The internet, in a commercial sense, has been in existence since 1995 and despite the slow up take caught on in the developed world. Big companies made sure they had a presence on the world wide web, websites were for the elite as internet access was only for those that could afford it. In the developing world, personal computers were expensive, few had them and the net wasn't even a known factor. My first experience with one was in '96, a Compaq Presario belonging to my cousins with an Encarta encyclopedia disc that opened up the world to me. Safe to say most Zambian companies were only pushing for electronic mail at the time and having their own website was not a priority. At the time, website design and hosting was expensive, very few people with knowledge on hypertext markup language (HTML) existed and they would charge top dollar to have one done so these companies could get away with not having a presence online.
Fast forward to 2013, we have the internet in our pockets and can literally make or break business deals on the go but Zambian companies still have a phobia about having a presence on the internet. I looked up the companies listed on the Lusaka Stock Exchange (LUSE) a while back and noticed that less than half had websites even the LUSE site was not very interactive or informative. At least now, the website has been improved and all the companies have one as well albeit under their multinational parent companies. These are serious people who want to be known and want to sell,the ones that surprise me are the ones termed medium scale businesses. Their focus is to get a Post office box and maybe an email address registered under free mail providers like Hotmail or Yahoo. Others would get one under a local ISP. They think of websites as a nice to have rather than a necessity.
Little do companies know what a powerful tool a website can be. A customer does not have to visit a premises or make a phone call to know what you are about,its as simple as performing a web search and going to the site. The visit would be reserved for the actual business dealings.
There are plenty of good web hosts and design has been made easier with content management system based websites so an organization's excuse for not having an online outlet is nothing but lack of forward thinking. At the minimum a company can open up a page on the world's largest social network, Facebook.
Gone are the days when social networks were frowned upon, now everyone who is anyone has a either a LinkedIn page, Twitter account and a Facebook page or all three making access to information or news very easy for any and everyone.
Its time to embrace the digital age. Get a website made, a mobile app developed and a Facebook to make your company reach more people.
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