Data from sahibinden.com revealed that customers’ shopping behavior showed some changes in 2009 compared to previous years. Ertaş, speaking to the Anatolia news agency, stated that the average time an individual customer spent on the Web site increased by 8 percent to 14 minutes, while the total number of pages opened per visit reached 34, indicating that customers started to do more research before making a decision. The average sales price of products offered via sahibinden.com started to decline as of March of last year, he said, adding, however, that the total number of goods sold was in line with the growth of the Web site. “Thus we can say that people did not postpone their purchases but instead chose cheaper products,” Ertaş said.
There were 858,000 active ads on sahibinden.com at the beginning of last year; this figure had risen by more than 50 percent, to 1.3 million, by the end of the year, he said, adding that the greatest increase in active ads was seen in the shopping category, with an 80 percent increase.
Ertaş said the number of sales made on sahibinden.com through use of a secure e-commerce system surged by 135 percent in 2009 over the previous year, indicating that customers have started to place more importance on payment security while shopping online.
The increasing number of active ads along with the number of products sold through the Web site shows that customers are becoming more comfortable with electronic commerce, he said. Last year the number of people using sahibinden.com, he said, increased by 80 percent compared to 2008. Three million out of a total 26 million Internet users use online shopping, Ertaş said, stating that the e-commerce market is poised to grow further in the near future.
