National Web Portal

1. www.SouthAfrica.info

It is generating the kind of traffic volumes normally associated

with full-blown commercial media websites.

It is leaving its local competitors for dead when it comes to the

all-important internet search result placements.

It is unique among international country web portals for the

range of its content and the frequency with which it is updated.

It is from this position of strength that SAinfo – while maintaining its

foundation in quality content – is implementing a significant strategy

extension/ shift, to create a more interactive website that builds

community around Brand SA by encouraging audience participation

in Brand SA projects.

2007/08 was a year of growth and development for the national web portal, www.

southafrica.info, culminating in the launch of a completely restructured, redesigned

website and a corresponding extension/ shift in its communication strategy.

The past six years have seen the establishment of SouthAfrica.info (SAinfo) as an

authoritative online country reference tool and powerful showcase of Brand South

Africa. Mixing consistently high-quality website content with savvy e-marketing, the

national web portal has evolved to the point where:

52

The National Gateway RedesignedA completely redesigned SAinfo has been launched, drastically improving and modernising the look and feel as well as the structure of the national gateway. The redesign has achieved a number of key objectives, all geared to radically shifting and strengthening the marketing of Brand South Africa.

Traffic GrowthSAinfo met both of its key monthly traffic targets for 2007/08, reaching 3 000 000 page impressions and 300 000 unique users a month. The site also broke the 27-million mark for monthly “hits”.

Internet Search Result PlacementsAcross a widening range of searches involving the keywords “south africa”, SAinfo pages are among the first to greet the virtual visitor to SA. For the great majority of strategic Google searches involving “south africa” (such as “investment opportunities south africa” and “black economic empowerment”), SAinfo comes well within the top 3 search results, completely outperforming any of its competitors.

E-marketing2007/08 saw increased uptake of SAinfo’s e-newsletters (+46%) and

RSS feed (+60%) and the creation of a new feed for mobile/ cellphones.

Building the Brand South Africa CommunitySAinfo’s Community page pulls together Brand marketing and participation initiatives, including the newly launched Your SA Story, which provides a platform for ordinary South Africans to tell the world their side of the South African story.

International Best Practice SurveyWhile an analysis of 13 other country portals helped inform SAinfo’s redesign, one thing was clear: SAinfo remains unique among country portals, both in its breadth of information and in the frequency

with which it updates that information.

Content Updating and MaintenanceSAinfo maintained its high-quality content offering during 2007/2008, publishing 100-150 new articles a month at an average of 5-7 per day. The site now runs to 68 section/ subsection pages and carries, at any one time, over 2 000 articles. Considerable work goes into producing, presenting and managing this content effectively for the web medium – and ensuring that it speaks the language and spreads the message of Brand South Africa to investors, tourists, citizens and the South African Diaspora.

2. THE NATIONAL GATEWAY REDESIGNED

In the last week of March 2008, almost six years since SouthAfrica.info first went live, a completely redesigned

SAinfo was launched – the culmination of months of conceptualisation, consultation and implementation. The

redesign has achieved a number of key objectives, all geared to radically shifting and strengthening the marketing

and promotion of Brand South Africa.

The old...and the new SouthAfrica.info

Improved Structure, Modernised LookBoth the look and feel and the

structure of the site have been

drastically improved and modernised.

A brand new masthead banner – that

subtly changes each time a new page

of the site is visited – uses the colours

and patterns of South Africa’s flag,

and the Alive with Possibility stamp,

to establish the Brand in a simple yet

striking manner.

A slideshow of automatically changing

images – each accompanying a

different lead article – provides a strong

visual “anchor” for the front page, while

enhancing both the impact and the

sense of life/ movement of the page.

Less clutter, quicker navigationGone is the clutter of the previous

design. The new SAinfo is slightly wider,

requires minimal down-scrolling, and is

considerably easier to make sense of.

The organisation and layout of content

is simpler and more intuitive, and a

streamlined menu structure – starting

with a much shortened “top tier” menu

– makes for quicker, more effective

navigation.

Brand ContinuityThe main elements of the design – the

top banner, lead image slideshow,

basic three-column structure and

overall “clean”, uncluttered layout –

are being carried across Brand South

Africa’s other websites, allowing the

Brand identity to translate seamlessly

from SAinfo to the Brand South Africa

corporate website, the soon to be

launched Media Club South Africa

and the forthcoming Brand South

Africa Blog. The new SAinfo has also

been designed to facilitate a significant

shift in website strategy: towards a far

more interactive website that builds

community around Brand South Africa

by encouraging audience participation

in Brand South Africa projects. (See

below: Building the Brand South Africa

Community)

54

3. TRAFFIC GROWTH

SAinfo continued on its strong upward growth path in 2007/08. The site met both of its key monthly traffic targets, reaching

3-million page impressions and 300 000 unique users a month – and also breaking the 27-million mark for monthly “hits”. By

31 March 2008, compared to 31 March 2007:

• SAinfo’smonthlypage impressions grew by 25% to 3 144 432 (March 2007: 2 505 202).

• SAinfo’smonthlyunique users increased by 21% to 300 016 (March 2007: 247 283).

• SAinfo’smonthlyhits grew by 21% to 27 887 946 (March 2007: 22 984 136).

Competing with Commercial PublishersFor a non-commercial, public information website, this kind of traffic is extraordinary. To put it into perspective: the Online

Publishers Association (OPA), which represents South Africa’s 28 biggest internet publishers and 57 biggest websites, issued

its latest quarterly readership figures in December 2007.

If one ranks sites primarily by monthly unique users, as the OPA does, then SAinfo’s fourth-quarter figures would have

put it in 16th place among the top commercial websites in the country – beating the likes of ananzi.co.za, easyinfo.co.za,

sabcnews.com, businessday.co.za and yellowpages.co.za.

SAINFO AUDIENCE AT A GLANCEMarch 2008

Percentage increaseover March 2007

Page views Pages 3.1-million

Unique users People 300 000

Hits http calls 27.8-million

25%

21%

21%

TABLE: Online Publishers Association statistics, top 25 SA websites (Oct-Dec 2007)

Ranking Website PublisherAverage monthly unique users

Further analysis of SAinfo’s traffic statistics reveals that:

At least 50% of SAinfo’s audience comes from abroad.

SAinfo’s visitors come from all over the world: 178 country domains were counted in March 2007, with the US, UK,

Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, France, Brazil and India leading the pack.

1

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10

11

12

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23

24

25

26

news24.com

iol.co.za

MSN

mweb.co.za

Hotmail

webmail.co.za

24.com

health24.co.za

autotrader.co.za

mg.co.za

iafrica.com

thetimes.co.za

fin24.co.za

supersport.co.za

careerjunction.co.za

southafrica.info

yellowpages.co.za

ananzi.co.za

wheels24.co.za

women24.com

bizcommunity.com

motoring.co.za

tonight.co.za

privateproperty.co.za

busrep.co.za

property24.com

Media24

Independent Online

MSN

M-Web

MSN

Interface

Media24

Media24

Auto Trader

Mail & Guardian Online

iafrica.com

Avusa

Media24

SuperSport Zone

CareerJunction

International Marketing

Council of South Africa

Yellow Pages South Africa

Ananzi (Pty) Ltd

Media24

Media24

Bizcommunity.com

Independent Online

Independent Online

Private Property

Independent Online

Media24

1 576 674

1 038 980

846 278

710 727

652 680

636 236

605 281

538 545

538 490

435 605

403 777

374 505

339 536

333 424

287 589

263 570

259 918

257 389

250 747

245 051

204 597

199 751

194 201

168 522

166 101

157 819

56

Underlying SAinfo’s readership growth is the site’s simply

phenomenal performance on internet search engines. It is

when one looks at SAinfo’s search result placements – a

key indicator of website success – that one appreciates the

extent to which the portal has established itself as South

Africa’s leading online country information resource.

Across an increasingly wide range of searches involving the

keywords “south africa”, SAinfo pages are among the first to

greet the virtual visitor to the country. Across the spectrum

of topics – from bird watching to exporting, music to

conferences, languages to telecoms infrastructure – SAinfo

has positioned itself as one of the first-choice sources of

information about the country.

This is especially true when it comes to topics of interest

to potential investors, as well as issues crucial to foreign

perceptions of South Africa, such as HIV/Aids and black

economic empowerment.

The table below charts SAinfo’s performance on the

world’s most popular search engine. Google searches were

conducted for a selected list of 30 strategic keywords or

phrases – a list to which any website that sought to market

South Africa would have to answer.

In each case, the search result placement was compared

with SAinfo’s five closest “competitors” – the websites most

closely resembling SAinfo in terms of type of information,

message and target audience:

Gov.za sites – any website ending with gov.za, including

the sites of bodies such as the Reserve Bank, Airports

Company South Africa, CSIR, and so on, as well as any

South Africa embassy website.

South African Tourism – www.southafrica.net

South Africa The Good News – www.sagoodnews.co.za

Mbendi – www.mbendi.co.za/ Polity.org.za –

www.polity.org.za

4. INTERNET SEARCH RESULT PLACEMENTS

Google has long placed www.southafrica.info/2010/ first for “2010 fifa world cup” and related internet searches. The same goes for a wide range of other strategic search phrases – see the table below.

TABLE: Google search results, SAinfo versus five competitors (March 2008)

1For purposes of comparison, these two independent, but in some respects similar, websites are treated as one

SEARCH KEYWORDS SAinfoGov.za sites SA.net

Search result placement for …

SA The Good News

MBendiandPolity1

south africaofficial guide south africaguide to south africasouth africa factssouth africa map2010 world cup south africafifa world cup 2010world cup south africagovernment south africasouth africa economyinvestment south africainvestment opportunities south africasouth africa commercesouth africa tradeexporting south africaimporting south africablack economic empowermentaids south africasouth africa companiessouth africa telecommunicationssouth africa manufacturingfinancial sector south africacall centres south africabiotechnology south africasouth african innovationseducation south africasouth africa healthcaresouth africa presspolitical parties south africademocracy south africa

62611141231113111331112511121

1

74

29

7591524

1161041153610

74320

27

212

10

22 (p)

8 (p)

16 (m)

13 (m)3 (m)3 (m)24 (p)

20 (m)23 (p)26 (p)30

30 (p)

21

5

25

58

Only the first three pages of Google results were counted in

each case, hence a blank in the table means the site failed

to come up within the first 30 search results. “1” is the best

possible result.

• SAinfo’saveragesearchresultplacementforthe30

searches: 1.96!

The importance of this achievement cannot be overstated.

When it comes to marketing South Africa to investors,

tourists and South Africans abroad via the internet medium,

SouthAfrica.info is leaving its competition for dead.

SAinfo not only “pulls” its audience

via search engines. It also “pushes”

its content to its target audience via a

number of e-marketing features. These

enjoyed continued strong uptake

over the course of 2007/08, and were

bolstered by a new arrival:

SAinfo MobileUsers can now get the latest SAinfo

updates on their cellphone, using a

free mobile service that looks for new

stories as they are posted on SAinfo,

automatically “pushes” this content

to their phone, and notifies them of

updates.

E-mail NewslettersSAinfo’s weekly e-newsletter goes out to

a growing list of voluntary subscribers.

The newsletter is also supplied to

the IMC for distribution to its own

subscriber list, along with a fortnightly

business newsletter for distribution to a

JSE-supplied list of users.

SAinfo’s voluntary subscribers

(weekly newsletter) grew by 46% to

5 362 by 31 March 2008 (March

2007: 3 664).

RSS FeedSAinfo’s RSS feed delivers the site’s

content to news-reading programmes

in an email-like format, providing an

invaluable service to anyone looking for

the most convenient way to keep track

of updating content across a number of

sites.

• SAinfo’smonthlytrafficviaitsRSS

feeds increased by 27% to 197 137

page impressions by 31 March

2008 (March 2007: 154 820).

5. E-MARKETING

6. BUILDING THE BRAND SOUTH AFRICA COMMUNITY

SAinfo’s new Community page pulls

together existing and new Brand

marketing and Brand participation

elements of the site. These include:

Your South African StoryLaunched by SAinfo as part of its

redesign, Your South African Story

provides a platform for ordinary South

Africans to tell their side of the South

African story – their own success

stories, inspirational stories, travel

stories, or stories that otherwise

capture their experience of the country

and its people. A monthly prize for

the best story has been introduced to

encourage participation – starting with

a Canon S5 digital camera valued at

over R4 000.

Brand Champions ProgrammeInformation and links on the IMC’s

multi-faceted campaign – including

both direct training and mass media

components – to build “Brand

Ambassadors” for South Africa.

Alive with Possibility StoriesPart of the above campaign, these case

studies, sourced by the IMC, aim to

inspire South Africans to become active

citizens by giving real-life examples of

individuals and organisations that are

living the Brand – that are helping to

build a South Africa that is Alive with

Possibility.

Global South AfricansA prominent link to the IMC’s Global

South Africans blog – precursor to the

forthcoming Global South Africans

website – the online arm of the IMC’s

initiative to mobilise the South African

Diaspora, to build a network of South

African talent abroad and connect it

to where it can make a difference at

home.

Brand South Africa Marketing MaterialLinks to a range of resources provided

by the IMC to help individuals and

organisations promote South Africa,

both internally and to the rest of the

world.

60

Factored into SAinfo’s redesign were

the results of a survey of 13 different

country portals. Conducted in

September 2007, the survey revealed a

significant shift from SAinfo’s previous

study of international best practice.

The emphasis three years ago was on

a “hard sell” of a country’s attractions:

sites gave prominence to dramatic

imagery and animation effects. Today’s

sites are more “sober”, emphasising

depth of information and ease of

navigation and presenting content in

a more matter-of-fact fashion. This

change in style acknowledges that web

users are better persuaded by credible

information than by “puffery”. It also

vindicates SAinfo, which adopted this

approach from the start.

www.canada.gc.ca

www.visitscotland.com

www.sg

www.australia.com

www.australia.gov.au

www.newzealand.com

india.gov.in

www.spain.info

www.poland.pl

www.i-uk.com

www.portugal.org

www.germany-info.org

www.sweden.se

Canada

Scotland

Singapore

Australia

Australia

New Zealand

India

Spain

Poland

United Kingdom

Portugal

Germany

Sweden

Country portals surveyed September 2007

7. INTERNATIONAL BEST PRACTICE SURVEY

Features that were factored into SAinfo’s redesign:

Focused, strong but not overwhelming, visual impact

Three-column page layout

Simpler navigation structure

The voices of ordinary citizens

Greater use of multimedia content

Content feeds for mobile

None of the international portals

surveyed are truly equivalent to SAinfo,

which is unique in its breadth of

information. Other national sites tend

to focus narrowly on either tourism

or government services. SAinfo, by

contrast, covers a broad sweep of

national information, including both

the public and private spheres, culture,

the economy, development and more.

SouthAfrica.info also stands out among

country portals for the frequency of its

updates. Many similar sites lack the

daily news and feature updates that

keep SAinfo fresh and that attract so

many visitors.

68 section pages, over 2 000 articlesSAinfo is a constantly evolving website,

now running to 68 section/subsection

pages and carrying, at any one time,

over 2 000 articles. Between 100 and

150 new articles are published on the

site every month, at an average of 5-7

per working day.

The site is bursting with well written,

stunningly presented articles on trade and investment, international successes for South Africa and Africa, “second economy”

initiatives, tourism successes, innovations, developments in job creation, anti-corruption and more.

In the background, introductory overview material covers subjects ranging from work permits to investor guidelines, golf

courses to taxation, the education system to whale watching – complete with links to all the important related websites for

those who wish to follow up or find out more.

The core task for SouthAfrica.info is that of maintaining, updating and expanding one of the world’s most comprehensive

country information portals.

South Africa Interactive MapThis is given an extra dimension by a web-based mapping

search engine that is SAinfo’s strongest interactive tool, a

powerful drawcard for the portal, and a major generator of

traffic in its own right.

Number one on Google (for the search “south africa map”),

SAinfo’s map is a sophisticated, quick-loading interactive

facility that allows users to go from national to provincial to

local level in searching for route directions, street addresses,

and entities ranging from accommodation to restaurants to

hospitals to police stations.

Traffic generated by SAinfo’s interactive map increased

by 25% year-on-year to 1 063 890 page impressions at

31 March 2008 (March 2007: 848 600).

8. CONTENT GROWTH

34

230

1 358

1 622

6.6

NEW CONTENT PRODUCED FOR SAINFO IN 2007/08

Overview articles

Feature articles

News articles

Total articles

Average articles per working day

62

Updating, site maintenanceConsiderable work goes into producing, presenting and

managing this content effectively for the web medium –

and ensuring that it speaks the language and spreads the

message of Brand South Africa to investors, tourists, citizens

and the South African Diaspora.

Great care is also taken over maintaining this offering:

checking and updating it for accuracy, closing information

gaps, adding and correcting links – and always making sure

that the site remains easily navigable.

Special focus events/ issuesEvents and issues that received special/ intensive coverage in

2007/08 included:

African Union Summit 2007

Freedom Day 2007

Youth Day 2007

World Economic Forum on Africa 2007

World Association of Newspapers (WAN) Congress 2007

National Arts Festival 2007

Crime statistics 2006/07

Nelson Mandela 89th birthday

2010 National Communication Partnership

Conference 2007

Women’s Month 2007

Heritage Month 2007

Inaugural Twenty20 Cricket World Championship

Rugby World Cup 2007

2010 World Cup Preliminary Draw

Medium Term Budget 2007

16 Days of Activism campaign 2007

World Aids Day 2007

World Economic Forum, Davos 2008

State of the Nation Address 2008

National Budget 2008

African Nations Cup 2008

National electricity supply