Ricky’s Online Business Blog

A customer wants to create a simple web site of 6 or 7 static web pages.  The site introduces their company and products, and attract enquiries through an online form.

He asked me to introduce web developers for him.  Besides suggesting my partner web designers for any web development job as I normally do, I also suggested him do it himself, especially if it is such a simple web site.

Customer can consider using any free content management system (CMS) out there, such as Drupal and Joomla.  A good CMS enables you to develop a complete web site with little or no technical knowledge.

But CMS to some customers is still quite technical.  Why not use a blogging system like WordPress instead?  You can create static pages using WordPress, and announce latest news and promotion from time to time by means of blogging.  This RickySoo.com web site is created using WordPress.

In fact, for businesses who want to build a web site, I would suggest make it a blog, especially if the web site is not too complicated.  Businesses should use blog not because it’s the “in” thing to do now, but it could be the most cost-effective way as well.

Learning WordPress is easier than learning a typical content management system.  You just need to download WordPress, install on your web site, set up everything, put in the content, and maintain it along the way.  Find out more on how to set up a blog here.

At the beginning there will be some learning curve.  But soon my customer will become a pro in WordPress, and he will love it.  The good thing is that, he can apply the WordPress skills to replicate other web sites as he wishes.

Do it yourself!

Recently I reconnected with a friend who came from a family of feng shui (风水) business.  He shared to me about his business. I’m not familiar with his industry.  But I know some real estate agents and interior designers are very much into feng shui in order to serve their customers better.

But according to my friend, the real feng shui masters in Malaysia are few and far between.  Yes, we have heard of some big names who tout their expertise in feng shui.  But although their marketing is excellent, some of them may not be real experts in feng shui and may not have respect among feng shui masters.

On the other hand, there are those who are real masters but are not good in marketing themselves.  But after all, why need to market so much?  Their daily schedule is already packed up and they are already earning good money.

I myself don’t believe and don’t practise feng shui.  But here I’m writing from a business perspective only and nothing else.  I asked my friend who is computer-savvy why he doesn’t use the Internet and even blogging to promote his business.  Perhaps the web site will not generate many leads.  But he can use it to build his reputation.

But he said those who promote on the Internet expose themselves for challenges from the real masters in feng shui.  If one is not yet ready, better not have a web site, much less a blog.  Ok, sounds reasonable to me.

There are web developers and Internet marketers who think that EVERY business should go online.  But I think there are businesses which should not have an Internet presence, perhaps because the Internet does not fit into their business model, or they are not yet ready for Internet presence.

So perhaps a feng shui business is one such example?

If you use some social networking web sites such as LinkedIn and Friendster, you know that you can easily invite friends in your address book to join your network.

You can either enter the email addresses of your friends manually. Or you can just enter your username and password of your web-based email service, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. Then the site will login on behalf of you, extract your friends’ details out of your address book, and send them an invitation email.

While asking for your login details, there is always a disclaimer claiming that “We do not store your login information”. But, do you believe?

As a web programmer myself, I know how easy it is to store people’s password without them knowing. If your login details fall into the wrong hands, the unscrupulous party can just log into your account, read your emails, send emails for you, or simply change your password and block you from accessing your mailbox any more.

I don’t know about you. But I have friends whose web-based mailbox had been hacked and they could not access their mailbox any more. Worse, a hacker even used my friend’s mailbox to send emails out on her behalf!

Of course I do trust sites such as LinkedIn. But if a site called XYZ that you do not know well ask you for login details, will you give them? Better safe than sorry.

From the point of view of site owner, is it good to ask for login details from members? However we claim that we don’t store their login details, they may still not trust us, because we are nobody!

This shows that trust is paramount in doing business, including online businesses. But when we are nobody, it takes time to build trust.

I wish there can be a good mechanism where members can safely invite people on their address book without the site owner getting to know the login details at all.

This is like how credit card details are processed – the customer enters the card number but the merchant never get to see it because it is sent directly to the bank.

Do you have any good solution?

Sometimes I hear complaints from web designers that their customers refuse to pay up, especially the last payment, after a web site is completed. No wonder sometimes designers register their domain names under their own names so that they can make sure the customers pay up, or lose their domain name!

I don’t have much experience on this and am not qualified to speak on this issue. I also don’t have very good solution to this. But I have a very naive idea.  if a customer refuses to pay up, just let him go and do not pursue after the money. Perhaps I have done something wrong that he refuses to pay up. Even if it’s not my fault, at least I have done something to help and bless his business.

You will surely not agree with my suggestion to let the customer go, to bless and not to curse, to look beyond our existence (we don’t exist just to make money), to thank the customer for giving business to us in the first place and for the money he has paid, to wish him well and never do anything to sabotage, even to continue to serve him If he ever comes back in the future.

There is a Chinese word called 舍得 (meaning “letting go”) which consists of two characters – 舍 and 得. Perhaps only when we learn to let go (舍), do we learn to how to truly gain (得).

Yes, I know I am naive   How about you?  What will you do?