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Published on March 19, 2008

It is time for Thai companies to "wake up" and make serious use of the Internet to improve their sales and marketing, said Internet marketing expert Archie Glikakis.

Glikakis said 70 per cent of the clients of his Internet marketing firm Position Front Page (PFP) are foreign companies.

"It's time for Thai firms to wake up," he said.

Even though computers are still not affordable for many Thais and the Internet has not yet reached a majority of the population, most consumers who have the money are already on cyberspace. With the current economic difficulty, companies must find new avenues to boost sales.

Glikakis said the Internet is the solution.

He cited the case of SFX Car Audio, a small car audio equipment shop on Rama IV. Before using PFP's Internet marketing service, SFX had intense competition because there are about 20 similar shops on the same road. Thanks to the website and search engine optimisation (SEO) service built and provided by PFP, SFX is now a crowded store, he said.

The SFX website has 2,000 visitors each month. It gets 15 inquiries a week with a 30-per-cent conversion rate - five out of 15 people who inquire about their products on the Web actually buy them. SFX made up its Internet marketing cost in less than a week, Glikakis said.

PFP's SEO fee is Bt155,000, which guarantees the client will stay on Google's first three pages for  a year.

Kukai Kindergarten School was one of PFP's first customers.

"A lot of people are searching for Bangkok kindergartens. We are contacted nearly every day," the school's owner, Vivan Sarakitprija, said.

But making your website easy to find is not enough. Firms also need to optimise their websites to convert the visits into actual sales and orders.

"Customers look at three things: is this what I want; what is the price; and how do I buy it. If you can't deliver that within seven seconds, you'll lose them," he said.

Thai e-commerce suffers from a lack of faith since infrastructure in the past was too weak to support secure transactions, Glikakis said.

"The public should become aware that e-commerce is now much safer," he said.

Pichaya Changsorn

The Nation