Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by WebMedic

Zero to One: Journey to build a startup

WebMedic — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 20:02:23 +0800

Hi everyone!

I am working on building a startup in Malaysia since April 2016 which recently was awarded MSC Status and pushing forward

Appreciate your feedback on the story which is shared on my blog, will leave an excerpt here and you can read the full by following the link at the bottom.

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What is the problem we are solving?

As a freelancer and while working on a digital agency, I saw both sides of the problems businesses and freelancers face.

Businesses are not proactively improving their website, most think of their website as an online brochure — they build it and leave it then expect it to generate revenues.

There are many reasons to why businesses are not proactively improving their websites, mainly it’s because the current solutions are too expensive or unreliable.

Freelancers on the other side are unhappy with the way they have to find work online and having to deal with business owners who are not technical can be frustrating.

Why does it matter?

The world is slowly but surely moving online, as of today we have 50% of the world’s population online and growing every year.

People are spending more time online and with that they are spending more money online so we are seeing an increase in e-commerce vs retail shopping.

At the same time we are seeing an increase in the gig or freelancer economy where companies in the US are spending over $700 billion annually on freelancers.

As of today we are seeing around 30% of the US workforce in the gig economy which is expected to reach 50% by 2020.

The future is online and the future is about independence — and with that there will be a lot of new opportunities and challenges to overcome.

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Interested to read the full story? it's available here: Zero to One: Journey to Build WebMedic

What can you learn from tracking your visitors?

WebMedic — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 19:58:11 +0800

As a business, your website visitors and customers feedback is important. Asking your visitors and customers for feedback is a difficult, time consuming task.

What if you can get feedback on your service without having to ask?

As your website browse your website, they are leaving behind data that can be monitored and analysed to help you improve your conversion rate — improve your sales.

What can we learn from monitoring website visitors?

1. Popular vs not so popular posts, pages and products

When you know what is working for your visitors vs not, you can identify where to invest your resources and how to qualify your visitors better.

For example if you sell pet food online and you notice that majority of your customers are buying dog related products, investing in more visibility for your dog products on your website can result in more sales.

2. Where are our visitors coming from

Not just their physical location but where from the Internet did they find your website.

Are most your relevant visitors (low bounce rate, high engagement) coming from LinkedIn? maybe you should focus more on LinkedIn vs Facebook.

Learn where your visitors are coming from so you can utilize your investment better by focusing on what works and spending less where it’s not working.

3. How are your visitors engaging with your website

Your website might feel natural and easy to use for you and people around you – but is it really working for everyone else?

When you look at your website from your visitor’s point of view, you can find out if they are using it correctly or if there are any problems that are causing them to leave.

You may read the full post here: What can we learn by tracking your website visitors?

The number 1 reason visitors don't buy from you

WebMedic — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 09:42:25 +0800

Research on over 5,000 worldwide online consumers shows us some interesting results, namely the number one reason people abandon your e-commerce store.

Online shoppers are demanding, lazy and want answers instantly.

According to the research, the key reasons for abandoning online stores are:

# Unexpected delivery costs (70%)
# Lack of information about the product, service or delivery (56%)
#Website difficult to navigate / can’t find what I am looking for (46%)
# Want to ask a question – can’t find answer (37%)
# Difficulty in getting any help / customer service on the website (30%)

These are important information, yet most sites hide them from customers.

When we say hide, we don’t mean completely remove — if the information is not clearly visible and easy to find, your visitors are more likely to leave.

Let’s use Sara as an example.

Sara wants to buy a new dress, she happens to have found your online store from your Instagram posts.

She goes on your website using her mobile phone to browse around.

How easy is it to find the navigation on your mobile website? will Sara get lost finding the dresses section?

Sara managed to find the dresses section and found a dress she likes but she is not sure about some things:

- Does the dress fit me?
- Do they have it in red?
-What happens if I need to return it?
- How long will it take to arrive?
- Do they even deliver to my location?
- Do I have to pay for shipping? how much?

How easy will Sara find answers to all her questions? remember she is on her mobile device without much screen landscape and even less patience.

Will Sara need to look around for a “Contact Us” page, fill in a form and hear back from you in 1-2 business days? Sara ain’t got time for that.

You want to make it super easy for your website visitors by constantly testing and improving your website based on customer feedback.

Copied from full article here: What is the number one reason visitors don’t buy from your e-commerce store?

What e-commerce CMS do you use?

WebMedic — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 04:17:48 +0800

Let's see what everyone here uses for their e-commerce website

Building your own e-commerce site?

WebMedic — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:52:02 +0800

Hi everyone,

So you want to build your own e-commerce website from scratch? read below for some advice on doing it right.

#1 Use a framework

You want to use PHP/MySQL which is good but please do not develop without using a framework.

Example of frameworks:

- Laravel
- Symfony2
- CodeIgniter
- WordPress

Depending on how barebones you want to start and which framework you are most comfortable with, they all have their own advantage — there is no one right answer here, it all depends on you and your needs.

Why use a framework?

I know you want to have your own e-commerce system and building it on top of someone elses code may sound like it defeats the purpose but… why reinvent the wheel? why have to worry about sessions, structure, authentication, database, template engine, separating logic from view and so on…

Let’s say you do reinvent the wheel and want to do it all from scratch.

Won’t other people want to work on this e-commerce platform in the future? will they have to learn your way of doing things? are you going to write the documentation of your system inside out? what happens when you need to update a library, rewrite code again?

Save yourself the headache, swallow your pride and learn to use frameworks, they are only here to help you.

#2 Plan everything but not too detailed

E-Commerce has a standard format in many ways which is good because you won’t have to invent new techniques most of the time.

The way you connect the different pieces together and adding new features to your system will change with time and having a detailed plan will be a waste of time.

Simply list all the pages required and the goals/key features per page will do.

Make sure your database structure is done in a way that you can easily adjust it later.

You can use MySQL Workbench to visually design your database which will help you moving forward: https://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/design/

#3 Release and let go!

You know what’s the biggest problem developers face when building products?

It’s never done.

Small feature there, edit the page here, remove this, add that, what if we have an API to connect to X, oh and then sort Y, man this graph would look cool, and fuck we can use these reports, woaha this is a nice plugin let me add it…

Don’t fall into this trap.

Make sure you have a set milestone to release your first version.

Get actual user feedback and see what they like/don’t like.

Then and only then you are allowed to release improvements.

All the best!

Advice for getting into business

WebMedic — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:48:17 +0800

Hi everyone,

For those of you thinking of starting up a new business, I would like to share my advice before you get into it.

Don’t get into it for the wrong reasons.

If you imagine that having your own business means working less, getting paid more and you only answer to yourself then you are wrong, wrong and wrong.

Having your own business is harder than your day job, you will work day and night, sometimes you won’t even get paid and your clients demand an answer asap or you are out of business.

It’s not for everyone, you need to be super driven and you need to feel very strongly about building and running a business that you are thinking about it almost all day.

It’s like this except it doesn’t just keep going at “THIS IS FUN!”, it repeats over and over where today morning you might feel like you are on top of the world and by afternoon you are unsure if your business is going to make it.

If you are down for the ride then it will be the most exciting thing you do in your life.

What do you think? what's your take on starting up a business?

All the best!

How to improve your e-commerce sales?

WebMedic — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:41:35 +0800

Hi everyone,

If you have an e-commerce store then sure you want to know one thing: how to get more sales?!

What we have here is the top factor to improve your online sales, by example.

Let's use Sara as an example

Sara wants to buy a new dress, she happens to have found your online store from your Instagram posts.

She goes on your website using her mobile phone to browse around.

How easy is it to find the navigation on your mobile website? will Sara get lost finding the dresses section?

Let's say Sara managed to find the dresses section and found a dress she likes but she is not sure about some things:

- Does the dress fit me?
- Do they have it in red?
- What happens if I need to return it?
- How long will it take to arrive?
- Do they even deliver to my location?
- Do I have to pay for shipping? how much?

How easy will Sara find answers to all her questions? remember she is on her mobile device without much screen landscape and even less patience.

Will Sara need to look around for a “Contact Us” page, fill in a form and hear back from you in 1-2 business days? Sara ain’t got time for that.

You want to make it super easy for your website visitors by constantly testing and improving your website based on customer feedback.

Click here to read full article on how to improve your e-commerce sales.

Advice to succeed as a freelancer

WebMedic — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:33:29 +0800

Hi everyone,

As a freelancer you might be worried about the market being saturated and not sure how to improve your freelancing career.

I want to share my top 3 advice which can help you get more clients and keep working with them for longer.

The advice is aimed at web development/design but can be applied to any freelancing work.

#1 You are in the business of understanding other businesses

It’s important and required from you to learn the technical side (ex: picking a suitable programming language, best practices, solving problems)

If you stop there, what’s the difference between you and the million other freelancers?

Let’s look at a usual scenario of hiring freelance developers:

Business wants something done, they either have an idea or a detailed brief
They go on freelancers websites to find a suitable candidate
They get 100s of bids from freelancers all over the world
They will filter through them and pick the one they feel is best
The developer now gets work based on what he is told and project is delivered

What’s the problem?

The average freelancer will do what they are told only and their initial bid will only take into account the technical side of the project.

The problem: Any programmer can develop based on an idea or brief.

What should you do instead?

You should be genuinely curious about the client’s business.

What is that project for? why do they want to develop a [website/app/project] now? what’s the clients business? how do they make money? who are their customers?

Simply asking these questions puts you in the top 1 % of all bidders automatically.

Don’t just ask and then get to work as usual!

You love technology right? cool, how can you help this client improve his idea based on what you learned about their business, using technology?

Now if you propose new ideas that make sense, you are the 1% of the 1%.

At this point the price does not matter.

Which reminds me: market rates are for losers.

You are not selling a commodity, you are a consultant offering solutions — you set the market rate for yourself based on the value you offer.

#2 You want to be a big fish in a small pond, not a small fish in a big pond

As a web developer you are competing with all the other million developers in the same pond of people looking for web developers.

What’s the problem?

You offer almost exactly the same service as everyone else, when people want to find you they are looking for a general terms such as “web developer” and that decreases your value.

How do we fix it?

What happens if we reposition your offering and say you are a web developer who specialises in boutique hotel websites?

Now we can say you are:

Competing with a much less crowd of web developers

Charging x10 more than other developers because you are offering a specialized service

In the future as you understand the market better you can develop Software as a Service and rent it out to boutique hotels.

Replace boutique hotels with any other market that makes sense to you based on who you have access to and what you personally like.

#3 Always be adding value

When I first got into business I thought the way it works is you get clients to pay you money.

The main goal? get paid.

What’s the problem?

Your clients will end up seeing you as a cost, you are not bringing in much value and so it’s an unfair relationship.

What did I do to fix it?

Instead of thinking how to make money, I started thinking how to add value.

I now lose money on some projects but it’s okay because the clients are happy and keep coming back for more which ends up making more profit.

Want happy clients?

Always Be Adding Value.

Keep the client’s interests first, always think of how would you give them the best value? how do you make them more money? what is the best thing for them?

It’s challenging because you are sacrificing your profit margins for your client but also because constantly providing more value to clients takes a lot of work!

If you can’t do that then your competition will and sooner or later you will be out of business.

Your thoughts and feedback are appreciated.

All the best!

Got WordPress?

WebMedic — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 16:05:11 +0800

Hi everyone,

Let's make a list of all WordPress blogs/websites on Lowyat forum.

Please share your website in the format:

Name: WebMedic - The Web Specialist
Website: https://webmedic.my
Type: Business website
Description: WebMedic is a website maintenance service.
'

Do you use the computer/mobile for hours?

WebMedic — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 14:20:54 +0800

Hi everyone,

This is a public service announcement to anyone who uses their computer/laptop/mobile/tablet for hours.

There is a massive risk called RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury).

The problem with RSI is that it starts with minimal pain/discomfort, your body seems normal...

Until it suddenly evolves into bigger problems (ex: tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome) which can evolve to permanent and disabling problems!

If you are having ANY pain/discomfort no matter how little, DO NOT IGNORE IT.

The solution at the beginning is fairly simple:

- Fix your posture! Do not lean over the laptop or computer, do not sit in awkward positions while browsing your mobile devices.

- Use an ergonomic keyboard / mouse.

- Most importantly: do stretches and do them often (every 20 minutes).

References:

https://managewp.com/how-to-prevent-repetit...t-your-computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdD7CgN5FGg

What issues do you face with your WordPress?

WebMedic — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 21:21:27 +0800

Hi website owners,

We want to help you fix all your WordPress problems.

What issues do you usually face with your website? how often do they happen? and what do you do about them usually?

Looking forward to your feedback.

Thank you

Are you using WordPress? See inside!

WebMedic — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 16:43:01 +0800

Hi,

We are working on a website maintenance service and wondering if there are any bloggers here using WordPress?

If you are having any issues with your website, please leave a comment / PM for free consultation

If you are not currently having any issues but would like to learn more about how can we help you, get in touch now

Our service covers (WordPress only for now):

- 24/7 Security Monitoring
- Managed updates
- Backups
- Technical support

Thank you