Growing International Digital Sales for SMEs in Trinidad & Tobago

A program hosted by The University of the West Indies and ExporTT

Client: ExporTT and University of the West Indies (UWI).

Focus: Growing international e-commerce sales for product-focused SMEs in Trinidad and Tobago.

Country: Trinidad and Tobago.

Goal: The aim of the initiatives were to offer training to SMEs in some key aspects of effective website creation, catalogues and international web optimisation along with offering individual help to businesses, such as digital audits and readiness assessments.

Activities: We created a webinar series entitled ‘How to Create and Exceptional Digital Catalogue’ to demonstrate to participants the ways in which digitising a catalogue can make your products more appealing to international customers and boost your order book. The webinars included:

• How to create a digital catalogue that maximizes export sales

• Best practices in creating the best product photos and descriptions

• Importance of optimizing your digital catalogue.

Following-on from the webinars, we offered Website Audits and Digital Readiness Assessments to all participants to look at their digital catalogues or websites. We analysed their current offering and fed back five top recommendations of easy wins to work towards best practice and a world class digital presence.

Additionally, a series of international digital trade workshops was delivered. They included masterclasses on International Website Optimisation, showing companies in Trinidad and Tobago how to use the web to increase sales to international customers around the world. These masterclasses covered top tips to:

• Choose an international digital strategy that is best for your business

• Find out how to improve your global profile through your website

• Discover how to rank more highly in international search engines

• Learn how to localise your website

• Learn how to make your website multilingual

• Find practical steps on how to start your international web journey.

The workshop also showed delegates how to:

• Utilise free tools and applications

• Avoid costly trial and error approaches

• Get your international website right from the start.

Results: As a result of the webinars, nearly 50% of people are now planning to develop a digital catalogue created with an online tool and 30% of people are even planning to take the next step and develop a basic website to get started online. The initiatives were a success with an overall satisfaction rating of 96.3%. We are also absolutely delighted to hear that 100% of participants believed that the information shared in the webinar could be used to improve their level of trade.