Avoid Safari’s Google Search Bar Redirect

In case you are an English speaker, living in a non English speaking country, you probably noticed that you are getting localized search engine results.

Google redirected your search and results accruing to your local IP.

If you would like to keep your Safari 4 Google search bar in English go to:
http://www.google.com/ncr

This will install a “no country redirect” cookie that avoids country specific search results.  If you ever want to reset your browser to enable this feature, just delete your google cookies.

Enjoy!

With the Shanghai Expo opening this week, an increasing number of foreign companies try to enter the emerging Chinese Internet market. Everybody wants to grab a piece of the cake.

Most  companies test the market first through the Internet. Let’s take a closer look at the Virtual Chinese Market, let’s see how big the pie is.

1. By the end of 2009 there are 382 million Chinese Internet users, more than the entire US population (309 million, 2010 estimate)
2. 382 million Chinese Internet users, with a strong buying power, are not all covered by TV commercials.
3. Internet prime time is from 8 am to Midnight, a total of 16 hours, that’s 11 hours of additional exposure than the TV’s 6 pm to 11pm audience gets.
4. By the end of 2009, Chinese online consumption exceeded RMB700 billion (USD102 billion), online shopping is the major consumption on the Internet.  Nearly 100 million people access Automotive websites, travel related sites reach an audience of 80 million.
5. Internet advertising spending has reached RMB12.3 billion (USD1.8 billion), an increased of 3.5% since 2008. Search engines advertisement spending has reached RMB7 billions (USD1.025 billion), an increased of 37.9% since 2008.

Data source: DCCI Data Center of China Internet

The market gets more competitive with the influx of foreign players but like the Chinese saying goes “No competition, No improvement”. Participating foreign companies like Apple definitely help the market grow in both hardware and software related fields.

Strategic market planning and localization is the key to a successful market entry.
Are you ready to try the Chinese Internet market? Contact us if you are.

Is your website suffering from one of these problems?

Global Marketing

Four scenarios intended as a checklist for international businesses servicing clients world-wide. All to often I see business owners, unaware of what’s good or bad, authorize projects executed by graphic web designers. The time and money previously wasted through other companies never ceases to amaze me. We can’t complain too much, a large part of our business is correcting the mistake of others. Ideally those mistakes should never have occurred.

Websites aimed at marketing goods and services internationally need to pay extra attention to a multitude of things.
Operators often take local operating conditions as granted, an assumption with a tremendous negative impact, on reaching globe potential clients and denying them a pleasant web experience.

Four important, common mistakes and solutions in no particular order:

1. Inconsistent and Confusing Navigation

Scenario: A foreign user arrives at your website, clicks a link, the second page menu differs substantially. A 3rd click and the visitor is hopelessly lost. The next click closes your site, a potential clients is lost.

Fact: Your navigation is inconsistent in style, content and location. It maybe have an image (gif or jpeg) or Flash menu.

Solution: Create a clear site consistent navigation system. Ideally a foreign user should be able to use a website intuitively. Having all menu options visually available, without the use of drop-down menus, is a plus. A text menu can always translated by an online service, something that can’t be done with a menu build with graphics or Flash.

2. No clear “Call to Action”

Scenario: With tremendous effort, all your data is finally online. Countless pages full of details and valuable information. Your site is popular but that’s it.

Fact: No monetary gain, your website doesn’t produce any income. You haven’t kept your mind on the money.

Solution: Your site lacks a solid strategy to convert traffic into clients. Align your website in the same way your greater business plan sets forth. The information on your website exists for the benefit of a conversion.

3. Overcrowding

Scenario: Everything is on your web page, all possibilities covered, not a single item, option or feature is missing. Despite the many graphics elements designed to get the visitors attention your page downloads fast. All seems well, but the conversion rate is disappointing.

Fact: Two vicious forces are at work here. First, your visitors experience a case of “analysis paralysis”. Faced with too many choices, Humans tend to make no choice at all. Second, a site loading lightning fast at the developers computer doesn’t guarantee the same performance far away. It may take several minutes to download the same site overseas, something most users won’t tolerate.

Solution: Provide simple choices that fulfill your objectives and aid your visitors in completing their desired task. Simplicity is everything. Limit the amount of graphics on your site, make the pages work for you without heavy graphics. Remote or mobile users with a slow internet connection appreciate fast loading sites. Move graphics to another, none critical page and label them as such.

4. Flash Splash Screens

Scenario: Your local graphic/web designer sold you an expensive, mind-blowing 30 second “state of the art” introduction in order to woo your website visitors. Now your website isn’t showing up in search engines result pages and your bounce rate is nearly 100%.

Fact: Splash pages are simply a bad idea. They are useless, annoying and indicate bad design. Search engines can’t read pictures, therefore information contained in Flash is simply lost. Flash graphics have their place in the internet, splash screens, menus and forms isn’t one of them. Don’t waste a business oriented Internet users time with a circus show.

Solution: Remove your Flash Splash Screen or language selection only top page. Replace Flash menus with Search Engine friendly CSS menu. Your users will thank you for it and your search engine results will improve.

Does your site suffers from one of these problems described above?
You are at a disadvantage compared to a competitor who does things right.
Website usability is our business, contact us for a free website consultation.

Any M$ user needs to think switching browsers now.
For years we had to put hundreds of additional programming and browser checking hours into M$ faulty browsers to make things work because of Redmond’s “special” interpretation of W3C standardized HTML codes.

Microsoft has warned that hackers are already exploiting the flaw, which could allow them to remotely take control of a computer running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Computer users running Internet Explorer 5.01 or the latest release, Internet Explorer 8, are not affected by the vulnerability.

“At this time, we are aware of targeted attacks attempting to use this vulnerability,” Microsoft said in a security advisory. “We will continue to monitor the threat environment and update this advisory if this situation changes.”

That even up to today Japanese banks, entire companies and even the government uses IE is downright scary.

Please use Firefox, Safari or Chrome for your daily browsing and in case you have trouble with online banking let your bank know that you will switch to a provider that supports alternatives.

If you have any good experience here in Japan with a company that supports Apple for example please let me know.

Interested in getting your own domain name?
Confused where your domain name is because you registered it “free of charge” with your website hosting contract?

A word of advice – keep your domain name registration and website hosting service separated. You’re paying for it anyway, hidden, deferred or otherwise. Should your website hosting service go bankrupt or service issues arise you may find yourself writing and faxing lots of legal documents to claim your ownership.

Follow the step-by-step instruction for a methodical domain name registration and maintenance.

1. Research domain names(s)
This is the most crucial, difficult and time consuming part of the process. Your domain needs to match your company name or in case of a new entity you need to make sure that the chosen domain name can be registered with your local business license authority.

2. Select registrar
Depending on your country you need to select an ICANN accredited domain name registrar that offers a convenient administration panel.
Where larger registrars offer multiple registries (e.g. com, net, org, cn, com.cn, asia, eu etc.) some specific registries such as the Japanese co.jp registry requires the submission of a business license.

3. Check availability
Run your choices through the search/availability page.

3.a Not available
More often the case – go back to step 1. and get more creative.

3.b Available
If you are luck to find a suitable domain name proceed through the shopping cart process. If available, consider the purchase of the other or similar registry to eliminate any competitors moving in on your success. Note: don’t forget to register the corresponding name on social media services such as Twitter and services such as Skype for branding purposes.
At this point you are likely confusingly persuaded to purchase a number or other related services, disregard them, any supplement service can be added at a later point. One recommended addition to the registration is the privacy registration (if available) as it protects your private information being published to the public.

4. Open an account
Proceed through the domain name registration process and provide your name and postal mail address. If in doubt, duplicate the same information to the administrative and technical contact section.

5. Registration Details
Most important at this stage is that you provide an unrelated domain email address. Should an unforeseen problem arise, you wouldn’t be able to be contacted at the address you’re have a problem with. Always use an alternative email address like Google or Yahoo account.

6. Payment
Make a credit card payment. It is convenient and often cheaper to make one single payment for many years, if you choose to do so, make extra sure that your information up-to-date as there are often many changes one forgets over the ears. See step 8. for details

7. Safeguard registration
Keep your domain registration information (paper printout recommended in case of hard disk failure) with your other important information. Note your domain name, registrar URL, login name and password.

8. Changes
Any business or personal change may have an influence on the ownership of the domain name and requires an update.

8.a. No
Your domain name registrar contacts you periodically to remind you to update your account. In case you haven’t received any such notice it’s time to research the why.

8.b. Yes
Credit card expiration, theft of credit card, ownership or partnership change, bankruptcy, business / address move, phone number change, email address change or a divorce etc. requires an update to keep your domain name secure.

9. Update registrar
Login with your registrar (with saved information from step 7), update and manage your account information accordingly.

If you think of the above process as complicated you will find yourself startled in case you need to prove ownership of a domain name.

Attack is the best defense.

No matter how fast and often the technology or media evolves, the secret of a successful website and marketing campaign never changes.
It’s simply 3-3-3!

• 3 seconds to catch the visitors interest to explore further and stay longer on the site.
• 3 clicks to get visitors to the desired actions.>
• 3 emails to get visitors back to your site.

Each online success depends on the 3-3-3, your brand awareness, your website’s user loyalty and retention, your online program’s ROI.

Contact us now to develop your strategy implementing the 3-3-3 rule to accelerating your business online.

Your bigger market share starts with 3-3-3

Over are the days when a site started with a graphic design.
Today’s successful websites are developed with strategy in order to benefit the users and achieve the owners objectives.

Developing that strategy is of utmost importance because only the ROI (Return of Investment) matters.

At a time when internet marketing, branding and e-commerce take on new heights we see so many newly developed sites missing the point. Seemingly created for the purpose of having a site only, they produce no measurable conversion (e.g. sales, sign-ups or downloads etc.).

How to fix this?

A successful site exists for the sake of the user. A visitor arriving at your site needs to be able, within seconds, to identify her/himself with the presented content and options to proceed and complete the task.
If the objective can’t be achieved within 2-3 clicks the site will be most likely abandoned – the visitor continues his search somewhere else – an unnecessarily missed chance.

What is a Website Strategy?

Just as a business plan focuses on a set of business goals, the website strategy outlines the site’s contribution toward that larger goal. The strategy doko.com develops in cooperation with your SME (Subject Matter Expert) identifies your objectives, targeted audience, their needs, concerns and as well as your competitors way.

doko.com’s Strategic Website Design

Once the strategy is devised the required content become apparent, at that time the website’s GUI (Graphic User Interface) design is started.
Contact us to develop your new, or optimize your existing website, with STRATEGY.

The digital transition is unstoppable, everything goes online and each setup requires a password.

As a website development and Internet marketing company doko.com is involved in the registration of domain names, servers, email accounts, media and PPC setups. Even a small website requires 20-30 passwords during the setup.
Entire companies are created online, an investment that never should be put at risk by the weakness of a priceless password.

Are you guilty of using the same simple password everywhere?
You’re putting yourself and everybody at risk. Spending endless hours on customization, uploading and manipulation of information – all based on a weak password – that’s not wise.

Once your computer, network or email account is compromised you probably spam unknowingly others and participate in the further distribution of malicious PC software.

Develop Good Security Habits

• Use separate passwords for every online service.
• Create passwords with a combination of both upper and lower case letters and numbers. For added security, if the services allows, use symbols as well.
• Keep track of all accounts and passwords used.

Here a list of additional accounts you probably need to track down and change the password on:

Money Management
Credit Cards, Bank Accounts, PINs, Online Banking and PayPal

Social Network Sites
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin, your Blog

Media Applications
iTunes or YouTube

Communication
AIM, Skype, iChat and ICQ

Email and Products Accounts
Gmail, AdWords, Yahoo Mail or personal email account

Network Information
ISP login, WiFi Network, Base Station and WEP2

Web Hosting
Server Information, FTP access and SQL Database information

Domain Registrar
Account Information of all domains

Online Shopping & Auction
Amazon, Yahoo Shopping and eBay

Software
Registration and Activation code

Identities
Online Certificates

Update your Passwords Today

Software Recommendation

If you are on an Apple Computer get familiar with your Keychain utility program. For a better solution get 1Password from Agile Web Solutions. You can even securely synchronize the data with your iPhone.

Vast opportunities for profitability exist in the Japanese and Chinese online markets: two of the three largest economies in the world behind the US.
Entry into these markets has traditionally been difficult; but with the help of local experts, online retail businesses expanding into Japan and China can benefit by:

• Handling direct orders from customers in Asia before investing in a physical presence in the region.
• Having the ability to perform thorough, low-risk and cost effective market testing via the online channel.
• Building valuable customer relationships and customer loyalty quickly and easily.

“Couldn’t I just translate my current website?”

The assumption that a single website will look and feel exactly the same regardless of language is very, very common: however it is also incorrect, and often costly.

Simply put:
A translated website is not a localized website!

The way in which users browse websites and transact online is vastly different between markets.

A classic example: Order forms with required fields that are not relevant to the customer’s country of residence, state/province/prefecture dropdowns in alphabetical order instead of geographical. The result: Confused customers who are suspicious of an unprofessional and seemingly unreliable site.

• Relevancy of graphical elements and suitability of the language, symbols, graphics and copy presented on the site must also be assessed.
• Word-for-word translation cannot express the real message you want to deliver with the nuance and flair that a local expert can provide.

Visit our Website Localization page for more details about our services.