local search experience on the road with you:

• Launch of the first Yellow™ In The Car directory, which is now in nine markets;
• Providing Yellow™ Mobile results links as an SMS to 1234 users – over 3.5m SMS links have been sent already;
• Send to mobile and send to GPS capabilities in Yellow Pages® OnLine and Whereis.com.au. These services have been used over 500,000 times in their first few months;
• And we have begun placing Mobile Codes in Yellow Pages® directories so you can transfer your print experience to mobile with one click. The first Mobile code included in the Yellow Pages® directory was for BigPond in Adelaide – followed by Foxtel in Sydney and Camera Action in Melbourne.

You can find helpful new content in the Yellow Pages® print directories, including local maps, public transport routes, a city attraction map and handy hints for new movers.

We’ve also been working with Yellow Pages® advertisers to help them improve the effectiveness and value of their advertising:

• Building out our local office network, beginning with Geelong in Victoria;
• Instituting sales continuity so advertisers can begin building a long-term relationship with their rep;
• Providing coaching in ‘info-rich’ effective advertising principles. We’ve conducted extensive research into what works in Yellow Pages® advertising, begun conducting seminars and placed 85 info-rich trained designers all over Australia.
• We’ve also set up over 7,000 metered ads for customers around Australia. These help advertisers determine exactly how many calls their ads are generating.
• And, Yellow Pages® listings will soon be available in Google Maps due to our recent agreement with Google.

At the same time, buyers can now search Google listings on an Australian search engine – sensis.com.au.

You can now support the environment by purchasing the Green UBD® street directories in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide.

The latest Whereis® satellite navigation maps have had almost 117,000km of road data added or improved and also include new features such as 3D city models for Melbourne and Sydney, junction views and 3D landmarks.

And Whereis.com.au locator buttons have been added. These provide one click access to popular landmarks, such as shopping centres, shopping centres, supermarkets, beaches, car parks, dog parks, libraries, police stations, ATMS, take away outlets and many other popular landmarks.

Australians can bid, buy and sell using the auction facilities at Trading Post® Online. And the new Trading Post® Mobile site has been a particularly big hit, with usage growing five times since we launched it in November(4).

Of course, we’ve been busy in China too. We achieved our target of making Soufun available in 100 Chinese cities and maintained Soufun as the number one real estate site in China.

And we’re now also number one and two respectively in the Chinese online auto and consumer electronics markets thanks to recent acquisitions.

So there’s some of the highlights for the last six months. Certainly not everything we’ve achieved, but I hope enough to demonstrate that we’ve been busy. It certainly feels like I have.

Next time, I’d like to turn my attention forward and ponder some of the big trends we see emerging in the advertising and local search markets.

1. Omniture. Monthly click through data. December quarter 2008.
2. White Pages® OnLine site analytics. October 2008 to January 2009.
3. 2 Degrees Research. White Pages® User Satisfaction Survey, September 2008.
4. Ominture. February 2009 and November 2008.