Surf7.net Blog

“Anyone can create a website!”, exclaim Kevin, my 12 years old nephew who just posted his first entry in his Blogger account. Like young Kevin, many people has this misconception. Even though what Kevin just did was something I can be proud of, but creating a successful corporate website is not a child play. It is a continuous journey that requires effort and lots of technical knowledge. Any experienced webmaster can tell you this. Without proper technical knowledge, your website will be just another pile of HTML files lying unnoticed in the vast cyberspace.

You know your website is successful when…

1. Your website rank higher than your competitors’ website in Google on your targeted keywords.
2. You begin to form a new department dedicated to handle sales lead from your website.
3. Your returning visitors is more than 50% every month and stays for more than 30 minutes.

So what makes a successful corporate website?

1. Search engine friendly - The common problem I have seen with most corporate website is they are not optimized properly for search engines. Even though there are many factors in determining your website ranking in search engine result, having a website which in “not ready” for search engines will simply throw away all your efforts, no matter how many incoming links you have or how great your contents are. FYI, 90% of our sales begin in Google. So search engine is important! Don’t neglect it.
2. Regular content updates - Another problem faced by most website owners is they find it too troublesome to update their content. Most of the cases are due to lack of proper tools. In the end, they gave up and left the content unchanged for years. Regularly updated content is one of the “secret” to a successful corporate website because other than your visitors, search engine also love fresh content. Editing your web pages or even add new web pages should be as easy as writing an email.
3. Attractive Design - Your website design is very important after you manage to generate huge traffic to your website via search engines. A good impression stays forever and it will persuade them to stay longer so that you will have more opportunity to convince them to buy from you. A good design should project your corporate image the moment your visitors look at it. It must not be too confusing and easy to navigate.
4. Easy Contacts - You know your website campaign is successful when you are overwhelm by phone calls and emails from your website visitors. That time, you might want to set up a new department dedicated to handle your website sales. That is why your visitors should be able to reach you conveniently online and via telephone or email.
5. Know your visitors - Are your visitors leaving your website after 1 minute and never come back again? How do they find your website? If it is from search engines, what keywords do they use to find you? These are some of the information you should know if you want your website to be successful. The more you understand your visitors and their preferences the easier it is to convince them to do business with your company.
6. Reliable facilities - A successful Website must be supported by a solid IT foundation with minimal downtime and a proficient technical team.

Top 10 tips for choosing a good domain name for your company:

1. Contain your company/brand name.
2. Does not contain hyphen or numbers (unless necessary or they are part of your brand)
3. Easy to spell. Should be able to spell correctly just by listening to it.
4. The lesser the words, the easier to remember and more valuable the domain name will be.
5. Always make .COM your first choice. If it is taken, then only go for .NET, .BIZ or other general TLD or country code TLD (if your company is based in Malaysia, register .com.my NOT .co.uk or .com.sg).
6. Descriptive. People should be able to get a hint about your website or business from your domain name. If it contains key terms, it may help in search engine ranking.
7. With the price of domains getting cheaper, anyone can afford to register multiple domains just for one website. Especially for domain with generic names, don’t just register .com only, register .net, org, .biz, .com.my, etc… as well.
8. Proof read it. Make sure your domain name cannot be read in other ways that brings totally different meaning or worse, embarrassing meaning.
9. Make sure the domain name is not a trademark of another company. Legal battle of domain name dispute is not pretty. To make sure you have a clear name, check it with your attorney or a trademark company.
10. If your desired domain name is taken by someone else and you have the budget, offer to buy the domain name from the current owner. Who can resist a good price? A good place to start is at Sedo.com.

I am sure it is getting harder and harder to get a domain base on the above tips. So my suggestion is reverse the process. If you are a new company, search for the available domain names and REGISTER THE DOMAIN NAME FIRST before you choose your company name. You don’t want to spend millions of RM on branding and find out all the good domain names have been taken by someone else.

If you already have a company name, for example; Acme Sdn Bhd and it is in pet food business but acme.com is already taken by someone else then you might want to consider registering acme.com.my or acmepetfood.com or even both.