Mercedes-Benz’s Mixed Tape
July 25th, 2008
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… :)
You may want to take a look at our related postsGraduating Soon?
July 18th, 2008
I wasn’t able to sort out few things lately! Yet, I felt they are some formulas hidden inside this three facts, just that I couldn’t able to link them out.
Working for others
Our graduates love this for sure, climbing corporate ladder. The higher you’re, the lower risk you can take. Is this comfort zone a permanent one, I doubt!
Yet, if not this, what else? It’s a highway. You are told it is fastest, closest and the most comfortable one. Except one thing, the high price to pay. Your parents, lecturers, buddies and our society shape this road and you are just following, what’s wrong with it?
Graduate, find a good job, get your first pay check, buy your first car and follow by a house. Pay your loans and when you’ve little money in your bank - almost the time to get married. Sounds familiar? Indeed, it is just another NKVE.
Start your own business - Type A
I always believe everyone has their own dream. I interviewed some, digging from their memory deep inside and yes - from cycling to setting up bakery. Many of these dreams are buried, less important than getting higher GPA and busy fighting to secure the best job in the most ‘well-known’ company with highest salary.
Only few of them, make the hard decision to roam the trunk road than going straight to the highway. It isn’t easy at all. You have spent your crucial 3 or 4 years in University, learning how to complete your final year project without a business model, without knowing how to market it, managing people, applying your MSC…
What’s Type A? Type A entrepreneurs, through not working for others, but decide to venture into business model that providing customized service, such as web design. They accumulate skills and experience, but sadly to say, this is a dead-end business model after 3 to 5 years. You find yourself getting busier, having lot of noise, probably a bigger team but also mean you have to make sure projects keep coming in every month, in time!
Start your own business - Type B
Type B entrepreneurs decide to start their own project. This can be, for example an online florist selling just roses. It starts small and no one sure how far this can go. This single project get 100% attention from the founder.
Put it this way, Type A’s business is to setup and take care of a garden for someone. It is an example of outsource. Type A, at the same time, taking care of more other gardens.
Type B, setup his own garden and plant just one tree in the garden. It is nothing but the tree. All focus, resources, time are investing into it.
Let’s fast forward to 5 years later. All trees in both garden yield fruits, but who owns it? In fact, the owner of the garden managed by Type A, are type B too. Type B has more time to think to grow his business while Type A busy managing garden after garden.
By the way, do you know who are those working in the garden, climbing up to the tree? You’re right, those in ‘Working-for-others’ with good climbing skills after years of training :)
If you are graduating soon, can I talk to you?
You may want to take a look at our related postsTop search engine ranking?
April 4th, 2008
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!
You may want to take a look at our related postsImportance of Keeping Your Renewal Records
January 8th, 2008
Who say running an online business is easy and everything seems to be auto-pilot - one just need to get the site running and start collecting money.
Email - Reliable, Manageable (forwarding, Spam Control), uptime. How marketing experience shares between your teams, solving customer support email while using it as an opportunity to train new support staff and at the same time to reduce operation issues…
Servers - Dedicated server, higher bandwidth, importance of understing every details of the platform including what is running in the Cron job, who is deleting the overflow log file, blocking the firewall, making sure the current datetime is correct and sync to the hardware clock, etc.
Domain name - Reminder to renew your domain name? Or, end up as the recent incident that caused the Advertlets.com domain to expire?
You may want to take a look at our related postsSource of visitors
January 3rd, 2008
Yes, this is an online business. If you are depending heavily on offline marketing to drive in visitors to your online business (unless you have already some establish offline business, and online is just an extention), you are probably hitting at the wrong target user-base.
In quick, sources of visitors can be broken down to Search Engine, Referral and Direct. Clicks from search engines of both Sponsored & free listing are one of the major source which you can never neglected. Referral is visitors landed at your website by clicking on any hyperlink that points to you, EXCEPT search engines. The hyperlink, can be in an email, from a Blog, from a banner, etc. Direct refers to those who type your URL in the web browsers.
Knowing where is your customers helps you to better plan your campaign!
You may want to take a look at our related postsDecide or Wet
January 1st, 2008
“You are on your half way to school, and rain starts to fall down. Here comes to a decision to be made. Either to rush back and get yourself a umbrella or sprint your way to school”
Puzzling? It is about decision, making the best decision at at the most right time!
Your online business just started. You have average 20 visitors a day. 2 out of 20 sign up for your online service. Well, you have just got yourself 10% conversion rate daily!
The two important measurement in this case, are Visitors and Conversion rate.
If you can increase Visitors to 40 a day - quite likely you are getting 4 successful sign up a day. Same goes to the conversion rate!
You post a comment in someone’s Blog with a link pointing back to your website. Yes, you drive more visitors but it does not increase your conversion rate. In another senario, you post some recent testimonials on your website, and this increase your conversion rate, but has nothing to do to drive in more Visitors.
Let’s make thing simple, if you have less than 100 visitors a day! Let’s see why we should focus in driving more Visitors first and only deal with Converision Rate later?
1. Without certain amount of Visitors, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of a change to your website for the sake of conversion rate!
2. You want to have shopping cart system, royalty program, membership login, etc. Let’s be true. Your website is new, you need visitors. You need their feedback to shape the features of your website. Shopping cart make buyers’ life easier (though we can also prove to you that not all your potentials know how to use a shopping cart, I will explain in future). No one come to your website because you have a shopping cart!
3. The more time you have spent in improving conversion rate, the less time you have to drive in more visitors!
You may want to take a look at our related postsAcmamall.com, more stones needed
December 26th, 2007
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.
You may want to take a look at our related postsA name for your online business…
December 23rd, 2007
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?
You may want to take a look at our related postsEngland or United Kingdom?
December 11th, 2007
“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!
You may want to take a look at our related postsBig Ship
December 11th, 2007
“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!
Endeavour - earnest and conscientious activity intended to do or accomplish something
December 5th, 2007
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!
You may want to take a look at our related postsThink the online way - even the smallest things matters
November 22nd, 2007
Yes, you may have the best system, software, idea, proposal for your online business, but without changing your mind to work like an online business… What would you do? Take this test now!
1. You have just received an email from your customers to thank you for your good service rendered.
2. You have just taken a picture of your company dinner.
3. Someone wrote in a very negative comment/feedback about your product.
4. You found an interesting link.
What will you do next (Remember, from a point of online business owner).
Post it with the Leave a Reply form below.
You may want to take a look at our related postsEmail is monotonous
November 22nd, 2007
“Email is monotonous,” said my friend during our discussion today. Email delivers a message in a single tone unlike a conversation. My business nature requires me to answer many emails a day.
My email reflects me, it is just another form of conversation, in text. We love our work - so I have to think of some ways to reflect this well in my email:
1. Thanks means Thanks, but Thanks :) means Thanks and I’m smiling happily. Will you love someone when she is hiding all her feelings from you?
2. You have more than one hundred ways to tell your sender that you are a human. This is me!.
3. Make your email short. Long email is just like your mom nagging on you! Do you ask your lecturer 10 questions at a time and expecting 10 answers together?
4. Skip this if you are that kind of person who will never stop and offer help to someone with a broken car beside the road. Don’t just reply for the sake of replying. Offer your help, feedback or any suggestion in your email!
5. Though this has something to do with the default setting of Outlook Express to mark message read automatically after 5 seconds - Never ignore an email. Give a precise answer. It is just a Yes or No. Not hearing from you is either not a Yes or No, but being impolite. Imagine you are talking to someone face to face but he ignores you and walk away, this is exactly the same feeling.
You may want to take a look at our related postsIt’s not about delivering
November 21st, 2007
Over the years, we have been working on projects after projects. So, what is the change?
In those days, we strike to deliver. We aim to complete project in time, good project management, quality control, customer satisfaction, etc. We have changed. The first question we are asking is the result.
Yes, to build system with results (can a poorly designed system gets you the result, I highly doubt it will).
You may want to take a look at our related postsWebsite completion
November 20th, 2007
We use the term ‘Website completion date…’ in our quote. I was kinda reluctant to apply this. Websites are never really ‘complete’ as new contents and changes will always be needed as long as you are still in the business.
Thus, when it is complete, you are at the end of your business!
You may want to take a look at our related postsWhat’s system design to do with marketing?
November 20th, 2007
Behind an online business, backend system works silently, handle operation issues, customer support, making your online experience a most wonderful one. They are a part of the business!
Spending more time in your operation means you have less time for your marketing.
It is one of the reason why we are never happy about our supporting system. Apparently, we revamp our system very often (Yes, complete revamp). New interface are tested before actual coding. Our programmers are tested in every revamp to make the interface even better.
Instead of presenting few dropdowns for different search options, we have included arrow button to click for various search options. Don’t ask me why the arrow is before the text field, why not after? Funny enough, such important details is never being discussed in the Request for Proposal documents or quotations. Clients tend to just want a system done, rather than getting it done the right way!
Thanks to Weikiat, our best reduce-operation-increase-marketing engineer!
You may want to take a look at our related postsWhy you work so late?
November 16th, 2007
We were having a drink last night, one of my friend seemed to be interested to find out why we are working late most of the time. It is pretty hard for us to answer until we have realized it is something to do with the word ‘work’…
We don’t feel that we are working because we are having fun and enjoying what we are doing.
You may want to take a look at our related postsHandle the truth
November 16th, 2007
‘Bad’ feedback can actually be good for blogs. It gives you clues as to where you went wrong and from there, how to improve.
“Focus on bad feedback, rectify and improve!”
Perhaps you could also add that people can give suggestions as to how to rectify the problem. Not all bad feedback is actually ‘bad’ as some are actually good feedback in disguise!
So when there is a negative feedback in your Blog next time, face it and solve it! Moderation is not only about removing negative feedback :)
You may want to take a look at our related postsConversion you don’t want
November 15th, 2007
In all online businesses, we have two important measurements - Visitors and Conversion Rate. If you have 100 visitors daily and 20 out of the 100 make a purchase online, that means you have 20% conversion rate.
Good customer support, happy returning customers, excellent services and buying experiences are factors that you can improve on. It is always good to listen to your customers, review the ordering process, collecting their feedback with a Blog and rewarding your customers rather than throwing your marketing budget to advertisements you can’t measure.
What happens to those conversion which you might not want it to happen - even once!
What is the goal of installing an alarm system? To prevent theft. Unauthorized access triggers siren. The whole process of conversion is unwanted by everyone who ironically decides to install an alarm system. Probably this explains why the interface and the keypad command are not really designed to improve the conversion, making it so much difficult to setup and I doubt it will be improved in the future :)
I was setting up my new home alarm system today.
You may want to take a look at our related postsDon’t leave people hanging
November 15th, 2007
It is not impolite to say no, but it is when you leave people hanging. When the subject of an email is in favor to someone, you tend to get the reply earlier. When the answer is no, some people choose to ignore and don’t reply to your email - sometimes we just need an answer to move on.
It is fine to say ‘no’ in your reply and your sender will be happier than receiving nothing at all!
You may want to take a look at our related postsI’m calling from Google?
November 14th, 2007
Received a call just now. A girl with a nice name Yu Sien, called me and greeted me with ‘Hi, I’m calling from Google’. The first thing that came to my mind was whether Larry was calling to make an offer on the Kumomo.com site, just kidding. Apparently, she is calling from Google Singapore, checking on the recent bugs that were discovered in Google Optimizers. Well, since we are only doing some testing with the code, and it was removed after then, basically we are not affected.
Who says being big doesn’t mean that you can’t do extra for your customers? Though I am probably just one of the millions of Google’s users, but I felt that I am their only one now :)
You may want to take a look at our related postsSave our Rhinos the better way
November 14th, 2007
Though we are very impressed with what has been done by Honda on their continuous campaign to raise the awareness of saving the Sumatran Rhinos, something needs to be done on the website - As we are running out of time and are at risk of losing our Rhinos [the news of the last few Rhino kept in the conservation park near Kuala Selangor shocked us few days after our visit there few years back].
Today, we are losing not just the Rhino, but visitors to the website as well!
We are greeted with the full flash introduction which hangs on the first visit. Determined not to give up, I visited the website after a few minutes, and was able to enter the website but it wasn’t giving any hint as to why there was no content displaying in all of the pages. It is simply empty with just the beautiful photos. Suspecting the flash file never completed downloading… [remember, the website conversion rate is closing to zero now].. I tried again, and this time was able to look at the content - expecting a poorly updated one with regards to the flash design and the difficulty in recompiling the flash file.
Again, no email addresses were found [maybe it is hidden somewhere, or I just couldn’t even spot a ‘contact us’ page. Well, the ‘latest news’ does not attract me to click and explore further, why not does it like a Blog to collect more feedback [through comments and track backs]?
This is a sample of website with capabilities and potential to drive in visitors [their major visitors source could be from Direct traffics, followed by Referrals or through Search Engines), but the website simply failed to convert - less conversion. In short, it is not hitting the goal of setting up the website.
Beautiful website without conversion
How about online donation? How about leaving a reply or feedback to at least communicate with your visitors? Feedbacks give you the permission to contact your visitors, to update them about news and interesting activities going on.
The website of Terry Fox Run KL [http://www.terryfoxrunkl.org], without a fancy look but collecting 590 comments over the period of two months since we launched the website, more than 10,000 unique visitors…
You may want to take a look at our related postsDo they really like to hear from us?
November 14th, 2007
We’re more than happy to hear from you - Share your thoughts, comments, feedback and queries with us and we’ll be more than happy to help you out in any way.
I came across the Contact Us page in the website of Honda Malaysia [www.honda.com.my] and I am going to tell you the reason why I am here in my next post. I was wondering how serious are they in listening from us when I couldn’t even find the email address or an enquiry form in their Contact Us page.
People are afraid of making changes and marked as ‘troublemakers’. We used to think that it is a norm to receive a reply from big corporates or government agencies with much delay when comparing to smaller institutions. Yes, big corporates do have ‘more’ things to handle and more emails to receive everyday but do not forget, they have bigger crowd of customers to win their hearts and ample resources to improve their process flow just like the simple act of replying an email in a fast manner!
You may want to take a look at our related posts
