A Line Between Sharing and Spamming

One of the smallest countries in the world, Seychelles is an island republic that is comprised of about 115 islands. With its warm, crystal clear, and yet turquoise waters, white beautiful soft sandy beaches, leafy and lush tropical vegetation and sapphire green rainforests, it is a real heaven on earth! Nonetheless, Site.pro team arrived to Seychelles not only to admire the views and nature, but also to explore the digital landscape of the country, shared hosting market, people’s approach to website builders, and more.

Small, but Mighty

Site.pro team met with Patrick Valmont, who together with his partner, Steve Nibourette, run ‘Dezigncubicle’ web design company, which offers a wide range of services, including Web Management, Cloud Hosting, Web Design, Ecommerce, Brand Identity, Photography, Website Audit, and even Mailchimp Marketing. During a very pleasant conversation, Patrick opened our eyes at how everything is managed in Seychelles and presented his country from a completely different angle.
The Seychelles Islands, which are indeed very small with a population of only about 100K and a total land area of 444 km², seem at first sight pretty ordinary and plain — a simple tourist destination with beautiful nature. Nonetheless, the country has been actually ranked third in Africa for internet penetration (70%) and first for Internet speed. Small, but mighty, right?

Local vs International

There are a lot of domains that are used on the Island. The natives have a local authentic domain .sc, but unfortunately it is not very popular. Compared to .sc, .com is chosen more widely, as people feel it is more professional and more cooperative to use it in their business matters. Moreover, the process of registration of .sc is much more complicated and requires a lot of paperwork to be done, which makes the price for it higher. The price of ccTLD .sc is about 1,000 SR, which is around $45-50 per year, compared to .com, which is only about $10-20 per year. As a matter of fact, when speaking about local hosting services, Patrick noticed that there is a lot to be explored and a lot to be improved. The price for regular local hosting is really high (about $20 per month), thus everybody tends to give less preference to the local services but chooses very cheap international shared hosting online, which is about $30 a year.

What About Payment Gateways?

There is only one bank, Absa Bank, that offers payment gateway services through the CyberSource platform. Other banks do not yet have and are not yet ready to use gateways, and when they will — it is going to be very expensive. Another problem is that while individuals and business sectors do have bank accounts, unfortunately not many of them are using Absa as their bank. Even though many agree that to make payment gateway operations is fairly easy, but in this matter companies have a tendency not to switch bank just because that specific bank is providing e-commerce. It is better to stay old-fashioned and not to use e-commerce at all, than to change the entire business structure and bank.

Haste Makes Waste

It might be the relaxing views or something else, but at some point, it seems that time runs differently in Seychelles. When asked about website builders, Patrick admits that they are not so popular and are coming along much like e-commerce. Even though e-commerce was around for decades, it is only recently, only now that people in Seychelles are slowly picking up its pieces. The same is with website builders — people are not too much in a hurry and need time to explore and get to know the features in order to use website builders in their life. The natives also need time to acknowledge information; thus, Patrick, for example, tends to carry out email marketing, though, not too often so that people would not feel being spammed! He informs potential customers about innovations and processes behind certain activities so that they could understand that it is something they might opt for in the next project and know whom to get in touch with.

It Is All About the Looks!

We heard it all before that true beauty comes from the inside not the outside, but another striking peculiarity of Seychelles market is that people tend to give preference to the looks. Indeed, people mostly focus on how their product looks and would not be stressed out, for example, by the positing of a button or whatsoever. Business owners do know what UX is, know its meaningfulness, but tend to choose UI to it. Accordingly, the majority of projects created on the Islands are similar, but that seems not to cause customers feel strange or worried at all, as long as they have nice design projects.

Final Words

The Republic of Seychelles is not only a travel worthy destination, with its rich and incredible variety of plants, animals, birds and marine life, it is a place with its own concerns and understanding of how things should be managed. Instead of rushing and getting ahead of things, as most people in other countries do, people in Seychelles prefer to believe that everything happens in its proper time and it is more important to focus on the looks or style, be it of the surroundings or in software or computerized devices. Accordingly, a free on-the-spot advice to You — immediately pull yourself away from the screen of your computer, tablet or your phone and take pleasure in what is around you at least for a minute!