Hawaii.com hopes
to lure Web traffic
with Doing Business’
content, links

The site's organizers
say it offers a valuable
collection of resources

By Erika Engle
eengle@starbulletin.com

Local Internet portal Hawaii.com today is adding business links to its Web site, furthering its business plan to be "Hawaii's 'Everything' Web site."

The Coalition of Business Organizations debuts content on "Doing Business in Hawaii" on the site, which already includes areas for "Living in Hawaii," "Visiting Hawaii," "Moving to Hawaii" and "Dreaming of Hawaii."

By adding links to the coalition, the site gains content from an online collection of business-related associations first organized by business leaders and the University of Hawaii.

The site's goal is to gain more visitors who click the site's ads or through links to businesses partnered with Hawaii.com, which is how the site generates revenue.

General Manager and Director of Sales Sheri Rolf describes Hawaii.com's new business areas as a "different level," to enhance online help for doing business in the state.

For example, Rolf says the coalition is the place where the five or six industry organizations related to advertising may be found all at once, such as the sales and marketing executives or the Hawaii Advertising Federation.

The site upgraded its business content at the suggestion of the Bob Lees, secretary general of the Pacific Basin Economic Council. The council is one of Hawaii.com's community partners.

Lees says he's come to use the Web site as a portal, and that during his travels around the Pacific Rim he encourages others to do so as well.

"There's so much clutter on the Internet, it's hard to find things," Lees said.

Under the Doing Business in Hawaii link on the site, for instance, investors can click on links to U.S. and international stock exchanges, links for local stocks and business news.

Hawaii.com began July 24 and now receives more than 1.5 million page views per month, with an average of 140,000 of those unique, or nonrepeat, visitors.

The Pacific Basin Economic Council is a nonprofit business organization, so it does not profit from click-throughs to its site. However, Lees says the council has been averaging 1,000 clicks per month through Hawaii.com, which "certainly gets us in touch with people that wouldn't know about us."

Television stations KHNL and KFVE are also partners. Vice President and General Manager John Fink says the Web site drives traffic to the TV stations' sites, and the stations provide streaming media to the Web site.

The stations' director of Internet sales, Andrew Riehle, says the stations and Hawaii.com officials have discussed furthering the alliance, "by bringing them in as partners on the classified [advertising] endeavor which will be rolling out very soon."

Hawaii.com is owned by Donrey Media Group, based in Las Vegas, Nev., Donrey owns several newspapers, a television station, and online ventures such as Lasvegas.com. It owns West Hawaii Today and the Hilo Tribune-Herald on the Big Island.

"Our goal is to develop a site compelling enough to make it part of someone's daily routine," said Al Gibes, Donrey's director of online operations. "If we have something for them every day it's going to be a win-win."