More than 400 million people log in daily, your Farmville addictions and alike were contributing 12% of their overall revenue, and for a conventional “eyeballs equal money” policy, Facebook managed to land $1 billion profit in 2011 on top of a $3.7 billion revenue, where 85% of them derived from advertising alone.

Their user base increased 39% last year, but revenue was up 88%! This reminds us of Friendster, which is the pioneer in social network and the initial pattern holder for some crucial social networking features like the ‘Friend Of A Friend’, and MySpace, which seems like an unstoppable alternative later.

Where did they done wrong? It’s an interesting question which we’ll come back to later. For now, savor the facts that Facebook successes proved that being a first-mover doesn’t always give you an advantage, and it takes several tries to make a triumph.

We’ve converted Facebook preliminary Prospectus and filing information from the SEC website for you to download:

facebook-sec-gov-pdf

A blogger is, most of the time, a web publisher

What relates blogging with an effective web design?

• Blogging needs loyal audience to make it fun. You’ll learn the fundamentals of making a website attractive to read and sticky at the same time. You’ll learn about the art of attractive copywriting, and practices like teasers and cliffhangers.
• Bloggers aim for email or RSS subscribers- so you’ll learn how to actually design the flow of your blog and content so that you can convert visitors to subscribers. That’s conversion tactics for you, and you’ll learn about User Experience and page objectives along the way.
• Blogging is personal in nature- in the world filled with spambots and cliche copy-writings, you’ll learn first-hand the art of being warm and approachable, being humane and getting into the hearts and minds of your readers. That’s effective communication skill.
• Blogging have matrices to keep track with- bloggers install analytics to learn about the people who visits and reads their blog. You’ll learn the ideas and jargons behind web traffics- bounce rate, keywords and visitors vs hits.
  

  Blog gives us a casual platform to understand the art of conversion and retention

• Blog is a unique expression of individuality- you’ll soon learn how to customize the design to fit your persona, starting with the point and click interface to CSS hacking when you realizes you want more!
• Blogosphere is interconnected- you’ll learn the tools of trades – social media and networking. You’ll understand the mechanics of social interactions and the tools to streamline your different social accounts.
• A new blogger starts with zero reputations and zero readers, so search engine will be a good source of traffic. You’ll learn the tricks of Search Engine Optimization before long.
• A blog can garner more visitors than regular website- making the more eyeballs attractive to advertisers. You’ll learn the approaches of monetization, from the usual CPM method to the affiliate marketing.
• Blog sometimes requires commentary and references- you’ll learn how to link to other contents including the licensing and the sites for resources.

Sounds like you’re in the right alley? Start a blog today and master the tool of the future.

Here are the list and screenshots of the biggest companies in Malaysia by revenue (according to the April 2011 Forbes 2000 list), starting a countdown from number 20 to 11. Click on the image to view the live website.

20. PPB Group

PBB Group, a flour milling corporation

Hosted on Apache server, this flour milling company use a neat presentation with grid-like display on the homepage with a clean sidebar showcasing the contact information and latest financial reports for the stakeholders. Also, the footer displays a quick snippets of their background and activities.

19. Petronas Gas

Petronas Gas, the GLC powerhouse dealing with gas processing and distribution. Flash sections not visible here.

One of several Petronas subsidiaries in the top-20 list, Petronas Gas website is hosted on a  Microsof Windows server, with a Flash banner on top and the main section on the home page. This ASP.net website use a sidebar with the latest news and announcements for quick info for visitors.

18. Plus Expressways

Plus highway, the Malaysian biggest highway concession.

A very  clean and structured presentation, the Plus website is TYPO3 open-source CMS and hosted on Windows server. It relies on Flash to power its homepage accordion banner, and displays the latest news, announcements and a useful tool for its target visitor- a toll fare calculator.

17. Hong Leong Financial Group

The Hong Leong group is more than just retail banking- it's a big conglomerate in manufacturing and properties.

The Hong Leong group corporate website use a static image for the homepage which is a big no-no for Search Engine Optimization approaches, not that need it badly anyways. There’s a possibility this website uses no dynamic content management whatsoever and statically hand-coded from scratch! A more sophisticated on-line banking website for the bank can be seen here.

16. AMMB Holdings

Ambank group, a retail and corporate banking giant

The Ambank group website is more banking-oriented website compare to Hong Leong’s (due to their more finance-oriented business) with advertising for their banking products and services. The ASP.net website is integrated with Microsoft Sharepoint intranet, uses tabs to simplify the presentation and uses lots of images and banners.

15. RHB Capital

RHB Capital, another financial powerhouse

RHB Capital website is a clean website with rotating image using AnythingSlider and jQuery. This ASP.net website lists the frequent links for visitors quick access along with the rates and featured services in a neat 3 column design.

14. Kuala Lumpur Kepong

Kuala Lumpu Kepong Berhad, a plantation giant

The plantation corporation website is written in PHP and uses some jQuery functionalities for the interactivity. Lots of negative spaces with subtle background integrated with the main image that highlights their main corporate activities.

13. Maxis

Maxis, a very end consumer-oriented design.

A very warm and friendly web design, Maxis homepage uses large imagery, rotating banner and icons to quickly projects their message and organize important links and recent promotions. It is hosted on Windows server and uses Mootools JavaScript frameork and Flash for interativity.

12. Public Bank

Public Bank, one of the highly-rated bank in terms of customer service

Another banking giant on the list, Public Bank’s corporate website uses both jQuery and Mootools framework, with 3 columns content and a sidebar showcasing different quick links, promotion highlights and latest news along with quick contact information.

11. Petronas Chemicals

Another arm in Petronas group, Petronas Chemical revolves around chemical activities

The most stylish an only dark-themed website in this part, the Petronas Chemical’s is developed using PHP on Apache server and uses some jQuery functionalities for display. It has an elegant steel-themed background image and a large chemical plant image on the home page, quickly communicating its niche industry along with some background information.

Part will be coming in the near future. Subscribe to our newsletter to keep it touch!

The timing of your release can make it or break it

But with this option comes another decision making headache to endure. Literally there’s no right or wrong in how you choose the timing and version of your release. There are 2 ways that you can see to it.

Release Earliest Possible

The Getting Real philosophy (curated by the people at 37Signals, founding developers of Ruby on Rails framework) advocates the “Release Early, Release Often” approach with introducing “Half-A-Product, Not Half-Ass Product” early on and improving it later.

Thousands of software developers have been inspired by their Getting Real concept including us here.

But that’s not all to it..

Release When It’s Awesome

But Joel Spolsky (CEO of THE Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow), meanwhile, suggested a slightly different approach.

With that, he underscores the importance of releasing a really good product on the launching date, as with the case of his latest project Trello (Check it out! We’re using it!)

This is a valid way to see it too, but he also used a closed private beta (a hundred of closed friends!) to cover up the feedback gathering stage that the Getting Real emphasized on in releasing early.

The considerations..

...depends on your resources.

Our team here at Fulkrum Interactive deals with product launch decisions several times a year (the Apple App Store ‘New Apps List’ can really make a difference in market traction if the time is right), so we recommend you to pounce upon these questions:

• Do you have enough private testers to help you refine your product pre-launch?
• Is there any significant event (as in expos and conference) that you can launch your product into the limelight?
• Do you think your core, basic product is the same as the current competitors’, but the add-ons are what make it stand up?
• Do you think your product is not time-sensitive (time-sensitive project like developing using the ever-changing iOS SDK)
• Do you use any outside platform which policy is somewhat volatile? (like third-party APIs)
• Do you already have the funds needed for your early operation?
• Do you have a complete team in-place to execute the big idea?

Ideas are worthless

This is where ideas go into between your eureka moment and your viability study

Ideas worth nothing to VCs and investors unless you’re capable of executing them. Sometimes we’re too excited about our world-changing ideas only to be disappointed when people with money dismissed them. Here’s h0w you can make your idea valuable:

• Have the right team or partner in-place which/who is capable in at least in technically overseeing the concept
• Come out with a prototype that shows you’re technically sure the concept can work
• Pattern nah….
• Quote someone credible who have listened and approved your idea, if there’s any (don’t miss any pitching session even if you don’t need the money)

Failure is a path

In start-up entrepreneurship where operational history is close to none, failure is no longer considered a challenge. It’s a route that we must travel. Here are the stages of failures that one has to visit occasionally.

• Failure to get funding
• Failure to complete the product/product not working
• Failure to release the product in time
• Failure to successfully market the product
• Total project failure because the product concept is too lame (oh well..)

Passion trumps everything

As the world of start-up entrepreneurship is notorious with the above-mentioned failures, salary, equity and other material rewards can no-longer guarantee a sustainable commitment and motivation among your team members. Passion is the only fuel. Build a cult following around your idea.

People willing to go to great length based on passion. Great length.

If people is not passionate enough about your idea, maybe:

• You’re talking to the wrong people (a golfer can’t judge a baseball player’s swing quality)
• You can’t communicate your ideals well thus it’s not understood fully
• Your idea just won’t work, which makes ‘passion’ a viable tool to measure your project ‘potential’ sometimes

Action vs inaction

Get out and do something. We’ll learn more from our action rather than our endless research, SWOT analysis, ROI Estimation, Cost vs Benefit study, and counseling. Inaction can cost as dearly too:

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
-John Stuart Mill

What are we waiting for?

Action! A small step may start a giant leap.

Good luck fellas.

Any input, however normal or obvious it may sound, that came from multi-millionnaire history-maker and web-technology godfather like him, is of course invaluable.

Without going into the details of the project, here are the points raised by Jawed and some of our observations:

Everything is moving into the cloud

The market is in for a hosted solution. Customers don’t want a box in their office because nobody knows how to fix it.

What Zoho cloud solutions taught us: everything will and can move to the cloud

Different branding approach

When it comes to consumer end product, it can be branded as stylish, hip, trendy, cool, and we can create lots of excitements around them. Enterprise product is different, branding plays lesser role because we’re the one who find the customers.

MailChimp uses more end-user-oriented branding and managed to gain some complaints on professionalism too form their enterprise clients

Benchmark email marketing solutions meanwhile, demonstrates a more stale, clean and clear enterprise-oriented design

Ways you can compete

If you can’t compete on something new or a novelty product, you can always compete on convenience and ease of use.

Happy Cog Hsoting differs from thousand other web host by charging premium price, offering a single package, single price and fully-managed web hosting.

These are the tips that can empower your strategy, the 20 minute session more or less validated some of our prior observations of the web industry, so future-proof your company for the internet!

CLick image for more Malaysian Facebook stats

Short answer: Facebook Page

Sometimes businesses make the wrong step by setting up personal profile for their company: not only this is against Facebook’s term of services, it is also less attractive because mutual connection has to be there for you to communicate with your followers.

See the examples of Facebook pages here.

Setting up Facebook page will allow the public to ‘like’ you page and receive updates to their news stream whenever you publish something new. That’s right, if 200 people like your page, you have the opportunity to talk to 200 prospective customer on a personal tone DAILY, not that easy to do through your website!

Like-Gate: Increasing followers to your page

There are tonnes of ways you can do to increase the fan to your page: paid and free ones. But the simplest and highly efficient way is called ‘like-gatting’: offer something (tips, ebooks, coupons, discounts) for the non-fan and make the stufs visible only after they hit the ‘like’ button. This can be achieved through adding a static iFrame tab and setting the tab as a default landing page for your page.

1-800-Flowers offer 20% discounts- only if you like their page

Here’s more on how to like-gate your Facebook page if you’re DIY kind of person!

Offering Something To Like

Often the problem is to come out with a creative offering that’s attractive enough to make people hit the like button. We suggest make the offering a niche item so that only the right kind of people your business targets like your page. This more organic way of promoting you Facebook, albeit slower, represents a more mature feedback about your promotional effort.

So what kind of offering you ask?

• Simple numbered-list of tips and ideas (eg: 10 meals for breakfast to help reduce weight everyday)
• Free downloads and giveaways (eg: wallpapers, templates etc.)
• Free coupons and discounts (eg: discount voucher registration)
• Multimedia (eg: video from Youtube)
• Registration forms (eg: for sweepstakes, free talks etc.)
• Report and guide download (eg: pdf files of industrial report)

Tips for a better like-gatting

1. Communicate clearly on the landing page what you’re offering as an exchange for liking the page
   

   Scrabble's Facebook Page clearly states what fan can get by liking their page

2. Put a visual cue on what the visitor needs to do (an arrow to the ‘like’ button)
   

   Porsche's page drags user attention from the focal view (car) to the like button above

3. Make some of the content you’re offering visible
   

   The Red Bull Fan Page demonstrates how to use visual cue to the like button and keeping some of the contents visible to induce impulsive reaction

4. Make some the page design fits the Facebook look and feel, people doesn’t like the impression that you’re taking them away form the site
   

   Mark Meyer's photography page is designed like it's a native Facebook page: users tend to trust native page better

5. Tell them what’s in for them in the long run if they like your page
   

   Inspired Magazine page tells about long-term benefits of liking their page: daily credible design tips

6. Use Facebook’s Social Plug-ins to embed the site functionality into the tabs – you can put the ‘like’ button in-line with your content which may garner better reaction
   

   Samsung's landing tab has the 'like' button clearly located below the message in order to follow the reader's eye flow

7. When promoting your Facebook page through Facebook ads or your email footer, don’t just put your Facebook page address, instead, promote the freebies you’re offering on your page.
   

   Ignite3Sixty clearly mention the discount to get people to their Facebook page

   

   An example email where the the email footer advertise the benefits instead of the FB page

8. Finally, don’t forget to tie in your Facebook landing tab to your other promotional campaign. For example, to build your mailing list, you may ask people to sign up through your custom tab that only reveals the signup form after the visitor like your page (don’t forget about the freebies!).

Understanding your web strategic moves

Companies mostly realize the need of having an effective website, hence the urge to jump on the bandwagon. But having a clearer objective regarding their web presence (at least a general idea) is a must because:

• It detects and avoid any missing features you need. It can save you money in the long run
• It gives you idea about your competitors. It cuts the development time significantly
• It will blend better with your company current strategy

What constitutes a web presence?

Having a web presence is not merely by just having your own website. It involves third-party web applications, search engines, email and social networking websites. Combining and matching these different tools and channels can greatly amplify your web strategy’s effectiveness.

Web presence is also about the way you communicate with your customer. Is it just informing your phone number? Or having an email contact form? Maybe having a live chat section, or video-conferencing tools. There are levels that you can offer your customers based on what your objectives are.

Tiers of Your Web Strategy

What are the different levels in using the web for my company? Here are our suggestions on the tier in implementing your web presence:

1. Simple web presence

This entry-level strategy is the bare minimum that any company should have: a simple company background, an overview of company’s main business, and most important, contact details for the web visitors to reach the company. As the most popular activity of on-line users is to search information, having these basic information is a must.A simple corporate website like this is the minimum presence one company should undertake.

A simple corporate website like this is the minimum presence one company should undertake.

2. Informational web presence

This corporate website is more extensive in its content, containing on-line catalogues, expansive project portfolios or company profile, news & blog updates and downloadable contents like reports and forms.

Technical and high-price products like cars should have their dedicated product section like this one by BMW Malaysia

3. Customer & vendor communication channel

The next tier involves more 2-way communication, whereby the company’s clients, vendors and suppliers can communicate with the company in an environment previously known as extranet. This log-in section only usually have information pertaining to the internal matters such as tender information and support.

Spirit Aerosystem has a separate log-in section for its suppliers to manage their dealings

4. Promotional & marketing tool

This is a tier where the company uses the internet as a tool to expand the company’s business, pertinently in marketing activities. This includes increasing exposures for the company’s brand, finding new customers, capturing leads for sales activities and educating awareness. The activities involves ranges from web advertising, Search Engine Optimization, social media activities, email marketing and some brand-building initiatives.

Dedicated third-party web applications like iContact permits companies to utilize on-line marketing without having to invest in expensive IT infrastructure

5. Consumer communication channel

Consumer-centric communication involves a more public-oriented approach, where the company extend its web presence into the consumer web spaces such as social network websites and multimedia portal like YouTube. This is popular for support-intensive businesses that require constant contact with the mass public.

Maxis Malaysia uses its Facebook page not just to promote its services, but also directly entertain enquiries from the public

6. Sales and distribution channel

Another popular purpose for web utilization is e-commerce: sell your product on-line! This can be superbly expensive or it can cost you nothing. It depends on your choice of payment method and how you plan the shopping experience.

Domino's Malaysia made the web its sales channel to complement telephone. It has exclusive offers for orders made through its website.

7. Internal collaboration platform

A more extended usage of the web is to treat it as a collaboration platform, previously called ‘Intranet’ this purely web-based collaboration suites range from simple business activities like file sharing and on-line discussions to more complicated business process like Customer Relationship Management, Human Resource Information System, Serial Versioning & Bug Tracking and Project Management software.

Salesforce connects a company's sales team with their extensive Customer Relationship Management and sales pipeline tools.

8. Diversification & expansion tactic

Lastly, the web can be the ultimate new lifeline: it can redefine your business model. Offer purely web-based service for your business in-order to tap into the potential of the internet. Like how Yellow Pages have a separate division focusing on-line classifieds, banks that capitalize on on-line banking and Microsoft introduction of its popular Office suite on-line.

The Star publications Malaysia offers web-based newspaper as a mean to tap into decreasing popularity of printed newspapers.

These are the tiers that you can identify and formulate your strategy: what are your needs now, and what are they 5 years from now. Identifying this can greatly shape your web strategy direction for the long run while keeping cost in-check.

The site is fully powered by WordPress now, back then when we started designing our corporate website, WordPress is not as fully-featured as today- the move the’ve taken to break away from being a mere blog engine made the decision easier.

Although live, we’re still working on it..

We also have a new office in Amcorp Mall in Petaling Jaya! As mentioned earlier we’re revamping the company’s strategic direction by this year end, so hopefully these changes will propel us into a more positive start. We’re planning on more channels to reach you:

1. This blog will have new posts on small business web tips
2. A weekly newsletter with more web tips
3. Facebook page will feature more news and pics from the team

Tune in to our Facebook page for a more frequent updates!

We’ve decided to stay small for the time being. Or even smaller. We’ve decided to work more autonomously to keep the creative juice flowing. We’re searching for new office. Revamping our apps roadmap. Rework the company branding. Cleaning up the accounts. And developing our very own new corporate website.

We hope this nip and tuck should be completed by the end of the year, meaning by then our team will be more mobile and agile while keeping the excitement level there.

Happy Eid Al-Fitri for all. Keep it real.