Establishing Web Presence

A website is considered the norm for many businesses in today's business. In fact some businesses (even giants such as Amazon) have abandoned the brick and mortar business model, opting instead for a full e-commerce model.

The key advantage of having a website is that it opens up your business to opportunities around the world, and not just restricted to your local market

Some of the main considerations which businesses need to consider when setting up a website are:

Domain Name

In simple terms, the domain name is basically your website's address. For example, if your business name is "Alan's Trading" and you want to setup a www.alantrading.com website. The "www.alantrading.com" is the domain name.

There are many domain name suffixes which you can choose from. Examples of these are ".com", ".net", ".info", ".org", ".biz", ".com.sg", ".sg", etc.

If you however want a ".com.sg" or ".sg" domain name (for example www.alantrading.com.sg), you would need to register your business first with the Singapore Authorities before you can apply for the ".com.sg" or ".sg" domain name. The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore has a listing of vendors which helps businesses to apply for the ".com.sg" or ".sg" domain name. The domain rental charges for ".com.sg" and ".sg" are about $60 per year.

Do note that if another entity had already registered a domain name, your business would not be able to register it. Thus when you are at the stage of deciding your business name, you should also check whether your intended domain name is already taken by others!

Domain Name - Rent or Buy

The majority of the companies rent the domain name instead of buying them.

This is because the purchase cost of a domain name could easily cost upwards of several thousand dollars, while the rental charges are about $20 per year for domains names(such as the ".com" or ".net" suffixes), and $60 per year for those with ".com.sg" or ".sg" suffixes.

Domain Name Suffixes

Another important consideration for the domain name is whether to rent more than one domain type. Using the www.alantrading.com example above, should your business also get www.alantrading.net, www.alantrading.biz, www.alantrading.com.sg, and www.alantrading.com.sg?

The advantage of renting several other domains too is the assurance that a client gets to your website regardless of the domain name suffix which they typed i.e. a customer who typed www.alantrading.net, www.alantrading.biz can also get to your website.

In addition, there are companies out there which purposely choose a domain name that is similar to another famous company, but using a different domain name suffix. These companies hopes to capitalise on the brand name of the famous company and capture customers who key in the incorrect domain name suffix. Back to the Alan's Trading example, another company might register itself as www.alantrading.asia!

It is recommended that Singapore businesses secure at least the ".com", ".net", ".com.sg", ".sg" domain name suffixes (total rental would be about $140 per year - $20 + $20 + $60 + $60). Most people would attempt to key in these domain name suffixes to find Singapore based businesses.

Web Hosting

Once the domain name of your business is sorted out, the next item to consider would be web hosting services. The web hosting provider puts your website on the internet on a 24/7 basis. The fees charged by these providers are typically on a monthly basis, and the amount varies by factors such as storage space, transfer speed, monthly transfer bandwidth and guaranteed service levels (e.g. 99.9% up time).

If the purpose of your business website is to showcase your products (and hence a lot of images, which can consume a large amount of storage), you might need to get a web hosting plan with higher storage space.

Another important thing to note is that the hosting of your physical website is just one of the many services which you can get from a web hosting provider. Different web hosting service providers provide different services in addition to web hosting. For instance:

Ability to create Email Acounts under your domain name:	Email accounts is an area where you can easily find great disparity in offering by different web hosting providers. Some web hosting providers allows you to create a limited number of email accounts under your domain name (for example, johnapple@alantrading.com, alistair@alantrading.com).
Monthly transfer bandwidth:	Some service providers allow you to transfer a fixed amount of data up onto the server e.g. 500mb in a month and thereafter charges you for additional transfer bandwidth. But there are others which allow for infinite transfer bandwidth. Suppose your site requires a lot of constant updates, the first service provider which restricts bandwidth is not a good option.

Website Design

This is the stage where you would need to consider the layout and the content which you want to place in your website.

It is also the stage which consumes significant time and effort.

Some websites may look plain and simple on the surface, but that's the result which is only achieved after taking into account plenty of considerations.

The 3 things which determine the overall look and feel of a website are the (1) layout, (2) colours, and (3) white spaces.

1. Layout	A typical website has a horizontal navigation bar at the top of the website, which allows the visitor to move between sections of the website. It might also have an additional panel on the left and/or right side of the website to assist in navigation within a page. Careful planning of the types of navigation aids is critical if you have a lot of content in your website. Websites also typically have another 2 sections known as the Site Links and Footer. The Site Links lay out in a flat fashion the main contents in a website, while the Footer section might explain the business's privacy policy and terms & conditions for usage of the website. When any visitor arrives at a website, the website's layout conveys a lot about the business character and capability. A company website which is messy (e.g. wordings & images not in alignment), paragraphs which are cluttered, poor navigational aids to assist in finding the desired item) is likely to convey an image of a company which is uncredible, lacking in organising skills, and poor clarity of thoughts. Conversely for a business who has a website that's clean, uncluttered, and properly structured into meaningful categories, it conveys credibility, trustworthiness, excellent organising capability and clarity of thoughts. There's no prize for guessing which company would the new visitor seek to engage.
2. Business' Color Scheme.	Aside from the layout, the next thing which a visitor notices when he visits a website is the colors. The business colors must be in alignment with the values and character of your company. Image credit: The Logo Company The above color guide serves as a useful starting point for a business to select their business colors. It is not an absolute reference e.g. it is possible for a business to bring out its optimistic and friendly side without using yellow/orange colors. In addition, colors is a very powerful visual tool to guide visitors in digesting your website's contents quickly by creating a visual hierarchy e.g. dark blue may be used for "main-header" items such as "Food", light blue for "sub-header" items such as "Lunch", and black color to describe in detail the "lunch" items.
3. White Spaces.	White spaces refers to any area of a page which does not have any content. Although it sounds insignificant (just empty areas without content), its impact on the overall website pleasantness is rather significant. Aside from web designers, folks from the press (e.g. newspaper) and print (e.g. magazines) industries pay a lot attention to white spaces. On the extreme left end of the spectrum (pages which are filled with content), it is difficult for the visitor to focus on any item. It might even be a "turn-off" for some visitors who had to digest one whole load of content, and consequently the visitor decides to venture off to other company's website instead.

What are the website languages used to create a website?

The main content of the website is placed in the website using HTML(Hyper Text Markup language), while the layout of these contents is done using the CSS (Cascasding Style Sheet) language. If there are forms involved in your website (for example, the "Contact Us" or "Customer Feedback" form in your website), Javascript and PHP language would also be used.

Once the website is done up, the final step would be to upload onto the internet. One of the ways this is done is through the usage of the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) service.

Photography

Images are important tools for businesses to showcase products to their customers. In particular, well-taken images are a necessity for businesses plying in industries such as Retail and Food & Beverage.

However, that's just the tip of the iceberg of what photographs can do for your business. Most important of all, professionally executed photographs boost the credibility of your corporate profile, way before you even meet your customers.

We offer a suite of professional photography solutions in areas such as products, food and corporate shoot so that you can eliminate the headache of scouting solutions for your images.

Tethered shooting

Our photography equipment has the capability to do tethered shooting. In simple terms, this means that our camera are connected to a computer, and images which are shot are immediately transferred to the computer for preview.

The computer screen is much bigger than the DSLR's LCD screen, and allows for viewing by everyone.

Our corporate profile shoots make use of this feature extensively. If you are not satisfied with the image seen on the computer (e.g. changing of your posture, the way you smile, etc.), we can immediately readjust and shoot again.

Delivery of images

The processed images would be uploaded onto the your cloud account maintained with us. Simply log into your account and you could retrieve your images!

Our Rates

How we can help your business to create a website?

For businesses who do not have knowledge of these web languages but still nevertheless wants to establish a website, we can assist you in the registration of domain name, sourcing for the web hosting service provider, and create a basic website (layout, styling, etc.) to establish an online presence for your business.

The only thing which we would need you to provide us would be the contents such as wordings and images (we would provide you with recommendations on what are some of the contents to place in your website).

How does our photography solution work?

It's simple. In most instances, we just need the following 3 bits of information from you.

What is the nature and size of the item to be photographed?	For example: it's a 50cm x 50cm food product, or it's a 1m x 1m x 1m metallic surface equipment. The nature and size of the items are important for us to plan the lighting and stage for the studio. If the item is large (such as housefold furniture), we may need to make additional arrangements with third party studios. In all cases, we would discuss with you before hand.
How will you want the image to be used?	For example: is it to be used as product images in A4-sized brochures, is it to be used as a 2m x 1m banner, or is it an image of the management team which is to be used in the "About Us" section of the your company's website?
Any special requirement for the image?	Our default option is to deliver the images on a clean white/black background. This provides you the flexibility to use the image for other applications. Should you desire your image to be placed on different backgrounds, have a chat with us and we will see how best to arrange it to meet your requirements.