So, you are planning to create a website for your business or already have one. Entergraph Co, Ltd. web design and development services are delivered by our team with years of experience. We are passionate about making your Thailand web site a success!
What are the essential parts of your online presence and what you need to pay attention to?
Let’s identify few essential parts of the web site design process:
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Domain name registration
This is the name of your website, it starts with “www” which is short for Word Wide Web, following by the name and TLD, such as “.com” Companies registering domains for you called “Registrars” They hold the license to do so from ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
There are few rules for successful domain name. first, it should include your product name and location. Think about good name people type in a search box on Google to find you web site. Use words, describing your product and geographical location. Something like www.bangkok-catering.com if you sell catering services in in Bangkok.
To find which domain name is available, you can use tools we provide at our registrar
Tip: Many clients come to us because they cannot access their registrations for some reason. Most of them relied on their webmaster to register domain names. This is the first advice we give all our clients: make sure you register your domain name with the ICANN registrar under your or your company name and have all your legal details entered in the registration form, including e-mail address which doesn’t belong to your domain
What this means, please make sure you own your property. This is very important step to ensure that you are the legal owner of your domain. Domains are registered on yearly basis and you can register for as many years as you want in advance, registrar will remind you when domain needs to be renewed. You can check your domain details here: http://whois.domaintools.com/
To protect your privacy, most registrars will let you have private registration (for the small yearly fee) where your name and contact details are not visible. We strongly recommend this privacy option.
Another thing to watch for is the cost of domain registration. Some companies offer ridiculous prices for domain names. For your information, typical cost for .com domain is $12-18/year and privacy option are another $12/year
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Web Hosting
Your website is basically a hard drive connected to internet backbone, a part of the hard dive. Most websites use shared hosting, either Linux or Windows operating system. We always recommend Linux for security reasons, it’s also less expensive because operation system is free. Your access to the hosting features provided by the hosting control panel, in this case, a Cpanel.
Again, you need to make sure hosting is under your or your company name, not your webmaster or web designer. Protect your property!
Typical cost of the hosting for the medium size is $50-80/year. Important feature to watch for is e-mail hosting and backups. You need e-mails with your website, most hosting providers supply number of e-mail accounts for you. Important feature is the web site backup, specifically, offsite backups. Typically, Cpanel includes local backup only. It’s like leaning keys in your apartment, you have backup, but cannot get it in the case your website is hacked, or you lost access for some reason.
Tip: Always make sure you have “offsite” backup stored in the cloud, such as Dropbox, Google Drive or AWS. This make your website “portable”, you can restore it on any web hosting if you want to move from existing host, or restore website which was hacked or broken
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Web Design
There are many options for web design, you will obviously need a designer to do this job. You pay only once to create the website. Please clearly specify the features you want to have.
Tip: your website should be mobile friendly as well as SEO friendly, this will ensure your customers have access from their mobile phones (in Thailand almost 90% of all business will come from mobile phones). SEO friendly means that your website has all necessary metatags, sitemap and listed with Google search engine. This is important for your website to be found on the internet.
Here is one the articles we wrote regarding mobile friendly websites: https://www.entergraph.com/web-site-mobile-friendly/
Prices will depend on your website features, number of pages and your negotiating skills. Be aware of very cheap and very expensive designers. Building website is difficult process, but it should not cost you a fortune.
You will need to provide designer with all content, after all, only you know all details of your business. This is by far the most difficult part of the making a successful website
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Maintenance and Search Engine Optimization
Your website needs to be updated on regular basis and it’s a very important to add content every month, submit news and offers. This makes your website dynamic and shows Google that you have important information on your website. In exchange, Google will place your website on the SERP – Search Engine Results Pages. You should be listed higher than your competition.
Tip: please read our article about the cost of maintenance for your website: https://www.entergraph.com/how-much-it-cost-to-maintain-a-website/
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Make your Website Secure
If you collect user’s information or sell products through your website, you need to protect this information. This is done by installing SSL – Secure Sockets Layer. SSL is a standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a server and a client—typically a website and a browser, or a mail server and a mail client. SSL is also important for your SEO.
SSL is not cheap, but there are few free options for SSL, please read our article here: https://www.entergraph.com/use-ssl-improve-web-site-ranking/
When website is ready, your webmaster should take Search Engine Optimization seriously and you will need to work together to update content, pay attention to social media marketing (we will write another article especially for Social Media Marketing strategy)
There are many ways to improve your website ranking and bring more customers. Good luck with your internet presents and please follow us for more updates!
Entergraph Co. Ltd. is providing all essential web services listed here for our clients since 2004. If you have any questions or want us to evaluate your existing website for free, please contact us. We are here to help!