In the virtual world of cyberspace, often
the only way your customer can evaluate you is your
communication - your language, presentation and style.
Your e-mail/web-site/ presentation etc. are your faces
to the world - and these must inspire sufficient confidence
in your customer to transact business with you or
at least take you seriously. This is a marked difference
from traditional business and you should be aware
of this feature of e-commerce.
You may be well known in your own country but the
overseas customer has no way of knowing how true your
claims are. The only touchstone he/she has is your
communication - you must make sure they are really
professional looking. The professional visitors must
immediately know from your offer that it has been
written by another professional.
I have written quite a few articles on communication
style, language, format etc. Please check previous
issues of FAIDA (http://www.infobanc.com/faida_old.htm)
In this article, we focus on website - that virtual
entity representing you to your customers.
But I do not have a website
If you take e-commerce seriously - please get a professional
website at the earliest. In today's market, it is
not only important but ESSENTIAL. A well designed,
professional looking website conveys a positive image
about your company and helps buyers locate you through
search engines. It is also much more economical to
have website rather than mailing printed brochures.
In early days of Internet, website was a costly business.
It also required special skills available only in
major cities. So, most companies did business with
only e-mail or a few pages in free sites like geocities.
Possession of website was not considered necessary
for evaluating a company or assessing credibility.
Not anymore ! Today you must have a full-fledged
website with URL like yourcompany.com or yourcompany.biz
- nothing less. And it no longer costs the earth -
you can get a reasonably fast, professionally designed
website with advanced features like interactive forms,
CSS etc. within Rs. 10,000 (USD 250) all inclusive
(i.e. domain name + web-host + design). Besides building
credibility, attracting customers, and promoting products
- it will also give you a lifelong e-mail address
that no ISP can take away.
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If you need advice or want our professional help for
your website design -
please feel free to contact me.
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Virtues of Professional Website
A website is not enough - it must be reasonably fast
and designed professionally. Please consult a skilled
and experienced professional rather than giving the
design job to your son or nephew or friend who has
just done a computer course. We have written many
articles on features of a professional web-site. Please
see earlier issues of FAIDA. There's also plenty of
resources in the Net. Here, let's examine the features
of a messy website.
How to Design Web-sites all wrong
Some of the purposes of a messy website are:
- Make it excruciatingly difficult to reach
- Thoroughly confuse hapless Columbus who could
reach it
- Drive Away Customers
- Project a negative image about the company
Some Suggestions on how to accomplish
above
- Make the first page 500 Kb or larger. Splash all
kinds of images, colours and fonts. Your purpose
is to make every visitor wait for at least a few
minutes before he/she can have a glance of your
deadly design.
- Look for a cheap and slow web-host. It will make
your job easy.
- Confuse people about the company, so that they
get no idea what kind of product or service you
offer, much less what they cost or how they work.
- Never reveal contact details of the company. If
you must include contact details, bury it deep inside
the site with links only from irrelevant and seldom
visited section.
