An Un-Scientific Analysis of the Trinidad & Tobago Online Market

When you put up a website it isn’t ‘just for so’, you want people to come to it right? Granted, there are many companies in T&T who actually do that, i.e. put up a website for the sake of having one but that’s them. You want visitors and it’s a numbers game: more visitors = more potential customers. We all want the maximum traffic yes, but the question is, in a country of 1.2 million, what range of traffic in our local online market would be considered ‘good’?

Like the heading says, this is an un-scientific analysis but I believe it can be used for a rough yardstick. Let’s first see who the top ten local websites are in Trinidad & Tobago:

[Source: Alexa]

[image width=”100%” height=”100%” title=”” lightbox=”true” align=”right” link=”http://www.forwardmultimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/trini-tuner.png”]http://www.forwardmultimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/trini-tuner-thumb.png[/image]As we can see the number one ‘private’ (so to speak) website is Trini Tuner and that may come as no surprise to many. While many website owners are not keen to reveal their traffic count, Trini Tuner is an exception (and rightly so), they proudly advertise their traffic of 8,000 unique visitors a day (of which 85% reside in Trinidad) which is confirmed by Alexa, 60% being males between the ages of 18 to 34.

According to the Central Statistical Office’s Mid-Year Population Estimate for the year 2010 (based on the year 2,000 census as the 2010 census figures are not yet available), the total population (Male and female) around the18-35 age group now in 2012 would be around 300,000-350,000 (my rough extrapolation).

The number one ranked website overall in terms of local visits is none other than Facebook, again no surprise,  and by simply using their ‘Create an Ad’ tool, we can also do a rough estimate of the size of the local online market. See below:

A more scientific analysis

In the Daily Express dated Friday 23^rd March 2012 there was an article titled ‘Carolyn: 52% with Internet in T&T’, which was reporting on our Public Administration Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan’s address at the opening of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) preparatory conference at Port of Spain for an upcoming summit. Her data originated from a 2010 ITU study which scored Trinidad & Tobago’s broadband penetration at 52%.

[alert]She was also quoted as saying “Here in Trinidad & Tobago we have recorded approximately 192,000 fixed internet subscribers with 190,000 being of fixed broadband internet services at the end of 2011.”[/alert]

Note, these are individual subscribers and we can safely assume that all of them are not living alone so if we double this figure we still come back to the 350,000+ range.

What these figures mean for your online business/website

These are raw figures with their obvious value being to estimate the maximum size of the market. Within these numbers lie the demographics and market segments you are trying to reach which is of course some percentage smaller.

With the best performing local website that’s not ‘big business’ at a level of 8,000 visitors per day in their niche demographic which FYI has been around for 12 years, you have a good basis for comparison and set your own targets.

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No doubt you’ll want to know how exactly you should go about setting and achieving targets for your website’s traffic based on this information and next article will focus on precisely this!
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