Burrp.com, the localised lifestyle listings and reviews portal under Infomedia 18, will expand its 10-city coverage, starting with Chandigarh and Kochi. While the Chandigarh-focused offering will be part of Burrp in two months or less, Kochi will follow soon after, informed Mr Vishal Anand, Chief Product Officer.
Speaking to Business Line , he said, “While the rest of the content is city-focused, BurrpTV (a national television content-focused part of the site) gives us a benchmark of how much traffic comes in from where. We launched in Jaipur and Goa recently — on the basis of that data followed up by a feasibility study — Chandigarh and Kochi will be next.”
Other cities being considered on the basis of traffic to BurrpTV are Nagpur, Indore and Surat.
Basic listing on the site is free. Display advertising contributes only 15 per cent of revenues, while sponsored listings and other search and discovery options to highlight listings contribute 80 to 85 per cent.
Mobile Apps, Access, Grow
Access to Burrp is largely from computers, but the opportunity in mobile has not escaped the company's attention. It launched an application through Nokia to promote its WAP site and that has seen traffic growing consistently, according to the spokesperson. “We are seeing a big shift happening to mobile access, and will be launching a BlackBerry application which is in the verification stage. Apps on Android and iPhone should follow,” said Mr Anand.
Marketing Push
Burrp differentiates itself from vanilla listing companies with rich content and user reviews focused on the lifestyle segment. While the maximum traffic is for searches on restaurants and pubs, event listings have become a traffic driver recently.
The site has 1.5 lakh businesses listed on it. Burrp claims an average of 15 lakh unique visitors per month, with 50 lakh visitors recorded in the last week of December — a spike attributed to New Year event listings. So far, there has been no conscious marketing effort, said Mr Anand.
He added, “We are happy the way the business has grown, and have been conscious about not spamming people. Till date, we haven't spent on marketing communications, but are hoping to change that this year. We realise that it's important to start focusing on marketing.”