When the decision was made to launch TTJ’s live website ttjonline.com last spring, we exhibited all the classic signs of web-phobia.
The thought of unleashing stories into the wide-blue ether of the internet brought us out in sweats and getting our heads around the website software gave us migraines. At the press of a button articles seemed to disappear into nowhere, only to resurface in the wrong place, at the wrong time and occasionally back to front. And the less said about what happened to pictures accompanying the stories the better.
To reassure our readers, however, this was all while we were at the ‘dummy’ phase (an appropriate term, as it transpired). Eventually, though we say so ourselves, it did come right and today the site runs smoothly alongside the magazine.
Once things did slot into place and the visitor numbers to the site started to climb, the exercise became increasingly rewarding. Particularly exciting is the ability ttjonline.com gives us to get stories into the timber industry arena in minutes. It has been an eye-opener too, getting responses to articles from the trade around the world.
What has also been interesting is the fact that running our own website has got us into the internet habit generally. We trawl timber companies’ own sites for news and information and the use of reference books now takes second place to internet search engines.
And according to operators of the leading international online wood markets, timber traders generally are gradually getting into the internet habit too. Between them, TIMBERWeb, ForestExpress, AsiaTimber.net and IHB claim to have thousands of users; com-panies buying and selling tens of thousands of cubes of wood and wood products over the net around the world.
Of course, as a percentage of all timber traded, the volumes on the internet are still minimal and even the online market operators say it will never become the be all and end all. But they maintain their user numbers are still climbing and that, in time, the net will become a widely accepted global trading forum running alongside and complementing conventional buying and selling routes. And, of course, in the interim, as merchants like Thorogoods are demonstrating, it is also becoming an increasingly important weapon in timber companies’ marketing and information armouries.
So it looks as though it is worth working through those web-phobias. As long as you stock up on paracetamol, you should be OK.
