Name of your website?SmallShop-The Caribbean Search Engine
Your name?
Anton Small
Your Location (city, etc)
Bridgetown
When did you start your website and why?
Our website was started in December 1997 as a means of capitalizing on the new technology by marketing our caribbean products.
Please give us a short summary of your website, business model, etc
Our present model still consists of internet retailing but we have included advertising and domain name services. We also maintain a portfolio of some very good travel related domains for investments purposes, such as flyaustria.com.We operate fully online.
What has been the most difficult part of creating and running your website?
Getting a merchant account for an online business was virtually nonexistent in the caribbean when we started and things haven't changed much since then. We are based on the island of Barbados.
Then of course is the marketing....
What has been the easist part of operating your website?
Getting a functional website up is pretty easy
What was your biggest mistake?
Committing an unknown error that caused our site to be removed from the google index.
Who maintains your website and why?
Our website is very low maintenance at present.We want to keep it as easy and as effective as possible.
Tell us how your business has benefitted from your website?
Our Business is our website
What are your views on ecommerce and the future of the internet?
There is still tremendous growth to be had in ecommerce but I think the true power of the internet is yet to be realised particularly in synergies between online and offline activities.
The trend towards web based applications however is what I believe to be the future and I expect that more and more computing and digital activities will eventually be done mostly online.
What are your views on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
I really don't think that you should really be optimizing for a search engine.It is much better to optimize for the end user.
What are your views on Search Engines? Have they helped or hindered your website?
All I can't say is that they have help in some instances and hindered in others. What I have learned is that non search engine traffic is crucial and it makes sense to increase the non search engine traffic.More and more though when you say search engine you are meaning Google
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Most of our traffic comes from referral links and persons who directly type our name into the address bar
What method has been least successful for promoting your website?
Newspapers
What would you like to see change with respect to the internet?
I would like to see it trend faster toward online web applications but it is heading that way.
You can enter a question of your choice and the answer here:How has your site changed over the years?
Our original concept was to create our own search directory as simple as possible and use it to promote our products.It actually worked quite well.If you look at our site now you will see that we have been utilizing technology from google to create our own search engine.
The idea being that we can create a very specific search engine that gives our users what they are looking for and without having to re-invent the wheel.
The internet is moving in a very collobrative way and we want to simply and easily piggy back on this technology where available while benefiting our end users ina very serious way.
What is your website address?
SmallShop-The Caribbean Search Engine