Stone Soup of an Online Business

Steve Jobs said he never listens to people. People would have said they want a faster horse (Henry Ford). Companies do it more as gestures, more than mining people for their ideas.

Lot of time, people don’t know what they want until you have get put the final product in front of them! If Akio Morita listen to their customers, we will never get the Walkman today.

Why? Steve and Akio Morita doesn’t spend time to study their users, because they themselves are already the best user experience expert!

When asked why iTunes works? Steve explained that illegal download through is free but taking some time to find the right song. iTunes, provides a better User Experience and you are assured with song quality and reliability. We can’t talk someone to stop downloading songs illegally, but we can give you Carrot. “Our carrot is, better User Experience… and that will cost you USD1 only,” said Steve.

Recently, we are revamping our travel guidebook. It is not rocket science or any marketing research on age-group of our travelers, or any ‘convenient’ information to fill in the guidebook - it is User Experience, to spent less than 3USD before the trip.

“I want a ‘car’!,” said Pin

Some other reading on User Experience:
How Not to Receive Feedback from Your Customer
Upload your picture to complete order?
What is the word?

• Don’t make a choice
• Running e-Government the way online store runs!
• Fly faster
• Save our Rhinos the better way
• Your Website Got Audio?

My partner, Yowchuan was one of the few entrepreneurs invited to MMU’s Centre for Commercialization and Technopreneur Development (CCTD) 8 years ago. Through it was merely a 300 sqf of space, but was already big enough for our dream to wonder far. Having the first office there, we never look back again.

If I’m not wrong, there are few incubators in Malaysia, check out the full list of MSC Malaysia status incubators. Looking back, some incubators are just like another MSC, both work like The Real Estate Corridor.

Not only this, some trying to confuse our technopreneur to make them believe that all big dream need some big funding. Yet, at many times, they can’t even tell you if your business model is right? You spent lot of your time attending entrepreneur-related talk and meet up with those ’successful’ businessman who shows you where they are now, but not how to get there!

Working with my interns over the years, I believe we have talented graduates for sure. They are lacking of confident, instead of funding and cubicle space. Talking about this, schools should actually allow them to pursue their dream as early as during their final year project stage, than working on those impractical project to look good in GPA/CPA. If they start earlier, they save more time and prepare themselves better before graduating!

What entrepreneurs want?

The physical space of where they work is never bigger than their dream. When you’re the only one to go off the beaten road after graduating, you need more than the incubator to realize your dream!

Long Way Home of a Web Developer
Decide Your Business Model Today!
Classified Companies
Google’s Web Design Company

• Graduating Soon?
• It’s never too late to change a bad name
• Google’s Web Design Company
• It’s not about delivering
• 2007 Year in Review

To have a recurring revenue for a business is kinda important. Same goes to empty vases in your office. We are lucky enough to have Ammie to refill it for us just when our first two roses quit.

Who says flower arrangement is easy? There are few things to make this works (ignore the girl in the picture). Ammie added a lily and match it with two beautiful roses. Some addictive (Flower food?) was added to make them stay alert for few more days in your office.

8 roses with lilies in vase. This was placed in the meeting room - order one for your office today! It makes some changes, without pain! :)

5 Reasons Why You Should Send Flowers in a Vase
What is Guardian Petals?

• Roses in Vase
• Two Roses in a Vase
• Upload your picture to complete order?
• Problem is improvement
• Passion is the best customer support!

I used to think of how those amazing company still indulged themselves in their own sweet dream of having many years of existence, in decades. It doesn’t take Friendster or WordPress long to become successful. If you need a more solid example, check out Google.

I was talking to one of the biggest property developer in Malaysia recently, over the revamp of their website. This is the second revamp after 4 years time, and I expect them to have clearer understanding on the importance of what to achieve now. Change is pain, and when every web developers walk in and tell you the same thing about mockup, fancy flash animation, they have finally chosen to measure something unmeasurable - branding.

They have chosen Leo Burnett, one of the famous creative company. I’m not sure how much opportunity cost will be lost to this property developer after visiting Leo Burnett’s website. My mouse turned into a big pencil, to match with their tag line ‘All big ideas come out from big pencil’. What has this to do with me? The website is in ALL-Flash version. The navigation does not impress me at all (perhaps, to the group’s decision maker, yes).

Creative agencies are in the market for many years, long before any web design company. In those days, TV, Radio and other non-online media are the main advertising channel. Over the years, creative agencies are moving into the online channel and this directly put themselves as the role of web developers, without knowing what and how website can really help - another example of Meatball Sundae.

It is not that you are big and the golden words ’starting since 18xx’..’ that makes you outstanding. It is about change!

Nokia wants to transform itself into a next-generation entertainment company. Last August, Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, created Ovi, an Internet service and online music store. Its intent, analysts say, is to compete directly against Apple.

This is unfamiliar territory for Nokia, which got its start in the mid-1800s as a paper maker. But as Mr. Ojanpera explained, companies like his have no choice. “Change is painful, but you have to figure this out in order to be successful,” said Mr. Ojanpera, who is based in White Plains. “The question is, are you willing to play by the new rules?”

Further Reading: Criteria for selecting good web developer

• Classified Companies
• Incubator for Startup
• Measuring the effectiveness of email campaign
• It’s never too late to change a bad name
• Decide Your Business Model Today!

If outsourcing is subcontracting a process, ‘noisesourching’ view the process as noise and can eventually affecting the subcontractors in long term. Outsourcing will die one day!

(I’ve talked to another lawyer today, it seems life of a lawyer is always busy. A lawyer works like a web designer. It’s a project after project lifestyles. Who says lawyer can’t change their business model and apply their experience, skills and knowledge into something that can benefit them in a recurring way, without much noise.)

• Google’s Web Design Company
• Noise is good!
• Long Way Home of a Web Developer
• Graduating Soon?
• How much can you cover?

Just like Michelin (yes, the famous tyre manufacturer) with its annual guide books ‘The Michelin Guide‘, Mercedes-Benz also has their tradition of presenting ten handpicked tracks by international newcomers as a free download compilation called Mixed Tape.

What is Mixed Tape to do with Automotive giant? Just like every successful online business has their story, I believe Mixed Tape is the story of offline business… :)

• Old marketing manager
• Big Ship
• Source of visitors
• Cost of Acquisition
• What’s the cost of an online business?

I was talking to my friend who worked in a Classified company. His company is into producing an inche thick printed classified and distributed free to businesses. The revenue model is simple, to get more companies to advertise, the better. You can choose from point form listing to full-page color advertisement, as long as you can pay for it.

We both agreed that this industries won’t last long. My friend estimating it would last for another 10 years and will start to go down. Why?

1. Customers are getting smarter now. See, you can’t pay Google for a clean high listing, but you can do it in Classified. Google use several method to find out the most useful and popular website and list them high, in a more technical term, PageRank. Yet, Classified companies spent more time to recruit more sales rep to sell more ads than focusing in improving their Classified.

2. It wasn’t hany. Printed classifed is thick and heavy. It requires you to go through the whole Klang Valley to find one Plumber who is near your house. Search engines solved this problem, presenting you with a weight-less solution, as long as you are connected. You get information you need, most targetted and updated.

3. There are too many medias now. Google will not be as successful if they start their company as one that sell and allow people to subscribe to their pay per click model. See, you need a story, a story that is truly benefiting your visitors.

At least there are few things Classified companies can do to improve this

Colored and box listing are free for those who deserve it, those with lot of good testimonials, those offering responsible customer support service. Companies who advertised should somehow find a way to prove their are qualified for a listing of their rank. In fact, all listing should be free!

Then, how to keep this Classified company survive if not selling advertisement? I don’t know actually, it can be many ways. Think about how to make your product useful to your customers and the readers of the Classified. Who knows, one day, the revenue could be from the selling of the Classified? Subscription fee? Adsense?

If you’re sure what will happen in the 10 years time, why not change today? Afraid of short-term pains?

• Old marketing manager
• Google’s Web Design Company
• Incubator for Startup
• I Hate Big Pencil
• Graduating Soon?

Think about this:

Group A: Hair stylists, web developers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, teacher, contractor, media planner, photographer, graphic designer…

(Group A’s customers want a customize solution. The solution is unique to each of them. Skill of Group A improved but limited to the person who is offering the service. The value of that person who offer the solution increases)

Group B: Online florist, broadband service provider, medical supplier, Google, Jobstreet, housing developers, scientist…

(Group B come out with their solution first. They customers made their decision to choose or reject the solution. The solution itself get improved and the values of the solution increases.)

Decide today! You don’t have many 5 or 10 years to change your business model!

Share with us your experience, post it here

• Google’s Web Design Company
• Classified Companies
• Everyone loves to share
• I want a faster horse!
• Long Way Home of a Web Developer

1. Agreement should always be the very first thing before any project starts. Most disputes happen after a project is generating revenue.

2. No verbal agreement. When putting it to words, you’ll find it more serious. I’d agree that it was not easy to put everything into writing, especially things like expectation. There must be certain kind of measurement. If there is no, how would you be able to value the performance of someone? The harder it is, the more important an agreement to be signed.

3. Agreement must be offer-to-offer. This means, it supposes to sound ‘you are getting xxx% of share for xxx amount of work done’ or ‘I will work xxx amount of work to get xxx% of share’. I found this missing in most of Chinaman’s ageement, it’s more like a offer-to-accept or accept-to-offer. I blame ‘儒家思想‘ on this matter!

• Email is monotonous
• Screw
• I’m calling from Google?
• Decide Your Business Model Today!
• Google’s Web Design Company

Looking back - 10 years, from one project to another, we have completed countless project for our customers, big and small. I’m glad we did. Through I found them to certain extend becoming noise, but noise is good.

We was once occupied by web design projects. We spent most of our time solving problems for our customers. It keeps us really busy. To cope with it, we get more staff. And when we realize we have more mouth to feed every month, we struggle to get more projects. This can be done only if your team never fall sick, your sales persons close deal timely, your designer produce the same good quality on every project, you have same less-fussy customers every time…

While your customers happily passing all the noises to you in their so-called outsource process, you are scratching your head to manage unnecessary noise over and over. You engage more staff than automating the process, you use your time to help your customers grow than your own.

Not only this, you find the red ocean spreading across in front of you. Web design firms fighting each other from getting drown. You try to find out why customers pay little on their website, when you think you should deserve more? You’re no longer satisfied been paid of your time spent, instead of values created.

Never underestimate your values. We can create wonders if we start something today, together.

• Noise is good!
• Google’s Web Design Company
• Graduating Soon?
• Noisesource
• It’s not about delivering

I was skeptical at first especially after we sent an email informing all our existing customers about decision we have made last week.

When asked why? This is definitely not another be-the-first kind of Malaysia Boleh campaign. It’s also not the Meatball Sundae like what Seth’s said in this book.

The change just happened. I can remember this suggestion was raised last year. We find no solid answers to how are we going to handle calls coming in on Friday, how our team members are able to check their email when they are not in the office, how to access the file servers without a VPN - We are not ready!

Again, change is pain but we are not afraid of it. Yet, to take every measure to make sure all our customers & team members will be benefited from this process.

• Mover of an online business
• Do they really like to hear from us?
• Working remotely
• Conversion you don’t want
• How Not to Receive Feedback from Your Customer

I found this particularly interesting. Is that chooing priority ‘Low’ also means I will get my responce slower? If everyone goes for priority ‘High’, then why bother to ask?

This reminds me the one of a song from Shakira, Illegal - “question my own questions on and on..”

• I want a faster horse!
• What is the word?
• Dog Adoption
• Email is monotonous
• Think the online way - even the smallest things matters

It takes you 2-minutes to listen to a real customer about how should the form looks like. I bet almost all customers will prefer a simple one than above.

1. Instruction kills creativity, makes people think less. The person who built this form is probably just want to get work done than how this form can help those who use it.

2. Change is pain. The original paper-based form could look exactly like this online form. Why bother to change it?

3. Users are passive. The form is viewed by countless visitors, yet no change has been done. Design of a building is done first than its construction. When the building is done, it is often too late to change, and suggestions are limited to what is already there.

• Acmamall.com, more stones needed
• I Hate Big Pencil
• Long Way Home of a Web Developer
• Think the online way - even the smallest things matters
• Why 4 Days?

You are in a book business for 30 years. Story of Amazon.com motivates you to extend your business online. You start to build a website and sell your books online. Your marketing manager busy adopting new marketing ideas including Blog, email newsletter, pay-per-click, etc.

But after a while, you start to think why the result was not as expected. Your cost acquiring new visitors is high, the Blog is not active, no one seems to use the tell-a-friend box in your website…

But, someone next door - without any experience in selling books, started an online book store. They have some funny story and people are spreading the news for them, their CEO can be reached anytime by an email, the way they reply the customer support email is fun.

Start an online business, never extend it from a conventional one!

• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• Google’s Web Design Company
• Importance of Keeping Your Renewal Records
• Classified Companies
• Big Ship

With Internet flatten the world, you can now take an order from your website without meeting your customer. They are required to fill in a boring and long order form (all the way from first name to where they stay).

You have them all kept in a customer database. A literate society comes to believe that everything can be explained in words. What you’ve just seen is an example of how great a fallacy that is.

I bet the name of customer means nothing to you, especially if you have thousand of orders a day. They are just another must-have record in your customer database, because all online forms are designed the same!

I’m surprised! Most of us only add a friend from Meetic when a picture was attached with a profile, same goes to facebook and frienster! Same goes to the fact that you will never fall in love with someone by just their name!

I wish I don’t have to fill in anything while making an order. Instead, just to upload my picture, why not? At least, I don’t become ‘another record’ in the database, but becoming a friend to the online store owner.

A customer database made up of faces, indexed by nick name! I would love to have this!

• Amazing Karen
• Think the online way - even the smallest things matters
• I want a faster horse!
• It’s never too late to change a bad name
• Two Roses in a Vase

When it comes to annual event, what is the best domain to be used? By including the year 2008 after the domain (yes, someone may already registered wcit.com), it is therefore a must to register a new name wcit2009 next year. New domain means you have to start all over again and build your ranking in search engine again! To solve this, if you are using a Blog, you can create categories like 2007, 2008, 2009, etc and assign your post respectively.

• 1.my, after 6 years of waiting
• 5 Must Have WordPress Plugins
• Old marketing manager
• Importance of Keeping Your Renewal Records
• Source of visitors

What happen if your fridge is not working? You turn off the power, remove everything and send it to repair. You got it back, working perfectly after two days.

You will notice one thing, your fridge is cleaner now, with all rubbish clear and things are in order! I bet you won’t clean it if the fridge doens’t go wrong.

How to apply this to online business?

Create problem virtually! Assumming your customer complaint at you, someone hacking into your website, broken link, page whacked, etc - all these bring positive result!

• Source of visitors
• Old marketing manager
• Who’s Jo-jo Challenge
• A name for your online business…
• It’s not about delivering

Yahoo suspend your Yahoo Mail account if you don’t login for long. While, Gmail - reward you to stay longer and login more frequent by counting and increase your email storage while you are logging in!

• Endeavour - earnest and conscientious activity intended to do or accomplish something
• Decide or Wet
• Paypal Experience - Part I
• Email is monotonous
• Fine-tuning TuneHotels.com

“All Marketers are Liars” - Seth Godin speaks at Google. Seth’s interesting presentation will tell you why technology won’t help, and why my parents will not come back bothering me if I send them to Google than Yahoo! :)

• Squidoo’s inevitable destiny
• Google to pay $3.1 bln for DoubleClick
• Reward or Penalty?
• RM150,000 to turn your ideas into reality
• Language localisation

It would be the best if every party in the loop go beyond their own scope!

• Truly first come first serve system must be discriminative!
• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• What is good website?
• Noise is good!
• Discard your PC in good way

What is noise? When you have hundred of products but only one which is selling well, the rest are noise. When you want to indulge yourself to do something, any interruption is considering noise, as well!

Outsourcing seems to be one of the way to cut off noise. Sony or IKEA will not be of what they are today if they choose not to outsource. Raw materials, production and logistics are examples of noise.

Noise can be passing around. Consumers buy rice from supermarkets, supermakets from distributors, distributors tfrom rice mill owners, and farmers lastly. Each level trying to get rid of noise.

What is the effect of noise? Farmers spent most of their time working in the paddy field to produce rice. In this case, farmers are bearing the noise from consumers, under the hot sun. The digested noise are now turning into experience of how to grow paddy!

Skill is a result of noise!

• Long Way Home of a Web Developer
• Noisesource
• What is good website?
• I want a faster horse!
• Graduating Soon?

If Google creates the most amazing website, why not they start their web design business?

When we work for someone, we get paid and at the same time we get the chance to acquire new skills. For example, a web designer creates an online store for someone and get paid for the time spent and the quality of work. Such relationship provides a very good platform for someone to learn.

The owner of the online store will not share the revenue with you. Everyday, values is built into the project and this has nothing to do with you (The very most you get a portfolio). The web designer goes project after project, having bad time during year end when all companies had finished their budget, etc.

This does not happen to only individual, but businesses as well. Most successful companies change their business direction to have recurring sales than one-off profit. All these involve applying their skills in different ways.

Web designers venture into their own online business; contractors builld their own housing project; programmer develop their own software for sale, etc. Remember, the moment you start, you are accumulating your values into somewhere. When you wake up tomorrow, it still still with you, Through you have much more to worry such as operation & marketing.

If you are Google now, would you want to start your web design business?

• Long Way Home of a Web Developer
• Graduating Soon?
• A name for your online business…
• Incubator for Startup
• Noisesource

When you are in another country, and the hard drive of the file server in your company crashed. Working remotely comes to a real test, where:

1. Restoration must be done quickly! Getting ready with second hard drive, moving backup files into the new server, re-install the Linux platform…

2. Tools to get you connected to your office, both voice and video. We use Skype. Broadband connection, power supply, cup of coffee - Starbucks, if only you can be there in time!

3. A team of people back in the office to work as your hands. This also means the whole set of infra for both voice and video must also be steadily available back in your office. I am lucky to have both, infra and a very capable team!

• Conneting LAN remotely with OpenVPN
• What interns want?
• 2007 Year in Review
• New year, chinese ancient art of change
• Decide or Wet

In order to pay via Paypal, buyers are required to sign-up for a Paypal account before they can submit the payment. In fact, the Paypal registration process is not as straight forward as it claims.  Most of the time, seller will receive questions/complaints from buyer as following.  

What is a Paypal Expended Number Program?

Why am I required to enter my bank details?

Why was I been charged for USD1? Is this a hidden charges from you?

First of all,  it is absolutely Free for buyer to signup for Paypal account.

To prevent fraud cases, Paypal will require buyers to verify their account via the Expanded Use Program. To prove the ownership of the credit card/bank account, Paypal will charge/deposit a small amount of money to buyers’ credit card/bank that they’ve registered with Paypal. Buyers will have to check their credit card statement/bank statement to retrieve a secret code from that transaction and enter back to Paypal system for verification purpose.

As an Unverified member of PayPal, buyers’ payments are subject to a Sending Limit. By becoming Verified, buyers will be able to send unlimited funds with their PayPal account. 

Paypal will refund money back to buyers’ account after they verifiy with Paypal.

• Swedish’s Faktura
• 1.my, after 6 years of waiting
• Who’s Jo-jo Challenge
• Warranty card
• Decide or Wet

Driving Visitors

If a website is new, without much traffic and returning visitors - a ‘good’ website should be simple and take less time to develop. More time should be spent on the marketing, to drive more visitors to your website.

Increase Conversion

Once a website is getting enough traffic (in our terms, above 500 visitors a day), you should have enough feedback to build a website closer to what your visitors want. In this case, ‘good’ websites are those with initutive layout, content what your visitors like, etc! In one word, higher conversion rate!

• Decide or Wet
• Conversion you don’t want
• Save our Rhinos the better way
• Fine-tuning TuneHotels.com
• What is the word?

Maintaining more than one Blog can be time consuming, endless patches, new WordPress upgrade (to enjoy the new features in the recent launch of WordPress 2.5), fine-tuning can keep you really busy!

We have decided to use single WordPress installation for all Blogs. Well, we explore WordPress Mu but it is just way too bulky and complicated. WP Mu is like a layer of control panel in front of WP core engine. Yet, due to this fact, it is hard to configure and having problem catching up with latest WP releases.

You can try the Multiblogs solution to work this out. This single WP installation works for everyone by loading a different config file. As usual, these are few issues to be taken note on:

1) Unicode_start, this is one way to show Unicode characters in your Linux Terminal. This is interesting, we thot Unicode filename in Linux was not well supported, looks we are wrong!

2) Symlink, this allows creation of folder structure in our approach to archieve something like /lang/country/destination. The command ln -s . Make sure this command is run in the folder where you are creating the symlink.

3) The clean vuser function in mb-functions.php in multiblogs seems do not support non-ascii language well. It replaces all non-ascii to _, creating problem in the database Prefix name.

• WordPress Web Hosting
• Toilet bowl must clean, but email can go down?
• 5 Must Have WordPress Plugins
• Handle the truth
• Problem is improvement

My friend asked me, “how to make a website appears on the top of search engines?”

The very first thing I can answer to her is, there is no quick for of doing this! Well, More than 50% of site visitors are directed from search engines.

Passive
Passive in a way, this is nothing new but a lot of passion needed, and often can and must be done on your end. There are unlimited kind of keywords which people used to find your website. In the simplest way, keywords are used by search engines to match content on your website. Now, do you think using keyword ‘石头汤’ can find my Blog, no way! Simply because I don’t have the Chinese translation. What about ‘石头羹’, ‘石頭湯’?

Active
Google sorts website using their patent-pending-never-disclose methodology. One of them, the PageRank, remain mistery but you can always interprete it to ‘the more links pointing to your website, the more popular your website is, eventually you deserve a higher seat’. Question, how to many many website pointing to you? This again, nothing new, not rocket science but a long term effort of making this to happen.

This first-class seat is not available for quick booking, you can only make your way to it!

• Classified Companies
• Source of visitors
• Cost of Acquisition
• How much can you cover?
• A name for your online business…

Seth Godin’s books are our bibles. When Seth started his new project, Squidoo, we are as excited as him. The building of a knowledge base with Seth’s ‘lens concept’ is pretty interesting. Yet, it is never easy for a market already dominated by Wiki, and the coming Google Knol project!

Looking back, we have started our Kumomo project a year ago. We are ambitious to believe it would taking up and to serve as an Ad Space Marketplace for everyone. It nearly become the albatross around our neck. The file closed when we sell the domain name and successfully funded two schools in Cambodia!

It seems that everyone is finding their way to create their own version of Web 2.0 project. Who will be the next FaceBook or Bebo? :)

• For the first time in their life…
• Language localisation
• Incubator for Startup
• Put a Roof on Their Head
• It’s never too late to change a bad name

Google has done their part to make searching of information more easily. Yet, do we have the tool to easily share our knowledge? The answer could be, NO!

Everyone possess useful knowledge, or having feedback about anything they come across. Can you tell how many of your visitors actually read your post and reply? Why not 100%? Could it because of the unfriendly Leave a Reply form at the bottom of your post?

The Knol project by Google will soon tell the answer!

• Don’t leave people hanging
• Squidoo’s inevitable destiny
• Think the online way - even the smallest things matters
• Email is monotonous
• Don’t make a choice

It is important to understand what are the fixed cost associated with an online business. The following are an example of cost breakdown for an small-medium scale online business for your reference,

Setting up
Hardware, backup, setting up servers (RM20k)
Trademarks and copyright (RM10k)
System development (RM800k)

Monthly operation
Co-location, email hosting, domain name (RM2k)
Customer support, 24×7 (RM10k)
System maintenance (RM5k)
SSL certificate (RM50)

Monthly marketing budget
Online & offline campaigns (RM5k)

• Importance of Keeping Your Renewal Records
• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• Old marketing manager
• England or United Kingdom?
• Conversion you don’t want

Pronunciation, spelling conventions and grammatical patterns are important for website targeting at specific regional markets.

Arguably, we have seen many website using flags to represent a language - in this case, most probably the national language of that specific country.

Let’s look at Jetstar’s website. I was directed to Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) version automatically when I first landed in their website. Interesting enough, Bahasa Malaysia is the official language of Malaysia, but conversion wise, I doubt!

Google, directing you to Malaysia version, but offering Malaysia Version in English language by default. You can easily find a link ‘Google.com.my offered in: Bahasa Malaysia’, which make more sense!

Cambodia e-Visa, allows you to choose your preferred language by clicking on the name of language. An alternative to using flags too!

• Cost of Acquisition
• Everyone loves to share
• Classified Companies
• Top search engine ranking?
• Measuring the effectiveness of email campaign

It amazed me when knowing Barbara’s husband was trained to be one of the computer programmer in the USA in year 1952. Barbara and her husband Glenn Halliday, was so kind to spend some time with us in an interview on their recent trip to Cambodia and the experience of using the online Cambodia Visa service.

“I can’t think of any improvements, but I wish more websites in the USA were as good–especially those of our governmental agencies…” Read full interview

• Don’t make a choice
• Running e-Government the way online store runs!
• 2007 Year in Review
• Memorable experience
• Books & stationery to donate!

Upon landing in Kuala Lumpur, my French friends who just came back from Cambodia are looking for a place to unpack their luggage and quick rest. They wanted some place near the heart of the city. With their budget and location preferences in mind, I decided to bring them over to Tune Hotels. Furthermore, I’ve always wanted to see how the “Booking” system works in Asia’s 1st No Frill Hotel.

Upon reaching the nearest computer terminal en route Tune Hotels, which “co-incidentally” happened to be my office, I finally got the chance to look at how the whole booking process works. The entire booking process is performed “live” by my friends. Bear in mind that this “live performance” is purely executed from the point of a non-English speaking user.

Bigger input fields and making the Booking Now stood out prominently can mean a lot of difference. The rule is simple, important element should always stand out visually from the rest. In this case, it’s not the Login button.

Most visitors jump into the form without spending much time browsing the entire website. Obviously, the main conversion of the website is online booking, hence creating other pages such as “About Us”, “Corporate Information” and various hotel guest-unrelated information would be counter-productive. Instead, content that is important is build alongside the form structure. Notice in this example above, it would be difficult to explain in text how comfortable the mattress it. A picture speaks a thousand words.

However, after my friend finish filling up all the booking details, as he was proceeding to the credit card payment phase, he was annoyingly greeted with an obstrusive “Member Sign Up” form. This part of the process was not executed as elegantly as I expected. As a rule of thumb, never add unnecessary processes in between the starting point and the goal- always use the Shortest Path Algorithm.

You can always include the “Member Sign Up” phase in the confirmation e-mail later, which in my opinion is much more relevant. And one can’t help but feel that the UI designer decided to take the easy way out by putting 5 equally prominent red bullets for the “Login”, “Register”, “Email me my password”, and “Back”. Hard work doesn’t always pay off now, but laziness almost always pay off instantly. The user could have been guided better and faster with a better layout design.

Lost in translation! Yup, Tune Hotels lost RM 5 just because some of the items listed in the website is not easily understood and was easily pass over by my friend. The word ‘Towel’ which is written only in English proves to be a headache for my friends who could have mistaken it as sanitary napkins. An icon would have done the job much better!

What is good design?

• Passing traffic
• Who’s Jo-jo Challenge
• How Not to Receive Feedback from Your Customer
• Decide or Wet
• Cost of Acquisition

Over the counter, banks use queue ticket system to manage their crowd.

However, as with human nature, not all counters can solve each customer’s request in the same time duration.

Incorrect form entries, forgetting a company stamp, signature mismatch, and all other kinds of human-prone errors are bound to happen! This is where the queue system cannot easily filter out, making it half as efficient as it should have been.

To fix this little margin of “humanity-error”, we have implemented an “approval-based system”.

It’s quite simple really. The approval process kicks in the moment the first customer start queueing. The duty of the approval team will filter out the customers with problems and direct those who are error-free straight to the counter. Those with errors will be directed to the error-fixing team, where a dedicated trouble-shooting team will attend to them personally.

It’s not to be seen as a system to penalize customers with errors, but rather, it’s to reward well-prepared customers who gets their documents right and speed up the process for them.

In the end, both the erroneous customer and the error-free customer will be happy.

• Conversion you don’t want
• What’s system design to do with marketing?
• Long Way Home of a Web Developer
• Do they really like to hear from us?
• Classified Companies

“More children in Cambodia can now attend schools for the first time in their life”

We believe that the Kumomo Tree is having this magical power of healing anyone sitting under it. It is this reason that drives us to create Kumomo.com, an advertisement booking platform which contributes to the Rural School Project on every successful booking.

By giving out the ownership of the domain name Kumomo.com, 26k USD was raised to build two schools in Cambodia. When asked, we have decided to name both new schools Kumomo Tree One & Two! Construction is expected to begin in mid February and should be completed in July 2008.

For the first time in my life too, I felt the magical power, so real and it is happening…

We need your help! We wish to upgrade both school with Internet access. With this, kids can access to the outside world, as well as to support the Girls Be Ambitious program.

If you have any extra stationery which you wish to donate to both schools, please send it to us (J-2-15, Jalan PJU 1/43, Aman Suria, PJ 47301, Selangor) before July 2008. Thank you so much!

• Put a Roof on Their Head
• Books & stationery to donate!
• 2007 Year in Review
• Squidoo’s inevitable destiny
• Graduating Soon?

No, not the canned meat product! This is the 5th Spam mails I have received from Malaysia Giant Supermarket through I have requested them to unsubscribe me from the their list. Guess their marketing team is really doing a good job to have a short email that go through most Spam filtering system!

Clearly, the result of conversion is, this was featured in my Blog for a wider marketing reach!

• Endeavour - earnest and conscientious activity intended to do or accomplish something
• Conversion you don’t want
• Passion is the best customer support!
• Think the online way - even the smallest things matters
• Old marketing manager

“Keep it in the store room first!”

You have a nice office chair that is broken. It can be fixed by replacing the circular plate beneath. New chair costs RM120 while fixing it costs you RM70. Most of us don’t throw it away or buy a new one because you know that the-lying-in-the-store-room broken chair can be fixed.

Making immediate decision is painful, so as making a change. Both explore a new possibility unknown. You can stay in your comfort zone by making no decision or change - will a comfort zone remains comfort without change, I doubt!

Your call to add a new junk worth RM50 to the earth, or to call BinChen for her help to fix your chair!

• New year, chinese ancient art of change
• Graduating Soon?
• How much can you cover?
• Decide or Wet
• Books & stationery to donate!

The less choice for your site visitors, the higher the conversion!

Upon landing on your website, your visitors are expecting that you, the site owner is making the best arrangement for them. Just like how we trust Google. You believe Google returned the MOST relevant result to you, don’t you? Or at least, the is the best Google can provide to you.

But still, many websites are designed to give you the choices of you don’t want. Do you buy Cambodia and Bahrain travel guide at the same time? If not, why shopping cart are provided? Yes, it gives you the convenience of shopping around, but it also creates more steps to complete a deal.

The tricky part (it is nothing but test & measure), it is how you divert them to their choice before they make a choice! The best is, this is done indirectly, without their awareness. You won’t be pleased to be asked for your shoe size immediately when entering a boutique…

Cambodie e-Visa allows travelers to apply their Travel Visa to Cambodia. If the applications come from travelers themeselves, chances that the’re applying for no more than 5 applications at a time. The first part of the application form was designed to filter the applicants and provide them with the best experience while submitting their details.

The use of icons immediately telling the applicants the total price before the last step. Icons use no translation and no shopping cart is required!

• Interview with Mike on e-Visa system
• Other e-Visa travelers’ experience

• Decide or Wet
• Interview with Barbara
• I want a faster horse!
• Running e-Government the way online store runs!
• Your Website Got Audio?

My Sony notebook, loose with one screw missing. A tiny screw cost nothing but I will never go to a Sony support centre and fix it, or order it somewhere. Why? Because I am lazy. If someone come to me and offer this to me with RM1 for one screw. I will take it, simply because it comes to me, at the right time, right place.

Shopping centre provides convenience to us. Everything are in one plaze. That is one way of fighting the laziness.

Another way, if Sony website or their support centre make known to me that I can order a screw through their website, I will do it too.

Laziness - it is a curse to online business offering items with small values.

• Who’s Jo-jo Challenge
• What’s the cost of an online business?
• Google’s Web Design Company
• Long Way Home of a Web Developer
• Old marketing manager

You are offering an online service. You know that visitors from search engines and other online sources are most likely to be converted into your customer than those coming from offline medias such as newspaper or TV commercial.

Rasa Sayang Malaysia calls out to all Malaysians to share the wonders of our country with the world by sending an online postcard. I have yet to see any Asian people to write on a postcard while waiting for the flight in the airport, foreigners do. Why not targeting at those backpackers who travel to Malaysia to logon to the website and send the postcard? Isn’t that they have more friends who eager to know about Malaysia than our friends? Yet, their commercials appear on local TV channel, and one need to register before even given the chance to look at what are those postcard available…

Mobile Wallet, choose to advertise with full page coverage in today’s newspaper. The cost of acquisition for the conversion to take place is high. If, this is so-called part of the branding process, it is not measurable, and it definitely not a conversion. Search engines and other online channels are going to drive in more than 80% of their website traffic, in a more targetted and measurable way. Only, with a fraction of offline marketing fee can do much to the current website…