It’s till very early to say what shape Jamaican e-commerce will take.
One important service to consider is a one-of-a-kind service offered by JamaicanLifestyle.com.
I used the service recently to send out an email message to its 24,500 odd email address database that a new e-book that I had written was available — for free. The response I received was a decent one, with some 150 or so downloads. By international standards, this was not a bad response — testimony to the kind of members they have on their database.
It’s entirely an opt-in database, which means that their members are a part of the list because they chose freely at some point to receive their emails. Most of the email that gets sent out is static — there are merely e-flyers with no call for action, and no clickable links that do anything other than take a user to a web page with a graphic of the same e-flyer.
Most of their content seems to be party and product advertisements. I believe that I was the first to try what I tried — here was the ad I sent.
Here in Jamaica… Can professionals obtain
Time Management, Productivity and Stress-Free Results?!!
In the last 7 days…
Has more email come into your already filled Inbox?
Have you missed an appointment?
Were you late for more than 2 meetings?
Did you feel a slight loss of peace of mind?
Was a sense of accomplishment missing?
If so, this free e-book for Jamaican professionals might help.
Available now, and for the next 72 hours ONLY
E-book:
“2Time Capturing — A Time Management Fundamental for Jamaican Managers”
Click on this page to claim your free copy, or follow the link below: http://fwconsulting.com/e-bookja
Clicking took a respondent directly to my landing page, where they could sign up to receive the e-book from my auto-responder. Apparently, I was the first customer to try something like this, testimony to the paucity of e-commerce activity in Jamaica.
Unfortunately, not everyone got the mailing — and I don’t know how many received it. My wife didn’t get it on her Gmail account, and neither did a friend of mine. On the other hand, I got it promptly, as did another friend of mine.
There were actually four emails that my wife didn’t get from the service, that I received, all within a 24 hour period. I’m still waiting to hear back from Jamaican Lifestyle after 3 weeks of emails and calls to account for the “blackout” that apparently happened. It could be due to any number of factors… was there a glitch in the matrix?
So, it’s not a perfect service, but I did get better than average results, which tells me that those who received it found it at least unique.
A recent broadcast I received had someone offering coaching services, along with her phone number and email address. We are truly in the early days of e-commerce in Jamaica!
I expect that there will be increasingly sophisticated offers by companies in the future, including the first webpage that allows for the use of a local credit card for purchases. PayMaster seems to be ahead in the game of accepting online payments — we shall see how things develop.