The key question of Market to Sector: What will be the destiny of websites?

H. Murat Şermet
August 21, 2012

The final revisions in the law about the obligation of websites would be considered as it prevents a big chaos. According to revision: If the companies are not in the independent audit category, there will be no obligation of creating a website. So, what do we have after those arguments? Lets underline some details relating to the process.

  • The discussions before the final revisions are beneficial in terms of building awareness to the difficulties of ‘creating a website’ as law expresses. Necessarily, it takes attention to the minimal requirements for sustainability. Moreover, it acts as a separator for the necessity of defining ‘sectoring’.
  • Utopian expectations in the market were the biggest issue that law caused. Some think that they will become rich overnight, and some think they are going to have all services and tools about website for free.
  • Clouding the differences between the companies that really need a website and the companies that are being forced to create a website, has deepen the dilemmas about the prices.
  • The institutions or individuals that don't have sufficient professional teams, sources and basic facilities to meet the requirements, were confusing the market by having an opportunist approach and highlighting the penalty threat of having no website. We anticipate that it will also be prevented with the final revisions.

What if the law came into operation without revisions, how would we define the ‘obligation of creating website’ as we may call the chaos that market will face?

Because of law-maker is responsible of planning a mission that increases the legal audit, law-maker recognized it can use the trending ‘online market’ and the related process for betterment of legal control. However, because of this awareness doesn't mean that the one who saw the issue first are able to systemize the solution, relevant section of the law came into operation with almost impossible requests like notary certified internet book etc.

What will be the destiny of websites? Because there is not an industry yet, “market” couldn’t interfere these requests naturally, -or there were some critics by individuals and organizations. Anyway, it needs be regarded as a big chance that the law didn’t come into operation without revisions. I would like to underline that I didn’t regard sectoral interfere as a deficiency or negative criticism. Conversely, we can count it as an opportunity for clearing the way of market to sector.

This law would come into operation if the council is British Commonwealth. The ones who recently enter British based websites may realize that there are information about privacy policy and cookies. However, with optimism, almost half of the Turkish companies don’t even have their company addresses correctly.

We, as YeniHayat, are working in the field on 33 cities and districts for more than 3 years in order to grab the market. In this 3-year process, while we were trying to understand and analyze the market’s tough points, point of views, expressions and deficiencies of the way to sectoring; we tried to know local market players personally and the way that they make, -or they cannot make- business, tried to see the differences between customer and demander, and finally tried to do best for sharing our observations with components in interest. Sadly, we witnessed that sector doesn't exist. Therefore there is a far possibility of industrialization. So without all these, how would millions of websites be created in a year?

What we mean when we say that “There is an opportunity for market”?

200.000 out of 2 millions existed websites in Internet -a market-adapted conjecture on the domains have been bought from ODTÜ- are company websites. So, more than 1/3 of the total 670.000 companies in Turkey have a website. This is an essential rate, however the rate of 2/3, the companies that don’t have a website, is an opportunity for the market which makes it more essential. Published websites can be considered; they have solutions for domain as they are created ‘in a way’, their hosting services are available as they are published, finally they have design even though in different qualities as design can be handled in a way. So what is the problem if everything is working properly? Again, we come where we started. Content and sustainability.

We say there is an opportunity for web market; we characterize the definitions but where are the sub-components?

  • No enough content experts are available.
  • Original visual design is expensive.
  • Video content is more expensive.
  • Training and institutionalization are just becoming the issue of the day (in terms of “Small and Medium size Enterprise”).
  • Perception of Copy Right issue and practice of the concerning sections of law is deficient..

In new period, although we observe as a social media fact that someone who wishes can call themselves as experts (because there are not an individuals or institutions that will verify); deficiencies and simple mistakes related to the process may be caused to some new complexities day in day out and therefore weak assurance to the market is decreasing. Thankfully, we are having good news too: There are some prosperous attempts like Association of Social Media Communicators (Sosyal Medya İletişimcileri Derneği) and Young IT Specialist (Genç Bilişimciler Derneği) are made by new generation.

As a summary, market is having an industrialization (in fact, unable to be industrialization) pain one way or another. In order to have positive results in this process, all sector components need to have a terminology about least common denominator. Considering that law maker can’t change the decision about opportunities in online market, he will allow the solutions that can plan audit expectations other than omnibus bill. In the case that if the sector does not execute itself, chaos that seemed delayed, may be standing as it carries bigger risks behind those doors.

What did new law have?

TTK (Turkish Commercial Code) desired to put stock corporation (corporation, limited company and limited partnership) in a situation that they have to create a website and publish a lot of information, primarily financial results. In addition, TTK’s 1524/6 section were requiring that contents of the website need to be written under the sequence number to a notary certified book by editing as a text and setting the time and date. According to this adjusting, the published content of a website need to be written to a notary certified book or if its written to a paper, that paper needs to be stick to a book.