In Part 3 of our June CoE E-Commerce panel, Going Digital: Offline Businesses Moving Online, moderator Omar Christidis of ArabNet, asks panelists Hassan Mikail of Aramex, Michael Trueschler of Citruss TV, and Alfonso De Gaetano of Google how offline businesses can create a useful presence online.

In this segment, panelists begin to field audience questions.

Christidis points out that a lot of businesses in the region are using Facebook as their official website, instead of developing their own site.

De Gaetano explains that Google offers businesses a free way to promote their online business through Google Places, helping offline businesses to show up high on search listings.

Mikail explains that a powerful new trend that we will start witnessing is big regional retailers and brands finally going online. Aramex is helping them with inventory management to make sure that the supply chain is fully functional. He also addresses an audience question about the difficulty of cataloguing products as a barrier to online entry.