New website design for the Port of Hamburg

30. Sep 2009 —

The redesigned internet portal www.hafen-hamburg.de now offers even more information about Germany’s biggest universal port

The internet portal www.hafen-hamburg.de, which is designed and managed by Port of Hamburg Marketing Regd. Assn., has been completely overhauled. It now presents a completely new appearance and includes a lot of additional content. Consisting of 1371 web pages in all, it offers a wide range of information about the various aspects of the marine transport industry in German, English, Chinese, Russian, Polish and Czech. Further languages will be added presently.

‘The numbers of internet visitors to the port were already impressive, with 1.1 million visits in the year 2008. We are hoping to build on this with our new website design, while offering potential customers and partners of the Port of Hamburg from all over the world up-to-date information about the wide range of services supplied and recent developments at the port. We have also developed an information platform for the benefit of our member companies from Hamburg, the neighbouring regions and the hinterland. This will promote and encourage direct customer enquiries and business contacts,’ explained Port of Hamburg Marketing’s Managing Director Claudia Roller as the new website went live.

For visitors to the Port of Hamburg website, the web pages offering contact and service data for the various service companies at the port are amongst those most frequently consulted. So the yellow pages facility has now been expanded, and the port’s associate members have been offered the option of a thumbnail sketch free of charge, incorporating the address and logo of the company. Internet users will now have an easier time finding the service provider they are looking for, helped by a variety of search options (full text search, alphabetic search, search by industry or by keyword and so on).

Ports along the Elbe and in the neighbourhood that are members or partners of Port of Hamburg Marketing also figure at the www.hafen-hamburg.de portal.

Ship-spotters will be pleased to find that the new plan of the port gives them the exact position of ships currently docked at the Port of Hamburg. Another new features is the ‘Points of interest’ heading, included under the port plan. This will be going online soon, and is designed to supply information about building activities and transport developments at the port of which Port of Hamburg Marketing has been notified.

Numerous overviews and statistical details about the goods handling terminals at the port and the goods that pass through them have also been made available. A ‘Departures database’, combined with a map of the world, supplies information about the regular services linking the Port of Hamburg with European and overseas ports. Feeder service departures are included here as well. More than 120 destinations in 24 different countries are targeted by regular seaport to hinterland services. The expanded website gives comprehensive information about these, as well as details of inland waterway services for container shipments.

‘Quick links’ are an additional feature, offering further information and interactive options. Water levels along the Elbe are displayed, thanks to the cooperation of the Waterways and Shipping Administration of the Federal Government. To assist persons looking for jobs at the port, a partnership with www.hafenkarriere.de has made it possible for details of vacancies in the marine transport industry to be included at the Port of Hamburg site. Another partnership with Hamburg Tourismus now enables visitors to the website to make hotel bookings directly from the internet portal.

Final touches are provided by a section dedicated cruiser shipping, short films supplied by earth TV and the port’s live webcam, which offers views of seven different areas of the harbour.

Port of Hamburg associate members can publish company news aimed at the general public directly online. In addition to port press releases and news of the marine transport industry, representatives of the media can now also access a photographic archive. Press pictures can be directly downloaded for printing. Numerous statistical listings and graphic diagrams relating to foreign trade complete the picture. Answers to frequently asked questions will be found under the FAQ heading on any of the various thematically organised pages.

Facts and figures about www.hafen-hamburg.de

Number of visitors in 2008: about 1.1 million

Clicks in 2008: 3.6 million clicks (not counting webcam access)

Average number of visitors daily: 3000

Total number of pages: 1371 (as at 28.09.09)

Ports included in the database: more than 1000

Number of ship photos: more than 1900 (as at 23.09.09)

Languages: German, English, Chinese, Russian, Czech and Polish

Partners responsible for content:

earthTV.com, vesseltracker.com, hamburg-tourism.de and wsd.de, as well as the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) and member companies of Port of Hamburg Marketing