Balik Pulau's local marketing bid!

Residents of Balik Pulau and everyone now have an opportunity to enhance their business and reach more customers in the less tapped consumer region of Penang's southwest district (approximately half in size of the Penang island, and a population well exceeding 50,000) with the upcoming launch of the first marketing platform on an integrated printed and online media, dubbed the InfoBiz, produced by Pusat Komputer Balik Pulau, in collaboration with the Rural Internet Centre (Pusat Internet Desa - PID) of Balik Pulau.

While PID, situated at the annex of the local post office building, has been serving thousands of its neighborhood residents for over six years now since 2003, its current supervisor, Siti Huraizah Abdul Rahman, continues to realize how the local community still very far behind in ICT adoption, particularly in Internet usage, estimated at well under 10% for the large parliamentary area covering Teluk Bahang, Pulau Betong (inclusive of the historic Kongsi Town) and Bayan Lepas (not including Bayan Lepas Industrial Area or Sungai Ara/Relau urban areas).

"In order to connect the community better, and faster, and immerse the residents with up-to-date business and social information, InfoBiz was incepted as an integrated media project combining the power of mass printed distribution, and online social media distribution", said Nasir Sobri who currently serves as Vice Chairman of Balik Pulau Social Entrepreneurs Club.

By advertising in the monthly issued InfoBiz, business owners can reach the largest optimum households in the rarely tapped market of Balik Pulau, and extend their marketing reach beyond Balik Pulau. This is due to collaboration with PID that has a large network of e-community throughout Penang, and its 42 centres around the country including Sabah and Sarawak with a total community of over 100,000.

Read the complete article at Balik Pulau Blog.

Three months, 600+ cities, all flocking to Penang City!

Over 11,000 visitors have visited Penang City's group of websites (*.PP.my) during the first quarter of 2009, from 1st of January until 31st of March '09. The sites have also been experiencing gradual increases in visits to surpass 200 visitors per day during many of most recent days.

The visitors came from over 600 cities in 90 countries via nearly 1,000 (computer) network locations:-

1. Over 80% of the visitors are from Malaysia, followed by United States (6.6%), Singapore (2.3%), United Kingdom (1%), Indonesia (1%), Australia, Canada, Thailand, Japan and Germany.
   
   
   
   
2. From Malaysia peninsular, the most visitors come from the home state of Pulau Pinang ('cities' of George Town, Prai & Butterworth - 34%), followed by Malaysian towns and cities of Kuala Lumpur (23.5%), Petaling Jaya (9%), Ipoh (8%) and 'Montara' (Mont Kiara?), Kulim and Johor Bahru with 2% visitors each. Singapore also contributed 2% of the visits, at the 9th place.
   
   
   
3. A total 1,357 pages were viewed a total of 18,281 times!
   
   
4. Slightly over a third of visits were to respective home pages.
   
   
5. 82.9% of the visits, are by new visitors, signifying potential growth of the traffic.
   
   
   
6. The biggest traffic contributors were the search engines (over 70%), eg. Google (46%) and Yahoo (21.5%). Other contributing referring sites include MSN, Facebook and Google Images (Search) at about 1% each. PID Balik Pulau's website also contributed 1.5% of the visits.
   
   
7. Over 60% of Penang City's visitors use Microsoft Internet Explorer, while a third of the visitors prefer Mozilla Firefox. Chrome, Safari and Opera are following at the bottom with 2% or less each. Over 60% of the visitors also use broadband connection in the form of DSL, T1 or Cable.
   
   
   
8. TM Berhad continues to be the biggest Internet service provider in Malaysia, having fasalitated over 50% of the visits (including via its Celcom mobile broadband services) to PP.my. Other major ISPs bringing the traffic include Core IP Network Development (PenangFon & MetroFon), Maxis Communications Bhd, USM Pulau Pinang and Jaring.
   
   
   
   
9. All these growing visits have pushed the popularity of PP.my to be in the top 1-million globally and top 12,000 in Malaysia, among over 150-million active domains as of today.