Jordan’s businesses need greater web presence

Businesses in Jordan and the Arab world can reach out to a wider audience by going online, according to experts in e-commerce. Companies in various sectors — retail, food, entertainment and others — can also boost their revenues significantly by establishing an online presence, the experts said, adding that Jordan and the Middle East in general are in need of more websites selling services and products online. “When companies have an online presence, they have a tremendous chance to get a bigger audience,” Alfonso De Gaetano, industry head of e-commerce for the Gulf Cooperation Council states at Google, said in an e-commerce conference held this week by Wamda, a regional programme that supports entrepreneurs. About 60 per cent of Internet users in the Middle East go online daily and 90 per cent of them use search engines to look for services, products or information, he said. Martin Waldenstrom, CEO of CashU, agreed. “There is a huge potential for businesses to realise growth in their revenues and audience if they go online,” Waldenstrom said in an interview with The Jordan Times on the sidelines of the conference. “Businesses that want to be successful and mushroom need to be online, which is the future,” Citruss TV co-founder Michael Trueschler said during the conference. The experts, however, said businesses that launch websites also need to focus on search engine optimisation (SEO), which makes their websites easier to find. “There are more than 10 billion web pages on the Internet. Therefore, SEO is important as it improves the visibility of a website in search engines,” said De Gaetano. The experts also mentioned that businesses should focus on posting videos on their websites as the future of communication in the next few years will be through videos. Internet penetration in Jordan reached about 50.5 per cent by the end of 2011, according to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission. Jordanian Internet users spent $370 million on products, services and online bill payments in 2011, a 92 per cent increase from $192 million in 2010, according to a report by the Arab Advisers Group. By The Jordan Times