In December 2009, The Harris Interactive Poll found that 80 percent of adults in US spend an average of 13 hours a week online. People search for information using search engines, indexes, and wiki. People surf websites to browse for products or information. Some simply post questions on their Twitter and Facebook accounts expecting credible recommendations from their friends.

Internett users in Asia represents more than 40% of the world’s internet user. Reaching out to target audience or target market online is definitely the way to go in today’s day and age. Businesses need to establish their presence online to engage and convert prospects into customers.

Online or digital marketing does not mean placing advertisement on Google or Yahoo anymore. We have Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and others that may serve the same purpose. The question is where will the interested prospects who wants to know more be led to? They should be led to a formal website. It could be a company, product, or an event website with all the information information that they need to know.

Take The First Step. Develop A Website.

The entire concept of digital marketing is about corporate branding, increase product/service awareness, which would lead into greater sales and profit margin.

Website should be seen as a business component that could help the company achieve competitive advantage and not aa mere information counter. A well planned, designed and developed website could act as the marketer and sales person for the business.

A well planned website would define the scope and purpose of the website. A website without purpose would turn out to be a mere information centre. A website with objective and purpose would have content and functions that would benefit the business.

A well designed website would grab the attention of the visitors and encouraged them to browse the website. The website layout, colour theme, placement of logo and menu plays a part in influencing visitors behaviour.

A well developed website ensures that the functions and features are secure, fast and user friendly. Visitors dread slow loading website or those that kept leading to server error pages.

To Develop A Website, You Will Need This

1. Domain Name

   Having a website is good. Having a website with a domain like mycompany.yahoo.com. is not. Get a nice and easy to remember domain name. It is recommended that the domain name is the same or, at least, one that reflects the company’s brand.

   With domain name, corporate email and website can be set up. It more professional to have a corporate that goes like john.doe@mycompany.com than john.doe@gmail.com.

   Domain name price is between $15 to $80 per year depending on domain extensions (.com, .net, .com.sg, .sg, etc)

2. Hosting Server

   Website needs web hosting servers to go online. If you are starting up and trying to save cost as much as possible, you can create email accounts in the same server. There are many web hosting company in Singapore who have been around since the 90s.

   Before engaging any web hosting company, it is good to read reviews on these companies by their current or former customers. If you are from Singapore, SgWebhostingtalk is a good start.

   A basic web hosting package cost is between $8 to $15 per month.

3. Web Design & Development

   Designing a website and development is a complicated process. It is not as easy as drawing snails on paper. The design of the website will affect website visitor’s behaviour. Website design is improving by the seconds, it is best to keep up with the trend.

   When developing website, it is always good to keep the end in mind. At the end of the day, the purpose of the website must remain in tact and the website must be found, hence it must be search engine friendly.

   The cost of developing a basic but unique website that reflects the company identity and branding varies from $850 to $2,000 depending on the functions required. To learn more about our service cost, read more on our web development service.

4. Good Written Content

   A good written website content is a friend of search engines. Good content engages visitor and would convince them to read more and perhaps be converted into buyers.

   Updating of content is a must. It’s a big turn off for visitors to find out that the website content is updated. Be sure to develop a website that can be easily updated. Engage a webmaster to perform content and web updating. If you are considering on outsourcing, read more on our web maintenance services.

5. Be Found In Search Engine

   Remember that a website needs to engage its visitors? But what is there to engage if there’s no visitors? You need to be found in search engine, such as Google and Yahoo.

   There are ways to be found in search engines. This can be done through paid advertising, social media engagement and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). These would cost you quite a bit. However, the least you should do is to submit your website to the various search engine around.

Wrap Up

Website should be viewed like any other business investment. It should be planned so that it has a role in the business and help to widen the business marketing outreach. There say a journey of a thousand mile starts with single step. For digital marketing, it starts with a website.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of the most important system that most, if not all, companies need to manage interactions with clients and sales prospects. It touches almost every aspects of today’s businesses. Right from pre-sales enquiries and marketing to post-sales customer service and technical support.

Its importance to businesses are signficant. With CRM, businesses would be able to identify their target market, segment it, create a product or services that will be in demand, and market it to the right people at the right place and at the right time. And that’s only a fraction of what CRM is all about. It is a whole lot more than just that.

However, the biggest discouraging factor for business to implement CRM in their process is cost. It had always been expensive for small and medium businesses to invest on. That was then.

Today, the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS) has gained its popularity and more application companies are providing this service to compete in the market. With SaaS, businesses are now able to subscribe to CRM application at a small fee or even free. Subscriptions are based on the packages similar to that of a hosting or email packages.

Check out some of the CRM On-demand and Cloud CRM that businesses can consider implementing in their business processes.

1. Salesforce

2. LeopardCRM

3. HighRise HQ

4. Tactile CRM

5. ZOHO CRM

6. Worketc

7. Marketcircle : Daylite

8. Sage CRM

9. eSalesTrack

10. Boss CRM

11. Winds CRM

12. Aplicor

13. Right Now

Wrap Up

Businesses are now wary of how funds available are invested. With CRM On-demand or Cloud CRM available in the market, value for money is rest assured. There are many in the market, therefore businesses should explore every possibilities as much as possible before deciding on the best one.

Providing clients with quotations and invoicing them upon project milestone or completion can be quite an effort. When I started off as a freelancer, my tool has been Excel and then have it converted to PDF. I had to type them line by line, price by price.. there was no template to work the magic.

6 years down the road, thing has change. Software as a service helps alot in cutting cost down while at the same time, providing the same top-notch feature as a standalone. Today, whether you are a business magnet or a rockstar freelancer, providing quotations and invoicing the clients won’t cost you a bomb and have it done effortlessly.

Check out these 23 invoicing applications that may just help you out!

1. Billing Boss

2. Billings

3. Blinksale

4. Cashboard

5. CurdBee

6. Freelance Total

7. FreshBooks

8. Harvest Invoicing

9. Intuit Billing Manager

10. Invoicera

11. Invoice Dude

12. Invoice Journal

13. Invoice Machine

14. Less Accounting

15. My Client Base

16. Ronin

17. Simple Invoices

18. Simply Bill

19. SiwApp

20. Time59

21. WinkBill

22. Working Point

23. Zoho Invoicing

Crowdsourcing has been very popular with businesses and designers of late. Although its implication on ethics and economics has been widely debated, there are businesses and designers who believed that crowdsourcing is definitely the best option.

For the benefit of those who have not heard of crowdsourcing before; crowdsourcing is an act similar to outsourcing. However, instead of outsourcing to an individual or a contractor, crowdsourcing outsource creative ideas or tasks to a crowd (group of individual, community or contractors).

Crowdsourcing To The Businesses

Crowdsourcing allow businesses to take advantage of the huge creative talent in the community and choose the best works and award the individual or contractor accordingly.

Let’s take a company that needs a business name and have a custom logo designed as an example. 

The company simply need to create a design brief such as business description, etc. The company then place a price on the work (prize money), set the completion date and start a “contest”.

A naming contest in Crowdspring starts at base price of USD$200. Naming contest is a contest which call for creative names for companies, events, etc. Creative individuals and professionals would suggest  ideas on what would be a great name for the company.

A custom logo contest in 99designs starts at a base price of USD$269. Designers will then try to design the logo at the best of their ability. Here we are not talking about one designer but scores of designers around the world.

The higher the prize money, they higher the participation rate will be and the more quality options the contest holder would have.

Beauty Is In The Eye Of the Contest Holder

From a designer point of view, you can be the best designer that have ever walked this planet or designing since you started holding a mouse, but that will not guarantee you that you will win contests.

It is a contest, in 99designs, there’s only one winner. For sites like DesignCrowd and CrowdSpring, contest holder may also award prize money to 2^nd and 3^rd best design. Rarely would there be less than 10 design submissions. Some contents would reach to three digit submissions. So what are the chances? You do the maths.

On a bright side, it is definitely a good place for beginners to test their skills and compete with the best designers in the community and benchmark. Design could only get better if you continue practicing. Sooner or later, with skills and a tad of luck, you might just win some contests.

For professionals who have clients to manage, crowdsourcing is too time consuming, not worth the money earn, and something that would just shoot our blood pressure sky high, especially when what we think is the best design compared to others, is not in the contest holder’s eyes. It’s frustrating sometimes.

Crowdsourcing to Outsourcing

Some contest holders in crowdsourcing sites such as 99designs, CrowdSpring and DesignCrowd are web service providers themselves. Some are web developers. So take the time to get connected with them. If you are talented enough and with an EQ of Barrack Obama, they might just outsource design works to you when a project comes along. Turn crowdsourcing to outsourcing in your favour.

Wrap up!

Crowdsourcing will continue to be a debate subject for designers and creative talents out there. It will never stop. It’s a two edge sword. Everything is. Do what works for you. If crowdsourcing is not for you, leave it. If it is for you, earn from it.

There is no point debating about it. One man’s meat is another man’s poison.

Selling your product online helps you to reach a wider target market which will in turn increase your sales. However, before you embark into this avenue, there are a few important things that you need to consider doing.

Let’s not go into crafting a business plan. You should have already done so. If you haven’t, it’s time to crack your brain. A business plan will tell you whether what you have in mind is possible or not, really. Like really really.

1. Nice… Unique Domain Name

Like girls used to say about good looking guys – either they are taken, or they are gay. Most domain names that are obvious and nice, are mostly already bought by someone.

Think of something unique and catchy. Something your prospective customers or visitors can remember. You wouldn’t want someone who have browsed your website once and the next day go “what was the website name again?”.

Once you have selected a name, what would like to have? .com, .net, .biz? If you can afford it, buy them all. Really. Like really really. Say you do bought them all, if a visitor type yourdomain.net instead of yourdomain.com, they will be redirected to yourdomain.com via the 301 redirect.

It’s really okay if you can’t afford it at the start of your business. No harm.

2. No Cart, No Shopping!

Yeah okay, no money, no shopping either. My recent article, I showed the various open source shopping cart or ecommerce platform that you can download for free. However, unless you don’t mind having the default template design, you can have your web store developed by web professionals.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to hosted shopping cart, such as Shopify, or an eCommerce Web Hosting software which gives you a turnkey solution.

The reason why you need a shopping cart or ecommerce system is pretty obvious. Firstly, you can display and describe your product. Put a price on it, appeal your customer through promotions and discounts, and sell it. Someone comes by, likes it, buys it and pays for it. Okay, displaying and describing of products, a simple website will do. But really? 

Think about this when someone buy a product from your web store using a system:

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[/list_ordered] I don’t think an ordinary website, like mine, can do that. With Shopify, yeah, maybe I can… embed and that’s it.

3. Where The Heck Will The Money Go To?

I’d love to see it in my bank account. Just kidding. You need a merchant account or a business account. Merchant account allows your customer to pay for their purchase by using their credit card.

You also need a payment gateway. It allows credit card transaction to be processed and debited in your merchant account. It is important when you are choosing a shopping cart, make sure that the system or platform supports your merchant account.

For my clients, I would usually encourage them to sign up for a PayPal account and use it to accept payment. It accepts credit card payment or transfer payment from their PayPal acount, process it and have it debited in you PayPal account. As and when you wish, you can transfer the dollars in your PayPal account to your bank account.

But what if you just want to sell online but transact payment offline? No problemo! You can provide instructions like mailing address for cheque or bank account number for bank transfer payment. Once they have done so, you can ask your customer to email you the details such as transaction number.

4. Secure Your Web Store

You need to secure your web store to ensure that your customers personal details are safe from the net vultures. Especially so if credit card payment is involved. If you like, when choosing a shopping card, consider only those that are Payment Card Industry (CPI) compliance.

You can also purchase a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate to increase the security of your website. If you purchase SSL certificate, it increases the security in the checkout process. You will see a padlock icon at the bottom of your browser and the url would change from http to https. There are other security measures that you may want to consider such as Hacker Safe, etc.

For your own website security? Let your customer know about your store policies such as refund and cancellation policy.

The trick is communication and confidence. Communicate with you customer on the restrictions and give them the confidence that it is safe to shop in your web store. This would project your web store as a place that is trusted and reliable, not some online scam store.

5. You Gotta Look Good, Baby

Would you buy from store that looks like Microsoft Words? I mean, poorly designed, big fonts, small fonts, black and white, clipart logo, and whatever not. It’s bad. Really bad. Like really really. It’s like meeting your client in your pyjamas.

You web store represent your business and yourself. Design your website in which it looks pleasant, easy to use, instructions and contents well placed. Remember, in the internet, you communicate with your customers through your content.

When designing a website, you got to strategise too. You want to make sure your product stands out among others. Your logo and your company name must be prominent. Also, make sure they can see where the important links, such as login, checkout, etc. Don’t hide them. Your customers are there to browse and buy, not solve puzzles.

Consistency in layout, fonts, colours play a big part in your design. So make sure you engage someone who is good in this area not just anybody will do as long it is cheap. Pay if you need to and pay them good. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Really.

6. Give It A Ride

Test your web store. Even better, ask you friends to test it. Get their comments and improve on it if you agree. Fix all the broken links, spelling and grammatical errors, search functions, and go through a checkout process till its complete. Test the admin panel too.

Check that it is compatible with all web browsers, IE 6, IE 7, IE 8, Firefox, Chrome, etc. Make sure it appears the way it should. If it’s not, fix it.

7. They Don’t Know You Yet

Promote your products and web store. You got to call them out and hopefully they will call the others, if they like what they see. For a start, submit your website to as many search engine as possible.

To end up high in a search results, make sure that your content contains keywords that would be probably used by your prospective customers. Keywords is very important in optimising search engine results.

If you have extra moolahs, invest on some marketing tools such as Google Adwords and be placed in the sponsored links sections. It does help.

You can also consider on giving discounts for referring a friend, start an affiliate program, etc. There are many ways to promote your products and web store.

8. Ready, Set, Go..

All these done, you are set to get your web store online. However, never go stagnant. It’s not just about your products, others can always sell what you are selling. But what you are providing in your web store is a service and that can always make a difference.

Wrap up!

So that is it. Consider the 8 points that I’ve listed. It might help you plan out what are the required components for your online store that would benefit you. You may need to invest some of your start-up funds but it’s worth it.

In 2008, a research was conducted by The Nielsen company on online shopping by consumers and it was suggested that more than 85% of the world’s online population has made an online purchase. (Reference)

Companies are also catching up with this trend by providing the avenue to have their products sold online. It’s inevitable, isn’t it?

Back then, security was a concern. Today, more and more of the internet users are embracing the technologies and starting to believe that it is safe. 

Blogshops have been a popular trend too. Not a bad thing. However, their credential is always questionable. It’s always good to have a proper online shop with all the functionalities of an online shop. Blogshops are free, yes, most definitely, but so are these ecommerce or shopping cart platforms.

1. OpenCart

2. UberCart

3. OSCommerce

4. Zen Cart

5. Magento

6. PrestaShop

7. NopCommerce

8. VirtueMart

9. CRE Loaded

10. KonaKart

11. Tomato Cart

12. DashCommerce

13. LiteCommerce

14. eCart

15. X-Cart

If there’s more than what has been listed, share it here!

Let’s admit it. We can’t read minds. It is always good to ask questions to know what exactly is running through other’s mind. That is of course if they would want to share.

Putting physical feedback aside, there are various ways to gather feedback from your target audience online. These people who are browsing your website are most likely your direct target audience. There are many websites out there which gather feedback the annoying way. Yes, the ever-so-annoying-right-smack-on-your-face-pop-ups. It just kills your mood to browse the website or read its content further.

Another method is to just embed a poll or a questionaire in a page and cross your fingers and hope that some kind soul would provide you with some feedback.

KISSInsights

KISSinsights is an application that gives you the avenue to gather feedback the less annoying but effective way. The feedback will pop from the footer like an Outlook email alert. It doesn’t distract you from reading, but you will definitely notice it.

Features:

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They say it takes only a few second before you either lose a visitor or entice them further. It is not really what your content are, it is how and where you place it. Layout plays a great part, and so does the design of the website. Let’s take a look at this week’s web inspirations!

1. Atlantis

2. Creative Logic

3. Pulse

4. Central Snow Sport

5. The Body Shop

6. Esplanade

7. Sentosa

8. LemonStand

9. Nybble Tech

10. Tracking Time

11. Tea Round Apps

12. WPWebHost

13. Adflavor

14. MailChimp

15. Pixelmator

16. Socialite

17. Nexus Nepal

18. Silverback App

19. Ten18Photography

20. It’s Workable