Since it appeared on line a week ago, the web site has had more than 200 visitors, said Eric Mudry, an account executive at Innovative Internet Marketing Solutions, which created the site. Visitors can browse through the chamber's newsletter, calendar of upcoming events or listings of committee members.

"The interest is definitely there," Mudry said.

The chamber, which has members in Wallingford and North Haven, kicked off its web site at a "Business After Hours" the same day torrential rains flooded the area and led to the closing of Main Street in the Yalesville section of Wallingford, where IIMS is located. "You couldn't have sabotaged it any worse," Mudry said.

Robin Wilson, executive director of the chamber, said about 30 people showed up despite the rain. She said she's not aware of any other chamber getting on the World Wide Web. She's hoping to sign up half of their 825 members to establish their own home pages.

"The networking, this is where everyone's going now," she said. It will allow members to reach "everywhere from Japan to next door in North Haven. The exposure is fantastic. It's less expensive than getting a full-page ad in our directory."

Eight member businesses established links from the chamber's home page to their web sites, Mudry said. Currently, all chamber members are listed on the chamber's site. Once they get their own web sites up and running, they can link directly to the chamber's site.

"The benefits are obvious," Mudry said. "You go from just a single listing to as extensive as you want to design it."

Jennie Davis, executive director of Healthworks, a local health club, has had a web site for about two weeks and has had a link to the chamber's site since Tuesday.

"We have a virtual tour of the club, with pictures of all the different areas. We have a fitness tip of the month. We have a thing that goes into our e-mail called 'Ask Our Fitness Pros,'" Davis said.

Because the fitness club's business is local, it helps to have a local link through the chamber of commerce, Davis said.

"The chamber will give us that local, regional stuff that we're looking for," she said. "In the more ways that you are, as a business, exposed to people, the more ways they begin to think about you."

Although she did not offer exact figures, Wells said the Web has increased profits for many of those companies.

The home page for the Quinnipiac Chamber of Commerce can be accessed on the World Wide Web at www.quinncham.com.

New Haven Register - Tuesday, April 23, 1996, By John Curtis, Register Staff