Name of your website?MauritianMatch.com
Your name?
MauritianMatch.com Administrator
Your Location (city, etc)
London
What inspired you to launch your own website?
http://www.MauritianMatch.com was developed by a team of Mauritians with the vision of an online centralized location for all Mauritians worldwide. Work was undertaken with various research and studies into already existing online services dedicated to Mauritians at the time as there was not a site, which provided an up-to-date all-in-one solution for all Mauritians world-wide.
We learnt that too many of these online match making sites charged for communications and even then, that was only through emails. The better the communications such as chat rooms, the greater the charge. We also noticed that there was a drawback with matching singles through a database of words and filters, because humans love interaction and it is from interaction that a mutual discovery is born and hence therefore why they charged for the interactions and we wanted to provide our site for 100% FREE.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Our first website was for our first business in 1996, which was for the distribution of I.T hardware from Taiwan distributed across Europe. The site was more of a useful tool for product marketing, awareness and capturing new clients as well as being a resource centre for downloading driver updates and providing further product details to the general public.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
As this new website is about getting all Mauritians connected worldwide via a centralized location online and for the purpose of matching all Mauritians, whether it be business, family, for friendship to finding a partner, the name of MauritianMatch.com was chosen.
Please give us a short summary of your website?
MauritianMatch.com is truly dedicated to all Mauritians from around the world with the main emphasis based on communications. So work began on developing the site so that it catered for events, families, friends, businesses as even those could be matched. For example people in business can match their ideas and possibly work with other Mauritians, utilising their own Mauritian resources and talents. Friends can match themselves with other Mauritians from not only their own surrounding locations, but also other Mauritians worldwide. Singles can match themselves with potential partners. Families can match themselves with relations that are abroad and able to communicate without incurring expenses. Altogether Mauritians matching Mauritians for whatever reasons.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
As mentioned above, the main difference is first of all it is 100% FREE we do not charge for anything, no monthly subscription charges and no credit card fees. The second reason is that it has all the modern web technologies as seen online today within a versatile and extended member registered community with a profile section for matching Mauritians with other Mauritians for whatever their purpose or needs for the further cause of progress.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Our mission is to unite all Mauritians together within one centralized location online, whereby all Mauritians can meet, share and communicate from any where, at any time, no matter where they are in the world. We see an online community, that will truly enable all Mauritians from around the world to benefit from it's resources. A place where from a click of a button Mauritians can easily access information and meet all walks of Mauritian life. A centralized location that aids Mauritians in every effort obtainable towards enhancing the progress of all Mauritians worldwide. A place where the community of members between themselves can help each other and provide solutions to problems. It is a well known fact that knowledge is power, but that knowledge is useless unless it is put into action. To progress today, it is not only about having knowledge, but also about having the right connections.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The success of this venture is not about time or money but more so for thee greater good of all Mauritians, a foundry from which they can share and evolve from knowledge and experiences gained from other Mauritians, not only through thee introductions and chat rooms but also from the Forums and Blog entries.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
First off, it was be the look and feel, followed by the database functionality and having our 100% dedicated servers and technical support.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
At the moment yes, as out chosen partners for our support in the US are a leader in web technology provisions, bandwidth support to 100% uptime management with 24 hours a day support.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
None as this project has been a labour of love and all home-made, the only cost has been our time and most people waste time but in this case it has been time worthwhile invested.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Our biggest challenge has been hitting our goal of having it all up and ready for launch within our 3 months deadline, which we set ourselves. It was initially built by two of us working around our already full-time and busy schedules.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Search Engine Optimization, we spent much of our time on getting the foundations right for it to be Search Engine Friendly. So when someone searches for Mauritians Online, Mauritian Community, Mauritian Singles, Mauritian Chat, Mauritian Friends etc, we appear in some case right at the top o9f the first page and if not on the first page or at least within the top 4 pages (top 40 sites out of 3,400,000 search results).
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
We was expecting it to take longer than we had thought, for it to appear on high results within search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, MSN, AOL etc. Within our first few weeks we had 2,500 hits and 47 registered members, which was totally unexpected.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
The site has been up and running now for only 6 weeks from it's launch date July 23rd 2007. We will keep this site for the duration of out life and our registered members life, as it is a time capsule of their life's events and we hope that generations after us keep the site alive, active and kicking long after out departure from the real world - into our virtual world ahead.
Where is your website located?
http://www.mauritianmatch.com
What is your website address?
MauritianMatch.com
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