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Views of the Web: I
by Steve McCabe
Welcome to the first of a series of articles about the Web from a Dominica perspective. It's been several years since I first published a series of articles about a newly-emerging phenomena in Dominica, the Internet. If I ever find copies of the articles, I'll publish the highlights, just to see how we've come along since 1997!
It has been good to see how widely the Internet has reached in to many homes and businesses. Indeed, it has been the tourism sector that has most embraced and benefited from the power of the web. However, one bad habit we developed and need to get out of is the idea that by simply having a domain name the world will instantly see you and buy your product. The debate about whether a .com is better than a .dm is spurious. What we need to realize is that creating your web page or site is just the first step in a long hard march of getting the world to find you and come to you. I've seen several well-done local sites that just cannot be found unless you know the exact domain name. These sites are almost useless to the people they should be working hard for.
The sad consequence is that some people will not fully realize the true potential the web - their experience will be of a web site with few hits or enquiries. It is good that it's so easy to create a web page; it gives power to people. I'm not saying that you always need professional help to realize the potential of your web site. But it will take hard work, dedication and patience to get to where you want to be; for example, web site owners should always be looking at their site statistics and looking for ways to improve traffic to their site.
I will always remember hiking to one of our waterfalls a few years ago and meeting a stranger who told me how they came to Dominica based solely on the great web site they'd seen. That was the web site I'd created! But I also remember the hard work it took to get the web site visible on the web. Indeed, those web sites locally that benefit most are often those that have had domains for the longest.
So, don't expect your web site to work wonders immediately! Having said that, I'm always pleased when a new client gets business from their new page as soon as it goes live. Results like that are not by chance - they are due to a page or site being immediately linked to a high-traffic site like aVirtualDominica.com.
Steve McCabe is CEO of Delphis Ltd.
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