Industrial revolutions in the future can only be technological
On the occasion of celebrating the 15th year since the beginning of the registration of the .rs domain, our client, the Registry of the National Internet Domain of Serbia, published a series of interviews with enterprenours
who registered the national domain in 2008. One of the interlocutors was Dragana Pešić – Lević.
The interview from Domen.rs is published below. Interview written by: Dušan Katilović, illustration: Nevena Đuranović.
How did you decide that your primary domain should be with the .co.rs extension?
Back in March 2008, the registration of the first .rs domains began, so for Blink, which was registered as an agency in May of that year, we immediately registered the .co.rs domain, based on the analogy that companies will generally, as successors to .co.yu, register .co.rs. After the first year of registration, we added .rs and both domains are fully functional to this day.
Did your previous experience in the IT world influence decisions regarding the company’s presence on the Internet?
I was lucky to have spent my entire working life in the IT industry, starting with the IT association where we organized professional meetings, through the ICT media, the magazine “Mikro PC World”, to working as a marketing manager in the company “BS Procesor”. , which was a distributor of IT equipment.
I was aware of the importance of a presence on the Internet for business long before I founded my company, so it was logical that in the first days after the registration of the company, we started with the creation of the website. A business that you can’t find on Google doesn’t exist – it was as true then as it is today.
Should the national domain be the first choice for Serbian companies?
As a media relations consultant for the National Internet Domain Registry of Serbia, together with my colleagues, I was on the “frontline” in educating the market about the fact that a national domain, not .com, should be chosen for a site whose content is intended for users from Serbia. .org or .net.
Years passed until they took us “seriously”, and we received confirmation of that claim at one of the Serbian Internet Domain Days, where a representative of the Google company explained that they give priority to sites on the .rs domain in local searches in the Serbian language.
Nowadays, it is rare to see a company from Serbia register a .com domain, which we consider our great success.
What changes in business would you single out as important from 2008 to today?
From 2008 to today, business in Serbia has experienced significant changes, especially in the area of internet business. At the beginning of that period, the Blink site , like the sites of other companies, served mainly as information channels about products and services. However, key changes have occurred with the development of technology and changing market habits.
On the internet scene, big storms happened every second, third year, and we changed in order to improve our business, survive and succeed.
The emergence of social networks created the need for businesses to be active not only on the site but also on other communication channels; the growth of mobile internet and the increase in the use of smart devices dictated that we adapt the sites to new formats; the introduction of cloud technologies allowed us to manage data more efficiently; the emergence of e-commerce, blockchain technology, NFTs and artificial intelligence represent a chance, that is, the possibility to soon offer personalized experiences to our users, in accordance with their preferences.
How has the site itself followed the changes in the market?
The Blink site has undergone four redesigns to accommodate all of these changes. The site mainly received inquiries from clients from abroad for whom we implemented projects in the country, and recommendations from satisfied domestic clients brought new business with companies and organizations from Serbia.
Over time, we expanded the list of clients, the team of permanent employees and the number of external collaborators. We have behind us over 500 organized expert meetings, conferences and seminars, hundreds of PR campaigns provided to state institutions, companies from the commercial sector and non-governmental organizations.
In the analysis we did recently, we determined that over 15,000 media announcements were made for clients in campaigns, worth around 12 million euros, and that 2.1 billion people were reached. All of this would not be possible without a website, an adequate overall presence on the Internet and new media.
We can be satisfied with what we have achieved, but in order to continue to do better, we must prepare for what is yet to come.
And it’s coming to us…?
Each of these technological changes that have taken place so far has had a specific impact on companies building an online presence in Serbia. We are facing another big storm that will bring us tectonic changes that we haven’t seen in decades, and they concern changes in Google search engines, which will indirectly affect the Blink site as well.
Namely, after the trial in which Google was declared a monopolist because it favors its results, the way we get search results will be changed. This will mean that soon, regardless of the fact that we all tried to have as optimized sites as possible, we will write notes that will provide more information about our business on the browser itself, without going to our site.
I am sure of one thing – ” industrial” revolutions in the future can only be technological and on the Internet – so we continue in the same manner, adapting to everything new that comes our way, because not adapting means (not) stopping.