Verecom Web Design Blog

The situation that PC industry fears to face has finally come to them. According to a recent report from IDC-International Data Corp in US, global PC shipment in the fourth quarter of 2008 has declined 0.4% compare with that of the year before. This is the first time for PC shipment appears to be decrease after PC industry show continuing growth in six years. IDC also predicted that this year the PC sales would go down 5.3%.

Currently the economic depression has spread from US to Mid-East and Asia, at the same time, Microsoft will release their new operation system, Windows 2, at least until the end of this year. Seems there is lack of good news to stimulate the market, IDC estimated that the whole market would recover gradually at least until 2010.

Regard to the sales of individual company, HP still occupied the highest market share while the shipment slightly grew 3.1. The performance of Acer and Toshiba were excellent among the all, the shipment grew 25.3% and 20.2%, respectively, ranked the third and the fifth of market share now. However both Dell and Lenovo seems meet some difficulties on their sales. Dell sales didn’t go well even in their home, US, the shipment decreased 6.3% while shipment for Lenovo decreased 4.8%.

Edited By Vicky Yin

Recent years, many people want to start their business online. Firstly, they may go and find someone to share the ideal and establish a website together. And then, buy some supplies wholesale and post the products on the website. After that, they will open their E-shopping with great dream and hope. Maybe they will also cooperate with SEO company to boost the Google Ranking. However, after one month, two months, three months, they still can not receive any order. Although seems there is nothing wrong with the website, they still can not make the deal. Under this situation, lots of owners can not endure to run the shop at loss and just close it in the end.

Actually having a website is just a beginning, when you launch the website, it doesn’t means deals will come automatically. Seems this is something everyone knows, but what makes such great different between the successful website from the website don’t have any traffic? There are some key points which are necessary to run the E-business well. Surely I won’t say if you fulfill all these conditions everything will goes well. However, without doing well in these points, surely there is no chance for you to success.

Market Positioning:

Nowadays, there are too many online shops on internet. If you don’t have clear market positioning and can not show any different from the other websites. I will suggest you don’t recklessly put the money and human power to establish the website first. I can surely tell you that you won’t success. It is better for you to spend this money on your holiday; at least you still can have a good memory.

What is the market positioning? Simply say it means clearly know the position of your website in the market and create your uniqueness through this understanding and then raise the competitive strength from these differences. For example, if you want to open a shopping mall, you market position can be “the shopping mall which can meet the needs of your whole life”, The uniqueness can be a theme shop inside, it must be attractive, hot and can not be found in other places. And your competition strength may be from the variety of the products which let the whole family, from adults to children, find all the things they need from the moment they wake up in the morning to they fall into sleep in the evening.

Let us say, if you want to open an online lady dress shop, then you have to decide which kind of lady dress you will sell: the OL suit for the girls just graduated, or the fashion clothe, or the simple and comfortable clothe for the university students. No matter which one you choose you have to create your own uniqueness and let your target customers think about you first when they want to buy cloth. For example, there is an online dress shop, it only sell big size OL dress. It makes the customers feel that even they might be bigger than the others, but they can still looks fashionable and proper. Moreover, this online shop let they don’t need to experience embarrass when the shop assistant tell them “we don’t have your size.” Although their market is very small but the market sharing is very high.

Some owners put more attention on the details of dress collocation; then the customers may buy the whole suit from the coats to pants instead of one single dress. This kind of shop will be really popular to the girls who want to looks better but not really sure about how to do the mix and match. Their quotation for each deal will also be higher than their competitors. On the other side, there are also the big shops who aim to meet any need of the customers. Their ideal is “you don’t need to go shopping in each season; we will prepare everything for you at one time.” Although all these shops are doing lady dress business, but their market position is very clear. Each of them has their own target groups, and it will be far more easier for them to do the sales.

For another example, if you want to sell health product, market positioning is still very important. You have to consider your selling point: luxurious style, or off-price shop, or use the celebrity charm. The important thing is you should not mix them together. If the price of your products is not high not low; the products are declared to have curative effect, but don’t have professional consultation… all these situations will just confuse your customers and make them hesitate to purchase your products.

No matter which field your business will be in, you can always find your market position. If you can not find anything makes you different from your website and your competitor, then you may really need to re-consider about starting an on-line business.

Edited By Vicky Yin

Actually it is really an old topic about how to use Blog to earn money. There are so many experts discussed about it and they even published books to give the solutions. However I still want to share some my own experience and wish it will give some helps.

Recently I saw a blog value list which is made by a blog observing survey. In this list, blog value is estimated by three indexes, link value, advertising value and article value. In my point of view, using these three indexes to estimate blog value is very precise. Now I will try to explain these three indexes one by one:

Blog article value index

Most new blogs in the first year are still unknown to the web users; if their traffic can reach 1 millions pv then it is already good enough. However, with this traffic, it is still very far away from entering the advertising market. The possible income for blogs in this stage is article license fee. If the articles in the blogs can be purchased by MSN or other bigger websites, the blogs will not just earn money but also let more target people know their blogs. The writers may also have the chance to be invited to open their own columns and sell the articles.

Simply say, if the blogs has won some reputation in their specific field, the profit from making the lecture, opening the column, publishing the books even the consultant’s fee should be counted as the blog article value. I believe this is the most realistic way to get real profit for normal blogs.

Blog link value index

In my Opinion, blogs suppose to receive highest rewards in this part but the reality is blogs always earn the least in this item among all. If blogs develop very well and are recognized by SEO company by high Page Rank value and great traffic (these two items have to time together to have high SEO effect), then they may be willing to pay to the blogs to link with their blog keywords. Although it is better than none, this income is still much lower than web master’s expectation.

In recent years, Google search engine do gives Blog product higher rank, and some well managed blogs start to have the chance to earn more though selling SEO product, even writing praise articles. For example, the blog which has good page rank post an article praising certain product, when users search this key word they may see this article, and then accept the product because they agree with the article.

This product has combined the article value, advertising value and link value, but the key point is about link value. Without considering the moral issue, this is the very unique product blogs can provide; therefore it supposes to bring more income to blogs.

Blog advertising value:

Even the blogs are developed very well, but it is still very hard to enter the “advertiser- media agent- media” value chain. The reason is very simple but also very critical, because blogs still cannot be counted as streamline media.

Therefore the most difficult part for blogs in creating its value is to let the advertiser buy the banner advertisement directly. Most of the blogs cannot get enough advertisements at the beginning; it may take them few years to really enter the mainstream value chain if they keep striving.

How to enter the mainstream value chain? Actually I cannot tell the answer. The only two clues I know so far are 1. Change to web media site through blog and then enter the mainstream 2. Find good salesmen.

In mainstream value chain, when people mentioned about blogs, naturally they get the impression of an unknown small website with BSP service. A single blog cannot avoid to be underestimated in this situation. Therefore, most webmasters have to introduce their websites as “the web media established based on blog”, or it will be very difficult for them to take the second step. The fact that blog sounds very “cheap” in mainstream value chain, is something really sad.

Then you need to find salesmen who are very familiar with the traditional mainstream value chain and let him use the way which is acceptable for traditional mainstream value chain to introduce the websites and present the powerful advertising effectiveness data , then the websites may have chance to enter the mainstream advertising market.

But it is difficult for a single blog get a salesman. If there are capable salesmen who don’t willing to under the rule of certain companies but wanting to set their own business, they can try to contact some top blogs, and form an assembly, then directly sell the advertisement to the advertisers and agencies. Surely this will be a good business and benefit both sides.

Last but not the least, there is one thing I have to mention, blogs still have to balance these three value indexes. The intensive information blogs have to lower down their page rank index. Because these blogs are very familiar with the characteristics of internet, they always have very good page rank, and the articles on this kind of blogs are very enough to be recognized by the web users in this certain field, their article value will also be very high, but this doesn’t means they will have same advertising value.

Edited By Vicky Yin

Last week we talk about the element of time. Our focus is on when is the golden time for the web masters to put their investment, because once you start to burn your money on e-business you have to keep burning it. Surely the web master anxiety neurosis will start to emerge after that. But last time we did not discuss another essential point: how we should do to get a good traffic from the ground?

To be honest, I have to say this issue is always a mystery for website development. You can always find a mountain of paper about how to increase traffic, however how many web masters actually can successfully boost their website traffic from zero. People like to read all kinds of articles about web development, but most of the authors just draw their conclusion through analysis and summary, or the strategies they used are about how to raise the traffic from 100 pv to 1000 pv. It has very limited referential value for the web masters to actually commercialise the website from the beginning…

Furthermore, even I can say I have some experience, but deep inside of my heart, I still don’t know any absolute method to rise up traffic. Many times I tell myself that this must be the way to bump up traffic, but the result comes out always far from expectation.

However, there always be 1 or 2 times you success after fail 99 times. You have to remind yourself: Where have you put your time on? It is only possible for you to find one or two successful methods if you keep trying within limited time. And these methods you find can never be imitated.

Maybe it sounds very mysterious, let us use a practical way to view it. Why it takes long time for the website to be commercialised? The key is on search engines. In order to get a good rank, not matter functional websites or community UGC websites, they all have to consume a lot of time on enriching the websites.

On technology perspective, the strength of website is on outbound links and the number of your web page. The website is competitive in search engine only when these two are abundant. This is also the reason why online-news website and big community forums always have good ranks. If you (or the others users) post a dairy, a story, a comment, a chat note, etc on your newly launched website, the rank of your website surely can not compare with that of the big-scale community forum. In order to lift up the rank, you have to work hard and it takes time to rise up the website’s rank.

Although search engine is not the only source of visitors, the traffic you gain through search engine is stable, even you don’t update the news but just lay down on bed. This is the basic traffic you website suppose to keep and this is your most important “first bucket of fish” as a newly launched website. And the good new is because structure of the internal and external links of newly developed websites are better than that of the mature websites; therefore, it may takes them less time to grow their ranks in search engine.

We take a new website au.ibtimes.com as an example; the internal and external links of this website is very good, therefore the website rank grows very quickly. Moreover, all the news article has iFrame, so each news has it own link, when time plays its role and users start to search the keyword through search engine, they naturally gain traffic.

Last tips about time is, when you start the website one of most important task is purchase the good domain name because lots of good domain names have been taken. So before you think about any new ideal about your domain name, you should concern about time as well.

Edited By Vicky Yin

New survey report from Pew shows more Americans read online news from internet compare with traditional newspaper. Most people from the survey said they get news of this year US president election, and also social networks play as important roles for rapid growing of internet news.

However, from this survey, Television is still the main source for Americans to get local and international news. The survey report also says the most popular news in 2008 is the global financial crisis, and also the government solution for this crisis.

Edited By Henry Lu

From CNN report, the Semantic Web seems boring and not easy to use. However some believe that the Web 3.0 technology adapted by semantic web can provide more fun and interactive experience on web searching.

The concept of Semantic Web is the semantics of information and services on the website are defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.

For example, a certain object is a tag for parts of car. User can get great web information links according to this tag. The hosting server has very fast processor and user can gain large quantity of data, and engineers can use this technology to develop better artificial intelligence.

Use Iphone to demonstrate Semantic Web

A testing kiosk has been set up in Germany by 2 German researchers; they use Iphone’s MP3 files with index to allow users who never use semantic web to try this technology. The kiosk use the fact that MP3 files are “things” that have already been described in ways that machines can understand. That’s because they have ID3 tags, which supply information on the artist and album. Users connect their iphone to Kiosk, the screen will show the song list and users can catalogue their song according to singers, name or song genre. Nearby on the screen are various “spotlets,” intelligent agents and each spotlet can perform different function for the objects. One spotlet, for instance, plays MP3s that are dragged on top of it. There’s also a YouTube spotlet. If you want to find videos related to Country music. Touch the song genre icon next to the phone and simply drag it on top of that spotlet. Instantly, icons for the first five country music videos from the YouTube search results appear on the spotlet.

This is simple example of semantic web; the entire system is far more complicated. German engineers will set up more Kiosks soon on libraries to help people to looking for information of library.

Edited By Henry Lu

To design a website, there are many factors we cannot control, such as luck, but there are also some keys element we can and have to manage well, one of them is time.

Why time is so important? Because most of the successful social networking websites, except Fashion Guide, did not start with finding a nice office, recruiting 10 staffs, holding a nice opening cocktail party and then design the website and waiting for the visitors to rush into it.

The reality is most of the social networking sites are started with a small host computer at home and there is nothing commercial at beginning, because the one started these websites never thought about earning profit through it at first place. Some of them just want to make it as a birthday gift for themselves or they just simply upload the information for their friends.

For example, lots of big IT information websites started with a forum on University BBS. At beginning only few regular visitors discussed together and graduately hundreds of articles were posted every day. Most of the social networking sites are free at the beginning. Because they started from 0, they are able to attract lots of people and have chance to grow greatly.

However, it takes at least 3 years for a website to develop into certain scale. When the small host has changed to big host, few visitors have developed to more than 100 thousands members, and then this is the starting point for the web masters to consider about commercialising their websites. In another word, you start as an amateur, putting your time and interests in it first and when the websites really reach certain level, then you can concern about how to make money. The principle is:” Set up good foundation and then put the money in it.”

There is a very famous saying in e-business industry:” if you want to earn money through website, there are only two moments for you to get in, one is when you have really great idea, and another is when the traffic has reach certain level.” Therefore, first you need to manage your website for at least two years with your passion and efforts and when it achieve good traffic and reputation you can start to raise up found to commercialise the website, you have to take a solid step first, then your further investment can be secure.

This is not all about the importance of Time, I would like to explain it more in next part.

Edited By Vicky Yin

Business Blogs are suitable for almost every industry. For example: CEO Blog, which talks about management concept or previous successful projects of company etc. Promotion Blog, which is suitable during the sale season and also Staff Blog, which is for company staffs to discuss current projects and improve the internal communication. There are 3 industries we strongly recommend to build their Blogs:

Blog for dining industry

For the restaurants, coffee shop, and take away shop etc. From the background design, font and images, the style of Blog should match the shop; hence the customers can have the same feeling inside the shop as browsing the Blog. The Shop owner should be the Webmaster and can catalogs articles into following sections to share with customers.

1. Recipes: Recipes research and creation etc..

2. Customers: News of customers

3. Staffs: Brief introduction of this month’s best employee etc…

4. Shop Decoration: Introduce of shop’s style, interior design and background music etc…

5. Holiday activity: Any special activity for Xmas, mothers days etc…

6. Special events: wedding days, company party etc..

7. Voucher download: Promotion voucher downloads.

The Blog editor should write articles focus on the shop and don’t mix too much with personal feeling. Shop owner can also find a professional copy-writer to write the interesting articles to promote the business image.

Blog for Hospital

Commercial advisement is not a good idea for Hospital, but How about Blog? In the Blog, Doctors can share their professional ideas and experience with their patients. The webmaster can catalogue the articles according to each department. For example: articles for internal medicine, surgery, ophthalmology, dermatology etc.. And each department doctors can regularly upload theirs articles on Blog. The articles needed to be understood easily by patients and according to news, doctors can upload articles which discuss current health issue, for example: miscarriage caused by smoking. Hence the Blog can build a closer relation between doctors and patients and improve hospital’s professionalism and reputation.

Blog for School

Many schools and universities already start use the Blog to communicate with their students. For example: Language school can use Blog with interesting topics to attract students to read, which is different from the traditional teaching method. Teachers can write any articles related to daily-life to teach students the common language skills. And through the interaction from online chatting, videos conference and forums, students will be more interested to participate and improve their learning ability.

Back to main topic, why business needs website? Because website is good tool for marketing, image and touch. And why these 3 industries need blogs? Because Blog is good for interaction, RSS, SEO and Cost. Blog is more flexible then traditional website, and still there is great development potential for industry Blog. There are many different way to develop an excellent Blog, and two Golden rules are honesty and persistence.

Edited By Henry Lu