In the Bulletin

From the Chairman

From the Director

Legco Report

Letters
To the Chamber

Cover Story
E-commerce Coming of Age

Special Feature
Banking on the Power of 'e'

Business
Egypt Striving to Become IT Hub

WTO Watch
Chamber Welcomes PNTR Vote 

iPerkin
Growth Hits 12.5% in First Half

Q&A
Esquel Group Chairman Marjorie Yang

Programmes
Mission to Xiamen

SME Week

Cashing in on Your Green Initiatives 

Businesses Must Back SAR's Asian Games Bid

e-Chamber
Doing Business Anywhere

Dodging the Pitfalls of E-commerce

Member Profile
Sam Seng Winery

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the bulletin


Chamber Web Site Now
Hong Kong Business Portal

The Chamber Web site, www.chamber.org.hk, now has a page view rate of over 150,000 per month, and this number is growing daily. The viewers come from 100 countries around the world, with half from outside Hong Kong.

As you read in September's Bulletin, we are continuing to improve our Web site to make it more user-friendly and more substantive. We realise that the Web site is used by members of the Chamber as well as non-member visitors. Therefore, our improvements have both sets of viewers in mind.

We have highlighted Chamber events on the right-hand side of the front page for easy reference, and you can use your credit card online to book Chamber events -- almost all at a discounted rate -- starting in mid-October. We have beefed up the contents of the International Business pages, including the China section, as we receive a great deal of the latest trade information from overseas and Chinese delegations. Members of Chamber committees can also view meeting minutes, meeting papers, special notices as well as participate in chat rooms to exchange their views.

We have also improved the database, including our Membership Directory, and the search engine for people to find products and services. In addition, our Opportunities bulletin board continues to generate interesting trade leads daily.

To date, we also have had almost 250 members asking to have our Web site host their company site. For a small company with limited name recognition, hooking on to the well-known Chamber name is smart business.

Finally, in June of this year, we sent out a request for proposals to ask for ideas of cooperation with our Web site to enhance our features. The response has been overwhelming, with 40 companies coming in to ask for some type of cooperation. They are obviously interested in leveraging the Chamber's name. After careful deliberation of what would be useful to our members and other viewers, we have agreed to cooperate with several of them. For a few selected ones that offer significant B2B features we previously did not have, we have agreed to have our Web site act as a portal to their Web site, providing once again discounted access for our members to their offerings. Some of these partners are: Busytrade, Growasia, and Rebound, among others. We will give you more details in time. We have put some others on a new "Webmart" page which provides discounted service and products to Chamber members.

Please go to our site, www.chamber.org.hk, now a portal, for a look at all these features and more. You will find that the Chamber itself is a good example of an "old economy" company that is using "new economy" techniques to improve its service.