Dragonfly Media Curacao

There are several companies and organisations on Curacao that represent Curacao abroad to bring in more tourism. The two most important ones in this respect are the Curacao Tourism Board (CTB) and the Curacao Hospitality And Tourism Association (CHATA).

Today these two organisations joined hands and presented the facts and figures for 2006 and moderated a discussion about the marketing plan 2008. Bo went to this meeting in the morning and I joined the afternoon session.

We are no off-line marketing guru so we can’t say very much about the what, where and when of promoting a Caribbean destination in the US, but we do know about the internet-side of this discussion. There are two things about the on-line marketing efforts which were discussed that piqued my interest. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday we put the new website of Small Murray Scheper live. We are very happy to count this dynamic Curacaoan law firm as one of our clients and would like to wish them good luck with their new website.

The website is not entirely finished yet because we still need to add the English version, but the Dutch version is entirely finished. The design is slightly futuristic, but because of the warm, high quality photographs by Marika Ringnalda and the personal touches it has definitely not become a sterile website. For the official blurb, check out our clients page.

Muller & Associates is a tax law firm on Curacao. They offer many services in the tax law arena like fiscal advice, help with audits and assistance if the tax collector has a beef with your company. An extra service they offer is a fiscal subscription where they take care of all your tax matters at a fixed monthly rate. We don’t know anything about taxes and such, but this sounds good.

The website looks very clean. The design is corporate, but not boring, and the color scheme is very appealing. It is available in three languages (Dutch, English and Spanish) and has a very flat structure. This makes it easily digestible without treating visitors like idiots. We like. Read the rest of this entry »

Bas Kok Creative Communicatie (one of our strategic partners) is looking for a graphic designer. Are you interested in working with some of the most interesting clients on the island and are based on Curacao? Give them a call!

You can find the official ad below and we added a translation for those of you that don’t speak Dutch (about 99.9% of the world’s population). Read the rest of this entry »

Tourism is booming on Curacao and the hotel chains know it. This morning the Curacao Tourist Board and CHATA (Curacao Hospitality And Tourism Association) presented the new Room Inventory Forecast to CHATA’s members.

This forecast shows the projects that are currently under construction or under development. It shows that from now until 2010 a total of almost 3,000 extra rooms will be available for tourists. You can see all the numbers at CTB’s corporate website. This is a good time to do business on Curacao!

One of the most awful things that can happen to a company that engages in SEO is when Google says that that company’s website is harmful. Nobody will visit your website from Google while that warning is up, that’s for sure. This is exactly what happened to us this week:

Update june 15: yesterday evening the warning was removed. Google likes us again :).

The new stuff we try out, we always try out on our own website before we go anywhere near our clients’ websites. In this case we tried something out on our site which opened up a vulnerability. Somebody found it, took advantage of it and placed some malicious JavaScript on our homepage.

We figured out what happened, when it happened (last friday 10 a.m.) and how to fix it. So, we fixed it, checked our clients’ websites (just to be sure) and were pretty smug about it. Regretfully; over the weekend Google indexed our homepage and found the malicious JavaScript before we did. This triggered the “OMG, this site is evil”-button in Google on monday evening and we got blacklisted. When you look for our website in Google now you will see that Google thinks that “this site may harm your computer”. Read the rest of this entry »

There are still a lot of misconceptions about Search Engine Optimization. Some of the people we talk to (potential clients or other design agencies) think that it’s as simple as submitting your website to the search engines and you will be found for the keyword “hotels”. Others think that it’s a dark art practiced with herbs, pentagrams and strange incantations when the moon is full. Some of us do drink herb tea in the evenings occasionally, but they stick to talking instead of chanting.

It is only natural that people have these misconceptions. Ask me to tell you everything I know about cars and I will also be done in 5 minutes and 2 minutes of those will be gibberish. That doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, it just means that I know more about SEO than I do about cars.

Search Engine Optimization is still a relatively young discipline (especially here on Curacao), it can be pretty complex and is certainly very dynamic. This is the perfect breeding ground for misconceptions. The more people learn about SEO and/or understand the reason why you should use it, the easier our work becomes. Read the rest of this entry »

Sentro Orto Fisiko Korsou is the practice of prosthetist Tom de Windt on Curacao. SOFK helps people that need a prosthetic limb. He helps local people as well as people from abroad that want to combine a holiday with getting a new prosthesis.

It looks like nothing much has been done on the website for the last few years and it is past due for an overhaul (or at least a content update). The website has been around for a while (since 2000, domain registered in 1998). Seeing that the first Curacaoan websites stem from 1997/98, 7 years is a respectable age here. Read the rest of this entry »

The last two weeks were pretty busy with client work so we didn’t have much time for the blog. Four posts in two weeks is way too few. The coming week will be a bit quieter though, so we can spare some more time for the blog again. Some of the stuff that happened the last two weeks:

• We got some new clients from Curacao for the web design department and had a lot of requests for quotes. So far, this month is looking very good :)
• When analyzing the statistics data of our latest redesign (Dive Operator Caribbean Sea Sports) it turns out that their first month with the new design is their best month so far in terms of visitors and search engine referrals. The amount of search engine referrals has actually doubled this first month. How’s that for a return on investment!
  The coming week we’re going to train two of their instructors on how to use their blog and we’re really expecting great things there.
• Dragonfly Media’s website is the most visited website in the Netherlands Antilles according to Alexa (for an explanation of their biased information see our article on Alexa’s idiosyncrasy).

Curacao Actief is an environmentally conscious tourism company here on Curacao. In effect, this means that they organize tours and activities that go easy on the environment and help people understand the importance of conservation and the beauty of nature.

For a long time people have only taken advantage of nature on Curacao without giving back. It is good to see that eco-tourism is also on the rise on Curacao so our children can enjoy nature here as well.

When looking at their website we get the impression that Curacao Actief is a professional company with a vision and the business-savvy to turn their vision into reality. The homepage has a lot of information and a clear, straightforward structure. The internal pages are filled with information and are easily digestible. So far, this is looking like a well-made, functional website. Read the rest of this entry »