The Dark Ages

Having had the opportunity to live abroad, it's quite contrasting how our local businesses approach the whole issue of promoting their businesses online. Large and small, our local businesses don't seem to value the benefits that could accrue from having that online presence.

With the advance of mobile and computing technology, the advent of the smart phones, the whole world is at one's fingertips; the access to information only as slow as one's data connection. This is indeed the digital age, consumers are spending more time online, and so it befuddles me why our Jamaican business don't see being online as being vital in doing business.

With so many Jamaicans in the diaspora one would imagine that our businessmen and women would see the value of going digital in promoting their businesses. Quite frankly, with increasingly busy schedules, no one has time to sit to look through phone directories, to look businesses up and then to sit and call around when one could with the click of a mouse, or scroll of a trackball find other companies who actually make the effort to court their customers.   

Certainly, when in need of a product or service, I like most customers take to the Internet, to get the undiluted truth, free of the well rehearsed spiel (i dunno why but i think it really ought to be spelt schpiel, but that apparently means something else in Yiddish) of the customer service agent, or reassuring soothings of that persuasive business owner. We do our comparisons, check prices and the variation of said prices and get reviews, all on the said big bad Internet. In this day and age when any buffoon can start a Facebook page expounding on the virtues of picking one's toe nails and asking all and sundry to like said activity, all for FREE, it does not take much effort and investment to get that online presence.

We really need to step it up if we are to compete in a global marketplace