Perth Website Consulting Perth

Perth Website Consulting Perth

Perth website consulting Perth is the first article of the Perth Web Consulting Perth Series. The ultimate goal of this series is to raise the awareness of business Internet (i.e. the World Wide Web) use. Whereas the articles talk about general issues about the web, the content is written to target small medium enterprises (SME) in Perth.

In this issue of Perth Website Consulting Perth, we will review some issues related to the business use of Internet websites and the web industry in Perth.

Perth Website Consulting Perth - Business can’t ignore the WWW

Let us start with some facts:

1. More than 70% of Australians has Internet access (Nielson//Net Ratings)
2. More than 80% of SMEs in Australia use the Internet (Yellowpages E-Business Report)
3. The Australia business Internet income in 2002 is AUD$11.3 million (WA Business Newspaper)
4. It is predicted that by the end of 2004, worldwide B2B ecommerce revenues will be USD2.7 trillion (eMarketer)

Hence, whether your business is B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer); whether you target only Perth, entire Australia, or worldwide, you need a website to stay competitive.

Perth Website Consulting Perth - The Use of Website

Websites are capable of doing all kinds of things – it is limited only by your imagination. Below is a list of common website usage in SMEs:

1. Your potential customers can visit to find out your company information 24 hrs/day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year
2. You can reach your customers anywhere in the world
3. Reduce your costs dramatically by providing documents/digital products online
4. Allows you to receive orders for goods/services online. This includes payments for goods/services to be processed in real-time
5. Allows your customers to contact you 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week, 365 days a year

Perth Website Consulting Perth - Website Design, Development and Promotion

When it comes to the design and development of websites, there are two types of extremist views. Web developers who have strong backgrounds in the graphic design often create artistic and flashy websites. Apart from visual appealing, the websites usually have very little useful feature. These websites can cost a fortune and, to some extent, can be considered most fanciful but least useful. On the other extreme, developers who come from the computer science background tends to build the most robust and fully featured websites but completely ignore the overall presentation.

A successful website lies in the middle of the two extremes. A good website is more than a piece of attractive artwork. Having a graphical intensive design can bring negative impact on the website. A good example can be observed in websites that are built entirely in Flash. Such websites cannot be effectively promoted to search engines such as Google and Yahoo since it prevents text search (more details in the upcoming article Perth Web Marketing Perth). Having websites that are not promoted are just as good as having none since no customers can find your website on the Internet.

On the other hand, over concentrating on the website features but ignoring the website design is unwise. A non-presentable website gives your business a bad corporate branding. It is well known that company branding is the most important asset of any business. Internationally recognized brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonalds are worth more than the combined value of the company’s premises. For Ecommerce websites, a bad branding prevents trust – the essential elements needed by customers to purchase on your website. Would you rather punch in your credit card number in the website in Figure 1 or Figure 2?

The creation of a good website requires expertise from various fields. A good website is more than merely a bunch of computer codes. It is the combined effort of business experts, talented graphic designers and IT specialist. A successful website cannot be built without full understanding of the business. In general, website development goes through tree phases: Design, Development, Promotion and Success measurement. Table 1 shows the activities involved in each phase. The process involves the re-iteration of the three phases. For example, when a satisfactory search engine optimization result is not achieved, the content/design of the website may have to change.

Table 1: Activities involved in web development

Perth Website Consulting Perth - Website Consulting in Perth

The need for professional web consultation has increased over the years. Businesses in Australia are beginning to realize that a basic website is not sufficient to help the business grow. In 2003, 68% of SMEs indicated that they intend to use the website to provide better services to their customers; 69% if SMEs intend to do Ecommerce; and 43% use websites to promote their business online.

There are over 180 web developers in Western Australia (WA) listed on the Yellow Pages. A review of the list suggests that a large portion of them are one-man shows operating in either a home or virtual office (secretarial services). Most of the incorporated web consulting films that operate in proper infrastructures have at least 3 people in the development team (WA Business News Book of List).

The One-man-show web consulting films operate in a fashion similar to freelance web developers. The pricing offered by them are fragmented. That is, you can pay almost any price ranging from $10 all the way up to $1,500. In general, if you are looking for a proper incorporated film who offers higher quality websites and continuous maintenance support, a simple website (with little or no feature) cost AUD$2,500 - $7,000. Feature rich websites (for SME) starts from AUD$5000 all the way up to $50,000.

In the Western Australia web industry, everybody can beat anybody in price. This is because the development cost can be greatly reduced by, for example, outsourcing the project to freelance developer or allocating the project to their low-pay trainees. Hence, in many cases, you get what you pay for.

Therefore, it is very important to consider factors other than price when it comes to selecting the right web consultant. You should aim for the website with the biggest return instead of cheapest in cost. The general rule is to choose the company with the most credentials whose price is affordable to you.

Perth Website Consulting Perth - What’s next? Multilingual website?

Globalization has major impacts to the world of business. It is partially made possible by the use of Internet as a tool to reduce the physical location barriers among people. Using website as an inexpensive tool, SMEs are no longer restricted to doing business in the country of its origin. Suddenly, businesses found themselves serving customers from a remote land of different culture and different languages.

Non English-speaking Internet users are already outnumbering English speaking ones. Multilingual website is therefore necessary to help SMEs worldwide to compete in the global, digital economy.