When an idea comes to mind and you want to have a digital platform the first thing that you think of is a mobile app. Why? Because it’s a platform that has been mentioned by your friends, family members or anyone in that matter. People will tell you that having an app is the best thing and how everyone in this world has a mobile phone. Correct? Yes, but….

Before I go any further I must highlight that this article is for startups, new business or sme’s who are either just about to start a business or have been in the industry for almost 10 years and thinking about having a website. If you a gamer, a tech company, eCommerce… you can skip this article but no harm reading it.

If you have a tight budget and you are just about to start a business, having an app may not be the best idea. An app can be pretty expensive. It can above RM 30,000 and more.

Consider having a website. A website is affordable and easy to customize. You minimize your risk and it’s a great channel to reach out to new customers.

Before having a website for yourself, consider these items before spending;

1. Hosting & Domain

What is hosting? And what is a domain? I’m not going to give you the technical aspect of what it is. Put it simple… domain are those www.yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com connects to a hosting. Hosting is where it stores all of your website files such as text, images, database and more. There are plenty of hosting and domain providers out there. In Malaysia itself there’s exabytes, GoDaddy, server freak, syokhost and more. Don’t worry, these hosting are not going to be placed inside your office space or bedroom. Nowadays hosting cost less than RM10.00, even a domain cost RM 5.00.

2. Choosing a CMS

What is a CMS? Do you want your website to be boring? Off course not! So you’ll need text, images, some effects, videos, crazy design etc etc. How do you insert those content? You insert it by using a CMS. CMS which stands for content management system is a tool that allows you to easily insert text, image, photos and other elements onto your website. CMS should be easy to use. If you stumble upon a CMS that is difficult to use then I can promise you that your website will die on its own. There are plenty of CMS available: joomla, worpdress, sharepoint, wix, weebly and many more. Ooops, some of the tools that I mentioned may not be 100% CMS. Well they sorta have… wix and weebly for examples are website buider that is equip with a CMS.

3. Design

I know how most of you love talking about designs for hours and hours and hours with your clients. Getting the right design is great! We salute you for thinking about design 24 hours a day. Please do keep in mind that the hardest thing to do when it comes to design is to make it as simple as possible so that users are able to use it. For us, we advice clients not to go for custom design because it can expensive and time consuming. If you just about to start your business, just use whatever design templates that’s available. This should be enough for you to get customers onto your website.

4. Call to action

Assuming you got someone to build your website what are you going to do next? Remember to always think about the customer. Not your vendor, not what you think but what your customer might think of your website. If you are in the oil and gas business, what do you want your potential customer to do when they are on your website? If you are running a construction company, what do you want your customer to do on the website? Make sure you have a nice flow of directing users from one page to another that wil lead them to contact you.

5. Mobile Ready

Remember when we mentioned that many would suggest to have an app. Yes that’s true but don’t forget that a website can be mobile ready too. Your website must be able to be responsive and mobile ready.  A website that is not repsonsive or mobile ready, google will penalize. So make sure that you have your website responsive to multiple devices. This will help you in your search ranking.