In designing a website, we consider not only the site's visual appeal but a lot of other factors including accessibility, page size, code compatibility, SEO readiness, and most importantly the purpose of the website.

Here, I'm giving emphasis to the purpose of the website. As with anything that exist, without a purpose, existence is futile. There's no use in having the most eye-catching website in the world, if it doesn't do anything.

In the "Website Planner" we send to our clients, we ask you to tell us who your target market is, what your competitive advantage are and we request you to tell us which among the reasons below is close to your purpose of launching your website.

To gain a favorable impression of the company/organization
To sell products directly using credit card information (shopping cart)
To make available product information/price lists to distributors/customers
To strengthen brand identification
To develop a qualified list of prospects
Other (please specify)


Almost all of the websites we develop are business websites and we see it very important that we as the developer and you as our client have identified the purpose of your website and who we design it for.

So, who do we really make your website for? People are generally bewildered when we say, not for you nor for us but for your CLIENTS.

Except to some website clients who have really studied their clients demographic and psycographic or those clients with adept understand of marketing, many approach us with uncertain voice telling us, "I want to have a splash page with this or that" or "I think the website of this softdrinks company is cool, I want to have something similar to that".

Well, let me tell you a secret in marketing, nothing will jump start your business more than knowing your clients' needs. We develop your website for your CLIENTS not for you. Beyond your envy with other flash heavy website, text and news bombarded homepage, you must come to an understanding of what your client expect to see from your website.

If you are a small company offering PC repair service, your potential clients must be looking for pricing, response time, your service area and ongoing promo.

If you are a car rental company, prospects might be interested in checking your rental conditions, rental rates, car model and photos.

If you are a big Telecommunications company, clients maybe interested to check for new mobile phone packages and promo, information on how to configure a mobile phone for specific service and so on.

You'll see that depending on the nature of your business and the size of your organization, you'll have different reasons for having a website and these will be the primary considerations when designing your website.

While many website owners are tempted to brag about how good their products are or how big their company is, only the wise profit by realizing that clients wanted to know how they can benefit from the product you are selling.

So we suggest to our customers, to be client-centered or other-minded as opposed to clinging to product-centered, self-minded attitude. In order to illustrate this principle, take the following statements for example.

Instead of saying "Our product is cheapest in the market" we suggest to state that "You can get a 50% savings from our new product"

Instead of boasting "We have more than 200 employees", we can say "we have the capacity to deliver 100,000 boxes per week"

These simple change in pitch from bragging to marketing can invite visitors to click more pages of your website so they'd learn more about what's in it for them as oppose to leaving your website and starting a new search.

So before you start deciding what website package you get, learn to think as if you are the client of your own business and assess for yourself what you would like to see from your website. Read more!

Yesterday a college friend called me asking if I could recommend any good web hosting company. She told me she inquired in a local web firm called Webf***s, but complained that their price costs an arm and a leg, P6,500 for 500MB hosting with 40 email accounts.

She sounded unbelieving when I told her I can give her a one year hosting deal for only P1,800 and generic Top Level Domain registration (gTLD) for P550.00 only. She was surprised when I said I'm managing a website design company. And it shocked her how cheap we can actually offer our hosting but then I said that hosting are really cheap nowadays.


One can actually get a hosting package at an even lower price. One need to be cautious though about Acceptable Usage Policy. Some are offering huge disk space and virtually unlimited bandwidth but doesn't tell you about their AUP such as Max CPU usage, Max Database Queries among others. I know someone who got the shock of his life when his website was suspended and when he inquired what caused the problem, he was told he reached the maximum database queries aloted. It's like you bought an iPhone only to tell you that you are only allowed to use Voice Call and Text messaging.

Anyway, going back to my friend, we weren't able to get her preferred domain--eksena.com because it was already registered, even the usual second option which is .net was already taken. So I said, you can go for eksena-events.com or eksena-ph.com since she's in the events production business but she opted to go for my recommendation which is eksena.com.ph. .PH domain costs higher than gTLD though.

Here's how much she paid,

.ph Domain Registration plus Setup P3,900 for 2 years
500MB Hosting unlimited email P1,800 per years
Total P5,700 only

I'm sure you recognized how much she was able to save. She got a .PH domain plus a web hosting with more features and unlimited email accounts at a price cheaper than what she would have paid for the same 500MB hosting alone with limited email accounts.

Assuming we were able to register eksena.com instead of eksena.com.ph, she would have paid only P2,350.00 since a .com domain costs only P550. That's more than half the price of what the other hosting company was offering.
Read more!

iCONCEPT is a Marketing and Advertising company in the Philippines with specialization in Website Design, Graphic Design, Computer Graphic Animation, and Search Engine Optimization.

We are offering our service to give you the following advantage:

Cost Savings

The Philippines is where you find one of the cheapest labor cost in Asia with equally competitive if not exceeding global skills and talents. This allows us to offer our service at a fraction of your production cost. Say if currently, you are selling a website package at $1,000.00 and your labor cost is 700$, you are making only $300. Typically we can work on that same project at half the price, in this case $350. With this cost savings, you can cut-down your price by 10% to be more competitive and increase your revenue by almost 100%.

Flexibility

An abrupt spike in sales makes you want to hire more employees and a sudden decline makes you want to fire one. You surely don’t want to lose precious projects just because your staff can’t handle the workload as you don’t want to pay money for employees who aren’t doing anything. By outsourcing your projects to us, you won’t have to worry about overflow projects anymore and you don’t need to think about how to fire employees during off peak season.

Quick Turnaround and Quality Service

As we do the legwork, you can focus more on things that matters most to you and your clients -- Marketing and Sales strategies to increase sales, Project Management to ensure timely delivery of products and Customer Service to maintain a good client relationship. Read more!

Ranking, in cyberspace terminologies means a web page’s relative placement on a Search Engine Results Page ( known as SERP ) for specific search query. If you go to a Search Engine, let’s say Google and type for example, “wedding planner” into the search Box, you will be given a list of all web pages where your search “wedding planner” is found or is associated with the content of the page. In Google, the default is 10 listings per page and the first page results are generally the most relevant to the search phrase “wedding planner”. Results are also sorted in order of relative importance to the search term.

If Search Engines do not list your site among the top 20 for your most important keywords, you might as well drop the idea of getting more customers from your website. Because many people, never go pass the top 10 results or the first page of SERP. If you are to be seen by your prospective clients, you really need to be in the top 10.


How much more traffic a page ranked #1 gets compared to say, a #2 or #4 is debatable. Those listings above the fold on an SERP do get clicked more than those below it. Above the fold are those results displayed before you have to scroll downward.

A recent study gives us some interesting statistics on the subject of ranking vs. percentage of clicks for that position. This study gives us the number of times people clicked on search engine results based on their ranking.

First Page:

Position 1: 35%
Position 2: 15%
Position 3: 8%
Position 4: 6%
Position 5: 5%
Position 6: 4%
Position 7: 4%
Position 8: 3%
Position 9: 3%
Position 10: 5%

Second Page:

Position 1: 6%
Position 2: 4%
Position 3: 2%
Position 4 and beyond: less than 1%

As you can see, if your site is not on the first two pages, there's a very slim chance that your site will be visited by prospective clients. When was the last time you went as far as the third page of your search results versus just starting a new search?

A website that does not appear in SERPs remains invisible to internet users and is almost useless. Thus you paid for nothing and you'll continue paying for your domain and hosting renewal for nothing, unless you have other good reason to have a website.

The good news is that it's not yet too late. You can optimize your website for a better ranking on your important keywords. There are many firms out there offering Search Engine Optimization service. Almost all claim to be the best, but don't easily trust people. You've wasted your money enough for a website that searchers don't get to see. Ask for proof!

One of our SEO clients, http://www.mls-dentalcosmetics.com has the following keyword ranking in Google as of this writing.

Dental Clinic St. Luke's Quezon City - Rank #1, #2
Dentist Quezon City St. Luke's - Rank #1, #2
Mall of Asia Dentist - Rank #3, #4
Dentist St. Luke's Quezon City - Rank #3
Dental Cosmetics Manila - Rank #1, #2
TMJ Dysfunction Philippines - Rank #1, #2
Filipino Dentist - Rank #4
Dentist Philippines - Rank #4
Dental Implant Philippines - Rank #4
Dental Clinic Philippines - Rank #6
Dental Clinic Manila - Rank #7

although we share the credit with a third party link builder who helped increase the site's popularity.

Dr. Santos now enjoys an average of one to two inquiries per day mostly from foreigners and overseas Filipino Workers (Balikbayan). One client alone who acquires a dental implant maybe enough to give him 100% Return Of Investment for the Search Engine Optimization work.

ICONCEPT.COM.PH as of this writing has the following keyword ranking:

In Google

website design makati - #1
website design bulacan - #2
website design cavite - #4
Web designer makati - #4
Website designer bulacan - #6
website developer bulacan - #6
e-commerce developer philippines - #5
e-commerce developer bulacan - #9

In Yahoo!

website design philippines - #1
web development philippines - #3
website design manila - #7, #8
web development manila - #8
website design bulacan - #4
website designer philippines - #6
website design cavite - #7
e-commerce website philippines - #7


Read more!

Your corporate identity and your brands are valuable corporate assets and essential marketing tools for success in today's global marketplace. If properly designed and managed, your corporate identity and your brand identity evoke strong feelings of affinity to your company and your products.

We, at iConcept Marketing & Advertising Inc. specialize in designing forward-thinking corporate and brand identity systems that embody the collective attributes, implied promises and expectations that employees, customers, investors, partners and other key audiences associate with our clients' product and service offerings.

Our services range from corporate nomenclature to logo design, corporate branding (letterheads, stationery, business card, even signage), marketing collaterals (posters, brochures, flyers, product catalogue), advertising & promotion (tarpaulin banners, streamers, point-of-puchase materials), even merchandising items (gift items, freebies). We apply a strong methodology that results in a consistent, unified, powerful and memorable visual image for your company and its brands.

Our designs instantly convey the vision and power of your organization. We take you through the entire process, everything from design concept to printer and paper selection.

What We Can Do

Identity Planning Sessions. Prior to working on your corporate and brand identity, we conduct a short workshop with you to determine the key messaging that your corporate and brand identity need to convey to your target audiences.

Logo Design. We define your logo, corporate colors and supporting design elements such that they communicate the vision, mission and function of your company, its products, and its services. We anticipate all possible uses of your logo and make sure
they will work well for you in all possible scenarios.





Corporate Identity Manual and Guidelines. Proper and consistent use of your logos and other identity elements is essential to branding success We develop corporate identity manuals and guidelines that ensure your identity is effectively and consistently applied in all forms of visual communication. We provide guidance on corporate typography and colors, detailed usage guidelines, examples of incorrect usage, brochure standards/templates, as well as video and multimedia standards.



Corporate Branding. Strong business branding commands attention. We design business cards, letterheads, stationery, envelopes, and presentation folders that communicate your confidence, energy, and company positioning.



Marketing Collaterals. We design functional yet eye-pleasing marketing collaterals like brochures and product catalogues that can be used for sales materials, media kits and other business purposes.



Advertising & Promotion. Whether you need a sign for your building, a banner to promote a specific marketing initiative, or even a mobile ad for your company vehicles, our talented designers can help you get what you need.



Merchandising Materials. To strengthen your product mileage, we can design t-shirts, pin buttons, pens, mugs and other gift items that quickly inform the market of what you are all about.

Read more!

Our client's point person called up 6pm today in a disquieted voice. She told me that their site was spammed. With our developer already out of the office, I immediately checked their website and found detestable entries in their testimonial page and here's the snapshot.



I quickly accessed the database and deleted those absurd entries which brings back the clean page and I had a sigh of relief. Here's how their cleaned up page looks like.




So, what do they do this for? The answer is Link Building! Link building is a by-product of Page Rank mania. Page Rank in layman's terms is Google's way of determining the relevancy and credibility of a page by counting the number of inbound links pointing to that page, of course together with a lot of other factors. This has lead to some BLACK HAT SEO techniques related to link building, including automated reciprocal link building, link farming, comment and testimonial page spamming among others. Our client was a victim of testimonial page spamming and I'd like to share few tips on how to avoid comment and testimonial spam.

1. Get Akismet www.akismet.com -- The sheer number of spam that Akismet blocks is enough reason for you to install it. I read from other people's testimonial that this light script is blocking thousand of spam everyday from their blogs and it wouldn't hurt if you try it to your site that is being infested by spammers.

2. Use the Blog Script to its potential -- Most blog script out there including wordpress and blogger is equipped with spam fighting options. You can either disable the comment feature or enable moderation before comment or testimonial appear on your page.

3. If your site is developed from scratch, make sure your programmer included the feature to moderate testimonial or comment submission. This will allow you to review new submission and delete unwanted ones. We have this feature in this client's website but I believe they did toggle on the moderation option.

Finally, if spammers won't see your page, there's no way they can spam it. You can set your robots.txt NOINDEX option so it will not be crawled by visiting robots -- robots are automated software agents that seeks content on the internet, and from within individual web pages and is a vital part of how search engines operate.

To know more about how to fight spam, visit our website at http://www.iconcept.com.ph

Owen V. Cruz

Former Telecom Engineer / Systems Developer - Smart Communications Inc.
Former Product Development Engineer - Wataniya Telecoms, Kuwait
Co-founder - IBRAINS Technologies Corp. - IT and Telecom Contracting Firm
Co-founder - iCONCEPT Marketing and Advertising, Inc. - Website Design Firm
Co-founder - Fast Tech Security Management, Inc. - Security Agency
Blog Listings
Read more!

Paying your money to a website designer who doesn't have a clue of what Search Engine Optimization is, is like buying jewelry only to hide it inside your closet. Unless of course if you know how to do it yourself.

People get excited by the idea of having a website for their business so they can tell their friends about it, have it printed in their name cards with the pipe dream that their business will jump start once prospective clients see their website.

The average small and medium scale business owner in the Philippines would probably spend as low as P7,000.00 to as much as P50,000.00 for a business website. And I'm sure you'll agree with me that for a start-up company, even P7,000.00 is not easy on the pocket. But that's probably the cheapest package you can get if you are to expect a decent website.


Although a website serves a number of purpose including product information, increasing credibility, easy access to company related information, I believe that the ultimate purpose of a business website is to increase sales by attracting more and more clients to see how good your products or services are. However, without your website being seen by potential clients, you just wasted the money you paid for the design and you'll continue to waste your money in paying for updates, hosting and domain renewal.

To many, SEO is unknown. Many even think that once you have a website, you'll automatically be listed in Search Engine Results Pages ( SERPs ). Well, let me tell you something about SEO-- Search Engine Optimization in layman's term is a technique to have your web pages indexed effectively by Search Engines such as Google and Yahoo so that the keywords relevant to your product or service offering will appear in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and that they will rank high.

Sadly, many website owners fell victim to freelancers, web design students and part-timers who doesn't have any idea of what SEO is. Then after that much awaited website launching comes disappointment. The website seats there in the lurch,unseen by potential clients, contents buried under the dust of the fast-paced cyber activities, waiting for the next domain and hosting renewal. Then here comes your developer asking you if you want him to update the contents of your site. So, you bought a 24 karat ring only to be hidden in the closet, then hear comes your jeweler who sold it to you offering to shine the piece of gold you'll never get to use. Silly, isn't it?

Search Engine Optimization is definitely not for the novice web designer and may not even be for the experienced web developers. I honestly think that SEO or SEM is for experts who have studied the hundred of different factors that affects Search Engine results placement. Page Rank, Page Point Score, Meta Elements, Keyword Relevance and W3C standardization are just some of the many factors SEO experts analyze for a better ranking. Detailed explanation of these factors is beyond the scope of this article. Bottom line, if your website doesn't appear in Search Engine Results pages, chances are your developer doesn't know about SEO. My personal advice, look for developer who knows what SEO is and how to capitalize on SEO to gain a competitive edge on the information superhighway.

Owen V. Cruz

Former Telecom Engineer / Systems Developer - Smart Communications Inc.
Former Product Development Engineer - Wataniya Telecoms, Kuwait
Co-founder - IBRAINS Technologies Corp. - IT and Telecom Contracting Firm
Co-founder - iCONCEPT Marketing and Advertising, Inc. - Website Design Firm
Co-founder - Fast Tech Security Management, Inc. - Security Agency
Blog: http://www.lastdayofmylife.com
Read more!