SMALL BUSINESSES TO GO ONLINE EASILY WITH "PATIKANA"

Smart Codes Tanzania Chief Executive Officer, Edwin Bruno (L) addressing a news conference in Dar es Salaam yesterday. With him is the company’s Customer Support Manager, Emmanuel Jackson.

SMALL businesses in Tanzanian can now go online easily and enhance their market outreach by signing up with PATIKANA, an affordable service designed to enhance online presence for businesses.

The service, under which small businesses get domain name, hosting services, email and website all for only Tsh 199,000, has been launched by Smart Codes, a local firm specializing in ICT solutions.

 “We see that many small businesses have been losing customers to large competitors because they can’t be found online,” said Smart Codes CEO Edwin Bruno yesterday in Dar es Salaam, “Complicated procedures and minimal budgets prevent them from creating a company website.”

The Smart Codes boss noted that at the normal rates prevailing in the market in the country, a website costs about Tsh 700,000, which is out of reach of many small businesses. Bruno added:” Our PATIKANA platform will now give a chance to small businesses looking to boost their online presence.”

Under the PATIKANA package, businesses get a single page for the website, which the CEO noted was  enough for starters to accommodate basic information needed to highlight the business portfolio. The websites come in a standard format for all customers, noted Bruno.

Since its launch a week ago, some 21 businesses have registered for PATIKANA, which is available through simple steps which are done online. “The business people are happy with PATIKANA because of its low cost and because the registration process is pretty fast,” noted Bruno.

To register with PATIKANA, customers log onto  www.patikana.co.tz and  fill an application online. The company then spreads out the information provided over pre-set module to set up the customer’s website.

PATIKANA, which takes a day to register with compared to a month needed for conventional website design, has an added advantage in that it is responsive, adapting to viewing in mobile phones without the need for zooming.  Said Bruno: “This is a great advantage, as research shows that 78 per cent of internet users have mobile phones.”

He said the PATIKANA platform will enable small businesses register their domain names before they are scooped by competitors, noting that it is a tendency for financially well-off competitors to register names similar to those owned by smaller businesses.

The CEO said that PATIKANA will help small businesses expand, as owning a website enhances reliability of the business , as customers know it is a serious business.  “Business involve financial transactions, and customers want to be sure they are dealing with a genuine business and not an online ghost,” said Bruno.

He noted that while popular social networking tools like facebook and instagram are important, for effective marketing of services and products they are not to be relied upon squarely, but should be used to provide the link leading to the official website where detailed information is available.

Said Bruno:  “In the near future, we foresee many businesses owning websites by using our PATIKANA service. With such affordable rates as ours, there is absolutely no excuse for small businesses not to have websites and enjoy the advantages of going online.”