Website Design for Malaysia companies : A lesson should be learnt
( If you plan to have a website, you should not miss this article - especially for Malaysian companies)
Malaysian companies could be the luckist companies in the world. Why ? Because they are a lot of government’s incentives to help Malaysian companies to promote their products. Including subsidy the companies to build a website.
The financial assistance started few years back in the year 2000. The government launched a grant called “ E-commerce Grant”, The grant’s objective is to help the Malaysian companies to sell products online through portals and payment gateway. The government appointed a list of portals providers to implement this project.
Unfortunately, the grant targeted to the wrong group - the SMI (Small and medium industries, who are merely manufactures). The SMI were keen to have a website, but when it comes to online transaction, most of them were not interested.
Why ? The reasons are simple, they are manufacturer, they don’t like to accept the order piece-by-piece, they wanted to accept the order bulk-to-bulk. Furthermore, the only mean to do online transaction is through credit card. Some manufacturers worried on frauds, and others found credit card is not practical in the bulk order which involved hundred thousands dollars.
At the end, the so called “e-commerce grant” merely became “website grant” because most of the SMI didn’t do transaction online at all.
And guess how much the portal providers charged for building a so called “website” for each SMI ? the answer is RM 10,000 (USD 2,800). Obviously, it was over-charged. A domain name, a 50MB web hosting, a few pages with products catalogue and some programming for shopping cart, these were all the SMI get. Of course, the portal providers also claimed that they have done SEO ( Search engine optimization) for the website they built for SMI.
Luckily, the chief officer of the government department who in-charge of the grant, was not stupid. He asked the providers to demo one-by-one the websites they built, starting from searching through search engines, found the website, click and browse throughout the website to make sure the website was fully function before the government release payment to providers.
Although it was tedious works, but it delivered one message to providers : you want to get money, you have to do your job. I still remember there was a provider , claiming that the website appeared in google and yahoo, the chief officer just said “show me”. The provider browsed through the page 1 to page 99 of Yahoo and Google searching the keywords but could not find the website, only showing his face that turning red and sweating…….
The story was not end there.
Few years later till now, many SMI who obtained the grant are not continued with their website. Reason being : the providers are either closed shop, OR, the maintenance cost is too high ! Some providers charge RM 1,000 (USD 280) just for maintain a so-called “website”.
Unfortunately, the government can’t help. The money was paid and the project is over.
What you should learn from the above lesson :
1) Never build a website that cannot deliver the results you want.
2) If the providers promised they can deliver the results, ask them “show me” before you pay. ( or request money back guarantee)
3) Beware of yearly maintenance fee.
4) Make sure your website appear in search engines, preferable on Top 30 position.
5) Find a reliable, history-proof web design company to design a website.
James Tan
