MI-Weblog
Getting a website on Curacao: where to start?
If you want to obtain an online presence for your Curacao business, it is not as simple as you might think. Almost every business will have one or more target countries to consider. For a successful Internet strategy it is imperative to effectively target each market separately.
Think about the possible target groups from all over the world:
- Locals
- Tourists
- Immigrants
- Off shore businesses
- Investors (for example real estate)
This means that you have to incorporate this in your Internet Strategy. First there is the language issue. Dutch and English are still the main markets. But start thinking about upcoming markets like Latin-America, Germany and Scandinavia.
Secondly, keep in mind how certain choices will affect your rankings in search engines:
- What domain extension to choose
- Where your website hosting is based
- Which preferred language is set
It is even advised that you create separate websites with unique domains when having a multilingual website for different target countries.
Also:
- Don’t forget that most Dutch people on Curacao (tourists and inhabitants) will use Google.nl
- Different countries have different cultures and sometimes different approaches as to what a website should offer (and how)
Set your goals
Think about what you want to achieve with your website. Do you want online sales, bookings, filled out contact forms, or generate a lot of page views to sell advertisements? Every website needs to have a goal. When you start building a website, that should always be on top of your mind. The design, structure, call to action and checkout forms of a website are tools to get to your final goals.
General web design thoughts
- Start with keyword research. Implementing keywords through your content (text), unique page titles and meta descriptions, headings, search engine friendly url’s and alt tags is key
- Make sure you create a html or xml sitemap
- Think about internal linking and incorporate good (keyword rich) anchor text to link to other pages
- Think about web usability and especially your website’s architecture (prioritize your pages)
- Set-up proper visitor tracking like Google Analytics (don’t just rely on your server statistics, which are generally not accurate)
- Include your country address in the footer
- Make sure you place a call to action on every page. That’s what it’s all about
- Make sure the programming and software of your website is up-to-date and has a long life span
- Don’t use a lot of flash as it will decrease your website speed, Google is unable to ‘read’ it and most visitors just want practical and logical navigation
- Create a user friendly custom 404 page for when a visitor encounters this error
Important when implementing a website redesign: make sure you have 301 redirects in place when you are changing your url’s.
Finding a local web design company
On Curacao there are really a lot of web designers with of course quality ranging from very bad to very good. Make sure you get offers from multiple companies and make sure you print this article when contacting them. List your website specifications and features in detail to avoid confusion and discussions later in the process.
What can we do for you?
MerlinMI provides all the service and knowledge needed for this process. We will guide you with strategic planning, creating requirements, creating keyword lists and function as a middleman between you and the web design company. We know what ‘language’ you speak and what they speak. We also have close contacts with the main web designers so we know what they are capable of and together we will choose the best one for you.
Make sure you are set up for the future!
These are the steps (download image)
