Stone Soup of an Online Business

I was reading a post and that was how I was introduced to this interesting Malaysia home-grown online shopping mall running since 2000. A very bad habit I have developed over the years of online experience can not stop me from checking the PageRank of this website - 3 out of 10.

Personally, I don’t know Quek. I admire his passion to continue running this store for more than 7 years. These are few humble suggestions from myself to improve the conversion (converting more visitors to customers),

1. Remove ‘Best viewed using IE…’. The compatibility issues is a challenge to store owner, not an instruction to your potential buyers.

2. On average, most visitors decide if they are to continue browsing on first page. The current landing page do nothing more than decreasing your conversion rate!

3. Make your site simpler. The current one is creating too many loops to discourage conversion to take place.

4. Use permalinks rather than dynamic page. Most of your pages does not maintain PageRank over the years.

• Decide or Wet
• Save our Rhinos the better way
• Cost of Acquisition
• Guard Checks at MMU: Efficiency or Deficiency?
• Who’s Jo-jo Challenge

Your services, products, how the system works, customer support give values to your domain name, not the other way round. When starting a new online business, we give no more than 2 days for a name, but countless night for the business planning.

Anyway, this does not mean that you should simply grab any name and start your online venture. A good name will somehow be able to go through the following filtering process.

1. buysellonline.co.uk (Use .com for big dream)
2. buysell-online.com (avoid special character)
3. buysellonline.com (too long)
4. buysell.com (Too generic)
5. dookia.com (nice but check first)

buysell.com seems to be a good name to many people, but it is not always true (unlikely to get and it could be expensive to acquire). A search result in Google doesn’t tell you how well is your business presence because the keyword ‘buysell’ matches not just your business, but thousand of other sites.

Run wild to get a name that matches none in search engines. dookia.com can be one such example. Find one with no more than 8 characters, easy to remember, etc. When your business grows to a legacy like Nike, you won’t wish to have a name that sounds like ‘Sport Shoes Inc’.

What is the value of the domain name ‘Google.com’ if it returns no accurate search result?

• Google’s Web Design Company
• Source of visitors
• What’s the cost of an online business?
• wcit2008.com or wcit.com?
• Top search engine ranking?

In a car showroom,

“I like the car, but can you make the front door slightly bigger” said big-size lady to the car salesman.

Though the car maker would like to listen to every suggestions, but sometimes it’s just not possible to please everyone. Hence, compromise is the order of the day, simply because some suggestions are just not plausible due to the cost of customization.

This happens to a lot of open source system such as WordPress, Apache, etc. These systems are developed by combining effort from developers around the world together with valuable feedbacks from millions of users.

The default color for WordPress admin is blue. Why blue? That’s because a blue background works best with web browser default colors for hyperlink.

Don’t change it to green just because your customer’s favorite color is green!

• Split Personality
• WordPress Web Hosting
• 2007 Year in Review
• Your Website Got Audio?
• Multiple Blogs in single installation

Love letter I
————————————————————-

Darling,

1. I miss you so much!
2. When can I see you again?
3. Good night

Pin

Love letter II
————————————————————-

Darling,

I miss you so much and can’t wait to see you again. Good night!

—<-@

Pin

The way you write can make a difference. Bullet is for shooting, not for emailing :)

• Advertisement in Year 1924
• A name for your online business…
• Why you work so late?
• Upload your picture to complete order?
• Email is monotonous

Definition of Split Personality: “A relatively rare dissociative disorder in which the usual integrity of the personality breaks down and two or more independent personalities emerge”.

Role play is important in system development especially comes to online system. Your users are everywhere, around the world, speaking different languages, backgrounds, etc. During the interface design stage, developers should think from a point of your users. Though not full-proof, but at least there is an effort to make your system prefered by more users.

“I am Japanese, I don’t speak English”

“Where is the buy button?”

“What is shopping cart?”

…

• Decide or Wet
• What is the word?
• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• Why WordPress Admin uses Blue?
• Don’t make a choice

It takes about two hours to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Siem Reap. Why not one hour or 30 mins? Why are we not writing to AirBus and give a feedback to make the plane fly faster?

Understanding how a plane works is no easy task (at least to me), let alone building one.

Similarly, when creating an online system, do not expect your users to suggest ‘major changes’. The average users can give feedback on their experience but to get them to tell you why you should start implementing full-text indexing  for your database is probably way too far-fetch for them.

• Split Personality
• A name for your online business…
• I want a faster horse!
• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• Save our Rhinos the better way

1) Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap will be updated and all major search engines which support the sitemap protocol like ASk.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO are notified about the update.

2) SEO Title Tag

Title tags are arguably the most important of the on-page factors for search engine optimization (”SEO”). It blows my mind how post titles are also used as title tags by WordPress, considering that post titles should be catchy, pithy, and short-and-sweet; whereas title tags should incorporate synonyms and alternate phrases to capture additional search visibility.

3) Subscribe to Comments

Subscribe to Comments is a robust plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries. The plugin includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts, block all notifications, or even change their notification e-mail address!

4) Get Recent Comments

This plugin shows excerpts of the latest comments and/or trackbacks in your sidebar. You have comprehensive control about their appearance. This ranges from the number of comments, the length of the excerpts up to the html layout. You can let the plugin order the comments by the corresponding post, or simply order them by date. The plugin can (optionally) separate the trackbacks/pingbacks from the comments. It can ignore comments to certain categories, and it offers support for gravatars.

5) Akismet

A plugin which identifies and blocks comment and trackback spam on blogs with integration to various blogging systems

What else?

If you have lot of comments in single post, try Paged Comments. Paged Comments enables comment paging. Useful for those popular blog entries receiving many comments, or a simple guestbook page within WordPress.

• WordPress Web Hosting
• A name for your online business…
• Everyone loves to share
• Why WordPress Admin uses Blue?
• Classified Companies

Gem Island Resort & Spa stresses on Turtle conservation and aims to further improve the population of turtles in this region, especially the leatherback species.

“What we do is, we collect the eggs after the turtles had laid them and put them in the turtle Hatchery area. Once they are hatched (about 8 to 10 weeks), they will be nurtured on the baby turtle pool specially build for them for aother 8 to 10 weeks. Then we will release them. This gives them a better chance of survival as they will be much bigger in size from when they were first hatched. The eggs collected are usually the “Green back” and occasionally the ‘Hawksbill”. Every year the Resort releases more than 2000 hatchlings back to the sea.” said Irene.

Gem Isle is located in a Marine Conservation Park with natural lush tropical setting. It has sandy beaches, crystal clear waters, spectacular underwater seascape of corals and marine life as some of it’s natural pristine assets.

Special March 08 promotion, Free & Easy Package at RM288 per Pax. Email Irene for booking enquiries

Chef Wan releasing the turtles. He was at the Resort doing a cook show.

• Problem is improvement
• Raptor Watch Week 2008
• Two Roses in a Vase
• Working remotely
• Cat food is not for cat!

In rural Cambodia, hundreds of villages still lack a functional primary and secondary school. AAfC’s Rural Schools Project, founded in 1999, has led the effort to construct over 300 primary and lower secondary schools – with matching funds from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank – to help promote education in rural Cambodia. After construction, each school is sponsored by a donor to provide value-add improvements to further strengthen student education, such as English/computer teachers, Internet, and access to clean water.

Be part of this 13k-to-build-a-school project

• For the first time in their life…
• Books & stationery to donate!
• Squidoo’s inevitable destiny
• Don’t make a choice
• 2007 Year in Review

Have you ever come across websites with sound? What was your first reaction (before your colleagues start staring at you over the cubicle)?

Mine was simple, I either look for the “OFF” button or I close down the site immediately.

Yes, website with audio is a totally “turn-off” to me (pun definitely intended). Unless you are selling music or your website is music-related, there’s no reason for you to let your favorite lullabies invade my surfing experience just because you know how to embed audio clips. Even music sites play their audio elegantly, most of them had the audios turned off by default.

I usually have at least 3-4 tabs running con-currently while I am surfing, and it really irritates me when I had to check which one of those tabs is making all that noise. It’s just like having 2 media players playing different songs at the same time.

Got audio on your site? Be considerate, take them out or mute them by default.

• Importance of Keeping Your Renewal Records
• I Hate Big Pencil
• Acmamall.com, more stones needed
• Top search engine ranking?
• Don’t make a choice

I have talked to many businesses when they are having problems with their email. When asked how much they are paying for their email hosting service, unsurprisingly ranging from RM200 to less than a thousand annually. They were promised with unlimited users package, so-called 100% uptime, etc. Fact is, they have all kinds of problem from email lost, SPAM to poor technical support!

Various DNS Tools unveil the problem of their poorly setup email service, bit all it sounds too technical to them! Yet, it is obviously too attractive of the package they have signed up.

Here is how a simple math says all,

Said Company A with 50 staff, subscribe to email hosting service by paying RM1,000 yearly

Let’s drill down to a single month,

It would be RM83 a month for 50 staff, or RM1.67 for every staff in a month.

Hmm, am I hear it wrong? RM1.67?

My office cleaning service costs me RM120 a month!
My last McDonald’s meal cost me RM10…

Understand that the above email hosting company may be looking at volumes, but maintaining a reliable email hosting infrastructure can not be cheap too! I have yet to use the RM200/year email hostingpackage (Look at The Star In-Tech if you plan to subscribe one) in my sample…

Pay more today for your email :)

• WordPress Web Hosting
• Passion is the best customer support!
• Classified Companies
• Swedish’s Faktura
• Long Way Home of a Web Developer

“there is no choice for England in the Country Dropdown list” said our customer.

It is a balance between development cost and conversion rate. We can use an interactive map, than a drop down to solve this problem, eventually reduce our operation cost, or less one support email for today. But, before changes are made, we justify its cost to make this change to the values of conversion increasement we can get!

The answer, we maintain the dropdown - email to the customer to choose United Kingdom instead. Afterall, this is the one and only request we have received since day one.

The best localization is to listen to your customers and make changes!

• Conversion you don’t want
• How Not to Receive Feedback from Your Customer
• Don’t leave people hanging
• Why 4 Days?
• Acmamall.com, more stones needed

“A moving ship, though stopped, can still move faster than a boat!”

This explains why online business model is so much different from conventional offline business. When an online business is big and strong enough, it attracts more visitors automatically and convert even more (without extra marketing and development to expand). The vertical grow of the business is limitless and can happen in short time!

• Google’s Web Design Company
• New year, chinese ancient art of change
• What’s the cost of an online business?
• Swedish’s Faktura
• Day dreaming…

Thank you for your email. While we very much value your enquiries, comments and feedbacks, please note that due to the volume of mails that we receive, we may not be able to respond immediately. Nevertheless, we endeavour to reply your email within five working days.

The word endeavour in the email autoresponders from one of the biggest bank in Malaysia makes me wondering! There are couples of things that can be done here:

1. A ‘good’ website reduces operation or increase revenue. To what extend the website has helped the institution if they are still receiving many emails? Learn how this contact form reduce 20% of emails we receive.

2. Helpdesk system and more trained personnels. Make sure you are listening to your first-line support team as they have the best solution to reduce the loads of operation. Keep telling your customers that you are loaded with email ends up to be another MMU car boot checker.

3. Who says email must be formal? It can be fun, and quick too!

• Do they really like to hear from us?
• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• England or United Kingdom?
• Email is monotonous
• Guard Checks at MMU: Efficiency or Deficiency?

To launch a successful online business, we need a good mover. What makes a good mover?

1. Able to motivate the team and mobilize every team member to the goal.

2. Dare to dream, and make changes fast!

3. Strong foundation in development, marketing, operation and financial fields.

4. Make all team members understand the final goal of the business.

5. Think positively, test & measure!

• What’s the cost of an online business?
• Big Ship
• Why 4 Days?
• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• Think the online way - even the smallest things matters

Throughout the years, we have batches of intern students from different local Universities and Colleges who come and join us, working for a duration of 3 to 5 months. This job match-making event can be quite dreadful for some, as when they go into companies who make them a slave of BKL and replacement for office boy, without proper training and trust.

We are lucky to have lots of happy interns. These feedback contains no artificial ingredients!

1. Interns are like leeches (they are never enough with blood new things). They have greatest passion to learn.

2. They are not active on working hour, as they always sleep late. Usually takes about 1 week to overcome this jet lag. Good adaptability. Tea break in the first week is a must!

3. They are careless in first the week only (because school teachers never go through their projects/assignments in details while our clients are).

4. They can’t sit here without any work, we have to make them busy - or at least give them MSN or Skype.

5. Last minute internship report is norm (Why report, not Blog from all interns, so knowledge and experience is shared and polished, change!)

6. Lecturer’s visit makes them nervous, so tell them earlier when the date is set.

What else, interns?

• Why you work so late?
• Incubator for Startup
• It’s not about delivering
• Put a Roof on Their Head
• Graduating Soon?

Nothing opened dialogue in Saudi Arabia like the tragic fire in March 2002 when fifteen young girls burned to death, or rather, were trampled to death, after Saudi mobility police forced the schoolgirls back into the fire because they were not wearing their hijab. The men of religion would not allow the firemen in to save the girls, telling them, ‘It is sinful to approach them,’ quoted from Desert Royal

Personal encounters of Sultana princess can be both interesting to read and to bring a deeper thought of the tragic of people outside our country.

• Multiple Blogs in single installation
• Dog Adoption
• Advertisement in Year 1924
• Working remotely
• Language localisation