FAQ

1. Consumers today will spend some time on doing research on products and services that they want online before making any purchases. Being found on the internet through any search engine gives you an advantage of being part of their selection process from their very first step. Imagine that how many potential consumers you will miss out if you don’t have a website.

2. You are able to conduct business day and night even at midnight, you are 24/7 open! With a website, consumers and client can go online and look for the information and details about your product / services about your business whenever they want because website never closed. If you choose an e-commerce website, your client can shop with you 24/7.

3. Save up on the cost for customer service employees by offering F.A.Q (frequently asked question) on your website. Your customer can find solution there without having the need to call your customer service line, even during off working hours. This can help you to reduce the cost on hiring customer service employees.

4. Consumers can get educated about your business and get their question answered through your website which can actually cut down the enquiries call received daily.

5. A website has potential to become source of information for the public, through providing helpful information, tips and articles that are relevant to your industry, giving visitors reason to come back to your website or visit you to find out more.

6. Consumers have more confidence in doing business with companies that know more on their own industry. You can provide more information about your industry, the products and services you offer, structure of your company, your company’s awards or achievements, so that consumers have more confidence in doing business with you.

7. Enlarge your market, more potential customers. A website can enlarge the market for every business, small or corporate, new or well-established, exposing your business to the global market, thus giving your business large number of potential customers and increasing the size of target audience. Visitors who visit your website are already interested in your products or services because they reached your website through searching the internet. Therefore, your business promotion is more effectively targeted.

SEO? What is that ?

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).

This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO – from discovery of the terms and phrases that will generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly, to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization’s offerings.Look at Google Search box. you will see a left column and a right column. The left column is called the “Natural Listing”, while the right column is called the “Sponsored Listing”.

Why does my company / organization / website need SEO?

The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines – Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves (although AOL gets nearly 10% of searches, their engine is powered by Google’s results). If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search – people who want what you have visiting your site. Whether your site provides content, services, products, or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users.

Search queries, the words that users type into the search box which contain terms and phrases best suited to your site, carry extraordinary value. Experience has shown that search engine traffic can make (or break) an organization’s success. Targeted visitors to a website can provide publicity, revenue, and exposure like no other. Investing in SEO, whether through time or finances, can have an exceptional rate of return.

An Opportunity Awaits You

We are living in a time of great opportunity. Right now the Internet is revolutionizing the way the world communicates and conducts business. Currently the technology of the Internet is relatively inexpensive and your barriers to entry into this lucrative business arena are low.
This window of opportunity will not stay open for you very long. In just a few short years these barriers may grow larger as the technology gets more complex and expensive. The few who “stake their claim” on the World Wide Web now will be the benefactors to this great opportunity.
Now is the time for you to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity and start using the Web to begin selling online now!

What Your Website Can Do For You

Your Website is the key to your success online. You can use your Website to increase sales, capture new markets, slash costs, and much more.

Opportunity:

The Internet is the fastest growing communications and commerce medium in the world. It does not matter what business you are in, you need to be a part of this community. Millions of potential customers are on the Internet. Your competition is also on the Internet and they are selling or will be selling to your market very soon.

Positioning:

By establishing your own identity through a Website, you have the opportunity to beat nearly all of your global competitors to the starting line. Being first has enormous value.

Extend Your Marketing Reach:

Having a presence on the Internet automatically extends your reach into the global economy since people from all over the world will find your site.

I know the temptation to choose a “sexy domain name” is real. For instance “Apple.com” sounds more stylish than “Accountingoutsourcing.com”. But unless you have a million bucks to spend on advertising “Apple.com” as an accounting outsource supplier, stick to the later one. Google will rank you higher for the keywords “accounting” and “outsourcing” than a mere non-descript “Apple.com”. Since “accounting” and “outsource” are keywords which describe your business sphere, there is a higher chance of people finding your website for what the business really offer.

What to do with the name cards you get after an unsuccessful sales pitch?

Ever went for a sales pitch only to find your potential customer:

– Not able to buy because he just ordered from your competitor for this year already?

– Not convinced about your capabilities or strengths?

– Not able to switch to you because he is not the decision-maker?

Well, Rome is never built in a day, my friend. And if they say “NO” to you today, it doesn’t mean saying no to you forever. Instead of throwing away the namecard of the person you met or storing it away forever in the “NOT SUCCESSFUL” namecard box, try the power of e-newsletter marketing.

First, ask for permission to put the person’s name on your email list.

Enter the name and email address of the person in your e-newsletter system. If you do this consistently enough, you should get a list of “ever met” potential clients which you can email to them once every month to communicate and remind them about your services and products.

E-newsletters marketing system? What’s wrong with the email I used to broadcast e-newsletters to potential clients now. Isn’t it just as effective?

E-commerce is not for every business. It is for a selected kind of business where:
– the products can be delivered at very low costs (such as electronic goods)
– disposing the product is feasible in the case of the customer rejecting the goods
– the product is unique and does not have a strong substitute
– the product is very standard and non-subjective

I once looked at a hotel website to check out if I could stay there over my vacations. The website looks really nice and everything was enticing until I read a news item that was dated 3 years back. Then, my confidence came tumbling down. I wasn’t prepared to believe any information that I had read anymore because those information (photos, rates, data) were all at least 3 years outdated!

Not only did I feel unsure about the hotel, I felt a little cheated – in the sense that I took the trouble to read about the hotel, only to realise I cannot trust any part of it.

So, this is one thought to take away when building a website. It is not just building it that you need to think about, it is updating it regularly (like every week) – to give it a respectable presence. In addition, an updated website can engage a visitor much longer and better by the comments it post on current situations and trends.

(If the thought of updating your website every week feels like too much work, think about the reward from Google. Google ranks sites based on how often they are updated. Update = High ranking!!!

Sites done completely in Flash are attractive and stunning to visitors, but they pose a problem for Googlebot. Googlebot treats the Flash site as a black box and cannot penetrate into the Flash file to analyse and capture keywords and descriptions about the business.

The end result is that Google does not know what business the site conducts… naturally, it doesn’t rank the site well on the relevant business it is in.

So to do it in Flash or not?

It depends on your objective for making a website. Is Google ranking important to you? Or you depend mainly on referrals, so the website is for those who receive your namecard.

If Google ranking is of some importance to you, you should not do 100% Flash design.

When people come to me for websites, they usually talk in terms of technology. Is it Joomla? Is it HTML? I have hosting already, etc, etc.

What I want to remind us is that website creation is about communication, not technology.

Did not catch that?

OK, let’s say you are proposing to a lady… Your message is simple (marry me), but the way you deliver it will be as important if you seriously want a positive outcome. So how you craft the message to ensure it is positively received is the key objective in communication.

Well, it is the same as for web communication. Say what you want to say in 30 seconds in the best possible way and with finesse.

Look at your name card and ask yourself if you are proud of your address.

Then, ask the same about your telephone number, fax and mobile number. Chances are you are quite happy about all of the above. But what about your web address? Is the domain name thoughtful? Is your website updated? Is your web address searchable in Google by keywords that represent your sphere of business? Does the site look professional?

Most small to medium-sized companies lack the thoughtfulness of their bigger cousins in their web presentations. Compare that to their name cards, and you will quickly find the web their weakest link in their marketing.

Websites are usually the first point of contact by potential customers – way before he calls a meeting for serious discussion. Thus, the hygiene factors necessary to promote a call for meeting must be present. This means that the website must be perceived to be positive to evoke further action by the customer.

An excellent website is usually where a small-to-mid-sized company can score points over bigger more established companies who are not as marketing oriented.

Invest in developing a good site – and you are on the way to sharpening your marketing strategy and plan..

International and global websites like Ebay, Google, Facebook, CNN, YouTube are pushing up the expectation of users everywhere in the world. Users now expect to be able to search for information in your site using keywords, see sophisticated Flash animation or illustration in your presentation, use member login to edit his profile and subscribe to your e-newsletter. Users today are EASILY DISAPPOINTED with a less than perfect website. A less than perfect website quickly translates to a feeling of your company as being “not professional” enough to afford a good website.

The same analogy is when a businessman you meet gives you a print-at-home namecard. Or even worse, he tells you he has NO namecard. How would you feel? What conclusions do you unfairly heap on him just because he cannot produce an acceptable-looking namecard?

The world still judge a book by its cover. A website is your corporate look and image. It is your silent salesman. It is your electronic brochure. I think it is far too important to wack it out over a weekend with your daughter just because she had learnt some HTML in school.

The proper websites of today uses PHP or ASP language with a database like MySQL. It also utilizes JavaScript and AJAX to give a rich user experience. Colours, photos and graphics are prepared using Photoshop and Illustrator using hexadecimal colours to fit well with the limited colour spectrum of computer monitors. Illustrative experiences are done on Adobe Flash with help from ActionScript controls. Go a little further and you might find content management systems to help make updating websites a breeze..