Don't Start Any Web Design yet until You Understand These

19 March 2017

Web design can be so easy. As long as you pay to hire some web designer to helps you build your website, it will be fine. However, don't fully depends on web designer. Something you must know. Don't get cheated ok? Lets start on the basic knowledge.

What is Website?

Let's straight to the point. 

You can always imagine that website is just like your physical retail shop that exist in virtual world. Something you cannot touch, cannot smell, but it serve the same purpose like physical shop that you can buy and sell. 

What is Domain Name?

Company Name = Domain Name (eg. www.abc.com, www.google.com)

Lets image you want to start a retail shop. What is the first step that you can think of to start a business? First, you must register a company with Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM) to get the legal status of your company. During the registration of your company, you are required to fill in your Company Name, Company Address, and others contact details. These is same as the domain name. You have to register your domain name with hosting company or any others domain name registration website such as godaddy.com (.com/.net/others) and mynic.my(.com.my/.my/others). 

Trick : Most of web designer will normally absorb this cost in their web design package and customer will be more happy to lets them do it. Please take note of this. web designer might register the domain name under their name and as a result, that domain name is belong to the web designer, not the customer. Therefore, it is very crucial that customer must verify that the domain name is belong to them. For normaly domain name(.com/net/others), please use whois.domaintools.com. Meanwhile, .com.my/.my can be check at whois.mynic.my. Make sure all the registrant, administrative and billing section is put under your name and email. (For email, good to put your personal email or any popular email provider such as @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com)

What is hosting?

Shop lot = Hosting

Once you have your company name ready, next step is to find the shop lot for you to start a business. You can rent or buy the shop lot from the property owner. In web world, shop lot is like computer that will store your website and host your website. A lot of company provide these hosting services. (eg, ipserverone.com, exabytes.com.my). The price will range from few hundred per year to few thousand per year. It is depend on what is the spec that you needed. 

Trick : If the website is just for information sharing only. You can start with very basic package. You can always upgrade it from time to time. 

What is web design?

Renovation = web design

Once you have shop lot, you will start the renovation task. Renovation task is same as web design. That where you start hiring web designer to do your renovation for you website. Web Design will range from few hundred to few thousand. It is depends on your requirement. For cheaper price, normally you will get the template base website where the structure of the website already fixed and just need to modify the design only. For higher price, you will get 100% customized design. It will be tailer made for you. 

Trick : Before start with the website design, identify your customer, where is your customer, what is their personality and what is the word they like to see. Once you have that, you should share it with your web designer before they start their job.

What is web programming?

Electricity/water/POS system = Web Programming

Once you renovate your shop, it is a time for you install the system in your shop. You will start install switches to switch on the light, switches to switch on the fan/air cond and etc. You will start implementing work flow or SOP in your operation. Same goes to web programming. You will start to have a system to update your website content (CMS), system to helps you received money online, system to helps you manage your customer and etc. Good example is ecommerce system or online shop system where buyer can buy directly from seller.

Trick : Before start any web programming, always search for any software that already available in the market that can helps you reduce your cost. Else, you might need to do customization programming which might resulting you to pay more.

Finished? Not yet! Marketing!

Newspaper advertisement/flyer = internet marketing

A lot of people will stop any effort after website is built. They thought that sales will come in automatically once they see the services that offered in website. For your information, there are 70 domain name registered and 571 website launched in very minute in the world. Your website is just one of billion website in the world. How buyer can find your services as they are million and billion website that provide same services in the world?

In conventional method, seller will start advertise in newspaper or distribute flyer. In internet world, we call it as internet marketing which include advertising in Facebook / Google, social media advertisement, Search Engine Optimization and any others virtual way to reach customer online.

Trick : Before do any advertisement, identify your customer, understand your customer behavior. Then only start targeting them with advertisement, offer and discount.

Summary

  1. Domain Name : Always make sure that the domain name is under your control and ownership is under your name.
  2. Hosting : Go for reliable hosting company even the price is higher. At the end of the day when you need helps, they can support you immediately.
  3. Web design : Before start any website, identify your customer and understand their behavior first. Then inform web designer to come out with the concept of the website.
  4. Web Programming : Look for any existing and stable system for cost efficiency purposes. If the existing system cannot fullfill your requirement, then only look for customization system.
  5. Internet Marketing : Identify your customer behavior and where are they in the internet. Then only use suitable tools to target them.
  6. If you have RM100 for your business, please spend RM30 for the domain name, hosting, web design and programming only and RM70 for marketing. Remember, if you build a palace (grand website) and put it in jungle (no marketing) is useless. I rather than build a small shop (normal website) and put it in KLCC (doing marketing) will have higher ROI.