New Web Directory for the Cayman Islands

Source: Cayman Net News Monday, March 7, 2005 The 21st Century has seen a drive in technology that could never have been imagined just a couple of decades ago. Suddenly, with the astronomic rise in popularity of the Internet, information is accessible 24 hours a day seven days a week and it seems there is no stopping the technology drive or our thirst for instantly available information. Translated into the business environment, the Internet has become a powerful and essential tool for promoting and marketing goods and services, while opening up a customer base to the widest possible audience.

Hilary McKenzie Cahill (left and Cathy Williams (right)

With the explosion of the Internet over the last decade the number of websites has grown from 4,852,000 in January 1995 to 317,646,084 in January 2005 (statistics produced by Internet Systems Consortium Inc). According to Forrester Research, 3,500,000 websites are now being created everyday, globally.

Many local companies here in Cayman have had the foresight to invest in the future and develop a website that will undoubtedly bring them on par with the rest of the world as far as economic development is concerned. However, investing money in the development of a site is only part of the equation, promoting that site is equally as important, to avoid being lost in an infinite sea of information.

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Internet users need to be equipped with some basic tools in order to assimilate and collate the vast array of information that is out there in cyberspace. The majority of Internet users are not technologically savvy and URL website addresses are not always intuitive, and simply typing the name of a company into a search engine does not necessarily bring up the website of that company.

Following extensive market research which exposed this gap in the market, a local Caymanian company called Alfresco Advertising Ltd has produced Ecay.

Ecay is Cayman’s first printed web directory publication which is also supported by an online portal. This annual publication conveniently sources and concisely lists website addresses for all government agencies, financial services, local businesses, cultural and tourism websites in the Cayman Islands.

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The creators of Ecay are long-time residents of the Cayman Islands with strong publishing backgrounds, and have a real understanding of the Cayman market. Hilary McKenzie-Cahill who is Alfresco Advertising’s Managing Director was the Regional Sales Manager/Acting Managing Director of Caribbean Publishing for several years. Recently she headed up business development for BB&P Marketing & Communications, a company that is market leaders in creative advertising in Cayman and across the region. Hilary McKenzie-Cahill says: “Last year when we launched Alfresco Advertising Ltd, a tremendous amount of thought and planning was put into Ecay’s development and it has now evolved into a highly sophisticated product that truly represents the sophisticated island and technological leader that the Cayman Islands has become.”

Hilary McKenzie Cahill Managing Director Alfresco Advertising Ltd.

Alfresco’s Director of Sales & Marketing, Cathy Williams is well-known in the publishing world in the Cayman Islands, primarily for her role as the concept developer for the Cayman Islands Journal and more recently publication coordinator for the Cayman Islands Year Book.

Cathy Williams Director of Sales and Marketing Alfresco Advertising Ltd.

Cathy Williams states: “The market research we undertook in the Spring of 2004 confirmed that Cayman’s businesses required a medium to promote their websites. Businesses here believe in the value of supplying instant access to their company’s information. The overriding outcome of our research from the end-user’s prospective was that the residents of the Cayman Islands required instant access to information on Cayman. We simply filled that void and thus Ecay was born.” She continues: “We expect the printed directory to reach in the region of 150,000 readers who are potential purchasers of Cayman’s goods and services, but exposure of Cayman’s businesses to millions of potential investors and visitors through our online portal is immeasurable.”

The benefits to Ecay’s advertisers are clear; but the benefits to the end users who are Cayman’s residents, overseas investors and visitors is unquestionable, as a recent NRF/Ernst & Young study (taken from Computer Times, March 2005) revealed 64% of those with Internet access use it to research products and services and later buy them through ‘traditional channels’, reiterating the vital necessity of Ecay as the medium in Cayman that allows Internet users to locate Cayman’s businesses information immediately from one source.

Hurricane Ivan tested the resilience of businesses in the Cayman Islands like no other event in the islands’ history. With traditional methods of communication such as land and cell telephone lines inoperable in the short term, during, and immediately after the storm (and some landlines even now still not up and running), the Internet became the Island’s lifeline to the outside world, and, conversely, international clients had the ability to communicate with local firms.

Straight after Hurricane Ivan, entire companies either moved their operations to new premises or took the entire operation overseas to ensure a continuation of service and their company website therefore became the single point of contact for their customer base. Therefore companies in Cayman now truly appreciate the benefit of a website component to their services.

With an economy heavily reliant upon an effective and operational financial services industry, it was essential after Ivan that businesses were able to use the Internet effectively, to ensure that firms locally did not miss a beat when it came to dealing with highly sophisticated international clientele.

Therefore, Ecay, what was, pre-Ivan, a useful tool for sourcing government, financial services, local business, cultural and tourist websites, has now emerged into a completely essential tool for accessing information in the Cayman Islands.

Usefully, the Ecay web directory not only lists all the website addresses of important companies in the Cayman Islands, but also features helpful maps of George Town’s central business district and tourist destinations, along with vital international website addresses, such as currency converters, international stock markets, overseas newspaper and business publications, international sporting events, travel and arts and culture websites.

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