11 Questions to ask your Prospective Web Design and Development Company – Part 1

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11 Questions to ask your Prospective Web Design and Development Company

In part 1, we will cover the first 5 questions to ask your prospective web design and development company. This will be followed by the second part where we will cover the remaining 6 questions.

1. Why should I hire your company and not a freelance web designer?
It depends. Whilst independent web designers, some of whom are extremely good, have a lot to offer, be sure to consider that a web design & development company will have in place, at the very least, the following:
(a) robust design, development and test processes
(b) access to the knowledge and expertise of an entire team of highly-qualified individuals
(c) a proper quality assurance mechanism
(d) access to large library of tools and components
(e) the ability to collectively solve problems and brainstorm as a team.

2. How long has your company been in business?
There is no hard and fast rule here. It ultimately depends on your comfort level, and, equally importantly on the cost factors. You may be comfortable working with a startup, or with a company without much experience, however, be sure to give this due consideration. Bear in mind if a company has been around for a long time, chances are they know what they are doing and thus they may be worth considering.

3. Can you show us samples of your work?
A good web design & development company should have a varied portfolio and this portfolio should illustrate their capabilities. A few important things to watch for: creativity, uniqueness of design, streamlined navigation and how well the design represents a brand.

4. Can you provide client testimonials?
Well established web presence companies will be happy to provide you with a list of satisfied clients. In fact, most of them would also make this list of testimonials available on their websites. If a company is unable to supply you with testimonials, or is unwilling to supply them, it should raise a red flag.

5. How experienced is your team?
A proper team structure will ensure that your project is handled in a professional fashion. A proper team structure indicates that a company has spent time and effort into cultivating a team culture. Any company that is serious about what they do will be happy to have you go to their offices and meet with their staff. If a company balks at a face-to-face meeting, well, you get the hint.

The Future of Mobile Advertising

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The Future of Mobile Advertising

Did you know that Google now holds the badge of being the Internet’s largest mobile advertising company?

Google acquired AdMob in late 2009 and that squarely placed Google on the map as one of the top mobile advertising companies. Google will leverage its Android platform in direct competition with Apple’s iPhone.  Some consider this to be a frontal attack on Apple and IOS‘s most serious advantage over Android – mobile apps. Developers are likely to capitalize on this move by starting to develop mobile ads for the Android Network that is spread across multiple networks.

In short, the Mobile world is now a huge marketplace with massive revenue potential and is on its way to becoming the next battleground for online advertising.

The next few months will see the mobile Internet advertising heating up, especially with the release of newer, faster and user-rich devices that will further impact the future of mobile advertising.

What are your thoughts?

Does My Business Need a Website in 2010?

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Does My Business Need a Website in 2010?

Does my business need a website in 2010? One word: ABSOLUTELY!

The Internet trend watching site, eMarketer quoted an Ad-ology survey conducted earlier this month that reveals some rather alarming numbers: 46% of small and medium business owners did not have a website in 2009.  Another study conducted by VistaPrint found that only about 50% of small business owners that have a website are actually tracking their online marketing efforts! And the icing on the cake is a study from a Discover Small Business Watch Poll that corroborates Ad-ology’s survey results and goes on to state that a lot of small and medium business owners perceive the need for a website for their business as a “myth”.

This begs the question: As a small or medium business owner, what are you losing out on if you don’t have your own website?

The answer is very clear: Customers!

Come on folks! We are just about ready to start year 2010. People are no longer using the (actual) yellow pages or phone books to look for information. The three major search engines are serving up local search results even when a search does not include a local or geographical qualifier. The bottom line: Small and Medium businesses need web presence that they can directly influence and control.

There are many ways for you to establish web presence. Of course, you can go Yelp or use other social media websites such as Merchant Circle and get a “listing” but always remember, you don’t control any of these. You have zero say on how they will allow you to connect with customers. It is better than nothing… but sadly it is still not enough.

Your very own website gives you the ability to:

  • Provide information and details about your products and services to people all over the world
  • Set yourself apart from your competition, especially if they don’t have a website
  • Become visible to the growing population that rely solely on the internet for information
  • Harness the power of social media and social websites, the new word of mouth
  • Properly and effectively leverage local search results from search engines
  • Establish yourself as an authority with your customers and within your industry
  • Build credibility with your customers by sharing information about your company
  • Build and create your own community (social network)
  • Leverage email marketing by building an email list and using that to market to potential clients

Before you jump on a website, take the time to identify why you need a website and what you need in that website. Remember, not all small businesses have the same “web presence” goals. Whether you want to simply promote your idea, sell products and services or build an online community, give it serious thought and plan your web presence goals.

So, now that you’ve got your goals planned, how do you go about getting yourself a website?

Website Domain: We recommend that you start by picking your website’s domain (that would be in the form of yourbusiness.com). In most cases, the domain name you end up with will be similar to your company or business name. Make sure that you book/register the domain name and that you retain ownership of the domain. We have come across situations where a website designer or development company booked a domain on behalf of a client and then refused to relinquish control of the domain name when the relationship changed.

Design & Development: Hire a professional company to design and develop your website. Don’t skip this step. We can tell you countless horror stories where people did not hire the right professional. If you want a proper image, look and feel, go to an expert.  The bottom line is that your website needs to look professional. The exact type of website you end up with will depend on several factors: your brand, your industry, your products or services and your business model.

Website Content: Content is KING on the web. Content is what your potential visitors are after. Content will give you a boost in your SEO (Website Search Engine Optimization) efforts. You do not need a website with lots of pages of content – the aim here is to provide potential clients with the right information about your business and what you are all about. We recommend that you have, at minimum, a 5-6 page website: Home Page, About, Contact, Products, Services and Testimonials and maybe even a Portfolio or Projects Page. The Contact page is essential so that you can leverage local business listings on search engines.

Website Hosting: Unless you already have website hosting in place, we recommend that you stick with your website design company (of course, they should offer website hosting as part of their services) even if you end up paying a little extra for website hosting. Whilst there are many affordable website hosting choices, it is best to stick with your design company because chances are that they know their hosting platforms best. An added benefit of getting hosting through your website design company is having a single contact, avoiding confusion about who’s responsibility it is if your website has an issue. Oh, and be sure that you get enough email addresses to cover your needs. Your email address should be you@yourbusiness.com.

Local Search Engine Listings: Make sure you grab your local listings on Google, Yahoo, Bing , Best-of-the-Web and any other third party websites. Go to www.getlisted.org to see if you are listed, and how complete your local listing is.

Internet Marketing: Again, hire a professional Internet marketing company that can assist you to prepare and complete an Internet Marketing Strategy that will include a Social Media plan, an Internet Marketing plan, Search Engine Optimization and Paid Advertising recommendations. The world of Internet Marketing can be daunting and it is best to have professional guidance so that you get the best return on investment (ROI).

On a final note, small and medium business owners are increasingly using the Internet as a marketing channel – this fact is upheld by the 36% increase of SMB owners who have created websites over the past 2 years. This number, no doubt, will increase in 2010 and beyond. Search Engines are putting more and more emphasis on local business listings which in turn makes your website an integral component of your business and marketing.

In short, get a website if you don’t have one!

What are your thoughts?

Web 2.0 for Beginners

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Web 2.0 for Beginners

As defined in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Web 2.0…refers to a perceived second generation of web-based  communities and hosted services  – such as social-networking sites,  wikis and folksonomies  –  which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.
• Is not an update to Web technical specifications.  Instead…“it is a change in how we use the internet”

Web 2.0 is defined as a set of Web-based software services that encourage users to become more involved in the creation and manipulation of data. Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information.

As the name suggests, Web 2.0 represents an important shift in the way digital information is created, shared, stored, distributed, and manipulated. In the years ahead, it will have a significant impact in the way businesses use both the Internet and enterprise-level IT applications. The phrase “Web 2.0” was first coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 but came into notice in the year 2004 when O’Reilly Media and MediaLive hosted the first 2.0 web conference.

Web 2.0 is simply a marketing strategy using one or many of the social media outlets. Those outlets are broken down into 6 different types:

1. Social Networking – the most popular of these outlets include Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, DirectMatches, Ryze and Orkut in India.
2. Social Bookmarking – well-known ones include Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. Originally, social bookmarks were places you could store your favorite bookmarks and you could access your bookmarks from anywhere, not just your own computer. Social bookmarking has evolved as people began to share their bookmarks with others.
3. Content Sharing – best-known sites for content sharing are Wikipedia, Squidoo, Hubpages, Gather and E-zine Articles. Content sharing sites are great for people who don’t have any web skills but want to share content on the internet.
4. Media Sharing – most well known are YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, Vimeo;
5. Blogging – these are online dairies which facilitate the readers to post interactive comments. They are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. The most popular amongst them are Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, etc.
6. Adapters – Amazon, Google Products, Cafe Press – these are traditional websites that “adapted” their products to the social marketing scene.

In all, we can say that Web 2.0 is a compact form of technologies, people, and attitude merged together, that has created an important shift in the way we think about and use the Internet. It facilitates a number of ways to benefit business by saving time and money, and offering a new mode of interaction with customers. Though, it has advantages of emerging technologies but must be used keeping the security aspects in mind.

What are your thoughts about Web 2.0?

Domain Name Primer

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Every time you are surfing the net you encounter something known as TLDs. After all what is it and how is it used?  TLDs are the Top Level Domains and they are the last part of an Internet domain name. Let’s take an example, in the domain name Arnima.com, the top-level domain is the three letters “com”.

It’s actually not that complicated!

The top-level domains (TLDs) are the highest level of domain names of the Internet.  The Domain Name System was created in the 1980s, and then the domain name space was divided into two main groups of domains. The country code top-level domains (ccTLD) were primarily based on the  territory codes of ISO-3166 country abbreviations. On the other hand, a group of seven generic top-level domains (gTLD) was implemented which represented a set of categories of names and multi-organizations.

gTLDs – Generic domains

A gTLD (generic top level domain) is a top-level domain and is used in particular by a specific type of organization. These generic TLDs are three or more letters long, and they’re named to be a good fit to the organization.
When top-level domains were first implemented, in January 1985, there were seven gTLDs:
•    ARPA —  Advanced Research Projects Agency
•    COM — commercial
•    EDU — educational establishments (primarily U.S.)
•    GOV — U.S. government
•    NET — network infrastructure
•    ORG — non-profit organizations
•    MIL — U.S. military

You must have come across the most popular domain extensions on the web –  .BIZ, .NAME, .MOBI, etc. They are all known as generic top-level domains (gTLDs) and are open for registration to all users worldwide, regardless of their citizenship, residence or age.

•    unsponsored top-level domains: domains operating directly under policies established by ICANN processes for the global Internet community.
•    sponsored top-level domains (sTLD): The private organizations proposed  and sponsored these domains Use is based on community theme concepts.
•    infrastructure top-level domain: It’s a group that consists of one domain, the Address and Routing Parameter Area (ARPA). It is managed by IANA.

ccTLD – Country Code Top-Level Domain

ccTLD is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country or a dependent territory.
Each country has a unique two-character abbreviation which is added at the end of the domain name (e.g. .us for US, .de for Germany, .uk for United Kingdom, .in for India, etc). Some countries have sold the rights to their ccTLDs (e.g. Tuvalu and .tv).

A new add-on to this is a group of internationalized domain name (IDN) top-level domains that has been installed under test for testing purposes. The countries and territories may apply for IDN ccTLDs from November 2009.

Refer to the following links for the authoritative list of currently existing TLDs in the root zone: