Major Turkish bank Yapı Kredi makes search the focus with the GSA

Posted by Yakup Dogan, Assistant General Manager for Alternative Distribution Channels, Yapı Kredi

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Yakup Dogan, Assistant General Manager in charge of Alternative Distribution Channels at Yapı Kredi, one of the largest retail banks and the largest credit card issuing bank in Turkey. View their case study to learn more and see what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

For me, one of the best things about working at Yapi Kredi is the genuine desire to make the banking experience as simple and enjoyable as possible for our customers. With this in mind, my team and I recently undertook a major re-design project to help improve the customer experience for the three million unique monthly visitors to our website.

And it was a big re-design. We literally got rid of everything on the site apart from a search bar. No confusing menus. No clutter. Visitors to the site can type what they need into the search bar and get directed straight to the answer. It is easy to use and we have had fantastic feedback from our customers. Not only has the number of daily site searches increased by 1000%, but users are spending an extra 30 seconds on average on the site.

Most importantly of all, the shift to the new site has made a genuine business impact. We’ve seen a 134% increase in loan applications since we re-designed the site and I attribute this to how easy it is to navigate around and use the site.



It’s safe to say we couldn’t have done any of this without the GSA. It offered advanced relevancy, ease of use, familiarity and lower TCO. Data security is very important to us and the GSA’s ability to integrate all of the domain’s security features was crucial.

Despite the enormous growth in use of the site, thanks to the GSA the number of admin staff I need to allocate to search remains the same. And because the volume of searches is now so much higher, we can better understand what customers need and are looking for the most. This, combined with web analytics, opens up a high level of insight into our customer’s expectations, frustrations and needs.

This enhanced visibility also enables us to better target our promotion of products to the right people at the right time during their visit, and increase sales. I firmly believe we’ve set a new standard for a simple, effective website experience in the financial sector.