Frequently Asked Questions

I design & develop websites. I design marketing collateral for your business. I help to distinct your business image from your competitors and communicate clearly who you are to your target audience.

I concept and produce. I code and design. I do conceptual copywriting. I can manage and work on your creative project from concept to delivery.

If you are a business owner, I can design your marketing collateral to present your visions, your objectives, and your products and services to your audience graphically, coherently and vividly. I can design and develop a website to streamline your business operations, to manage your digital assets, to tell your prospects what you do, to keep you connected with your customers, and provide insights to understand your customers' behaviours and preferences.

If you are an individual with an idea, I can provide the basic marketing tools for you to start-off on the right foot more affordably.

If you are a software/website developer, I can improve and design the user interface of your product to increase its aesthetic value. My understanding in client-side scripting languages will make sensible contributions to improve the User Experience of your product.

If you are a story teller/writer/presenter, I can enhance the impact of your stories/writings/speech by creating meaningful graphics to produce a memorable visual experience for your audience/readers/prospects.

If you are a designer, I can present the ideas of your design in written form or turn your design into web pages with lines of codes.

If you are a SEO marketer, I can design and develop website with SEO semantic markup and present your client's textual/graphic/video content in a SEO friendly manner. My background in SEO will give you a peace of mind to collaborate with.

I work independently most of the time. My intention is to produce the best result for your project within the capacity allows. Depends on project requirements, I will collaborate with other professionals who have skills and equipment that I don't or who can do a better job for a certain aspect of the project. For e.g. printer, hosting service provider, photographer, 3D designer, voice over artist, to name a few.

I enjoy learning about different industry. I begin every project with some research and information gathering. It does not matter which industry or field your business is in, my work process will take care of it.

You can use my project brief worksheet here. The more information you can provide, the faster I can respond and the more accurate the preliminary estimate will be. All information exchange is treated with strictest confidence.

I appreciate all enquiries about my services. However, I work independently, my immediate attention is to my clients and work on hand. I am unable to attend impromptu meet up most of the time. When I start on your project, you will receive immediate attention and full commitment from me too. It will also be more productive if we can have an initial understanding on what to expect on both sides before we meet.

To begin, you can email me your project requirements. You can use the project brief worksheet here. I may ask a few more questions to understand better. I'll be direct if I can't deliver what you are looking for. I may direct you to someone who is more suitable than me. If I can meet your project expectations, we can schedule a meet up to discuss further. All information exchange is treated with strict confidence regardless if we can work together.

I do work with overseas clients. Geographical location is not a problem if you have consistent access to the www, email and or phone. Distance doesn't diminish quality of work if there is adequate communication to and fro.

It takes time to provide a quotation. I try to reply to all email enquiries the soonest I can. Do indicate your urgency in the contact form and I will prioritize to respond to it asap.

You can use my project brief worksheet here. The more information you can provide, the faster I can respond and the more accurate the preliminary estimate will be.

The situation of budget exceeds project requirements rarely happens. More often than not, the budget will determine the methodology of your project, the amount of time spent and the resources I can use for your project.

For e.g. On images, if you have more budget, I can spend more time to design custom images, tailor a photography session or purchase higher quality photos for your project. If your budget is tight, I can use cheaper source of stock images for your project.

For e.g. On website development, if you have more budget, I can spend more time and resources to tailor features and functionalities to sync with your business operations. If you have tighter budget, we can workaround with some ready made resources.

For e.g. On design, if you have more budget, I can spend more time to work on more concepts and provide more design options. If you have tighter budget, we can limit to fewer concepts, less design options and revisions.

The list goes on, you know how this work.

It is a valid concern. It is also important to understand you have a say in how the end result turns out to be.

My work process involves stages of approvals from your end. You won't have to handle unpleasant surprises. Your feedback and approvals are needed along the way to proceed with the project. I offer you my solution but you have the final say in what you want to do with it. My responsibility is, to the best of my knowledge, to keep you informed of the possible consequences of each decision you make. Together, we explore the possibilities. I trust that you know your business best and respect your final decision. I'll make the best out of your decision with my skills, experience and knowledge.

So, at the end of the day, we need to take responsibilities of our own decision making.

• 1. Project Brief
• 2. Your logo
• 3. Branding guidelines (if any)
• 4. Your content (text/images/videos...etc)

Yes I do. In one of my earlier corporate employment, I have designed, developed and maintained a multi-lingual and multi-regional site that offers content in 9 languages in 3 geo locations.

In terms of language ability, I speak fluent Mandarin. I have worked on projects to translate English articles to Chinese. I was a budding writer in school days and have articles published in Chinese magazines and local Chinese Newspapers. I can work with your traditional and simplified Chinese content with ease.

Yes I do but it depends on the development platform of your website. I offer both ad-hoc and scheduled maintenance package.

I work with websites hosted on linux platform. I work with client-side scripting languages like PHP, HTML/CSS and javascript. I work with open source applications such as Wordpress, WooCommerce, osCommerce and Opencart.

I don't work with sites hosted on Windows Platform. I have background in Pascal and Foxpro but I don't have enough exposure to maintain websites developed in ASP.NET with Visual Basic and C#.

You can learn about my website design process here

I have packages for startups who want to test their business ideas more affordably. You can contact me with your project brief, budget and requirements, we can start something from there.

I provide custom design service mainly. For clients with tighter budget, customizing a quality pre-made template can be an option.

Yes. I can convert your design to HTML/CSS. If you are still obsessed with W3C compliant, you are in good hands.

I don't develop mobile application. I can work on the UI/UX of your mobile app.

I think social media platforms and website complement rather than substitute each other.

There are few situations you need to consider to make a decision. On social media platforms, your business may disappear in the next second, your account can be banned for baffling reason, and the support is hard to reach. If you rely on social media platforms solely, you are building your entire business on the mercy of others' hands. Nonetheless, if you know what you are doing, what to expect and are prepare for it, I wouldn't say it is a bad idea. It is a good avenue to build brand awareness and you can very much do so at a low cost with effective collaboration.

Website serves as a landing point of your marketing and advertising efforts. It is ideal to have the call-to-actions direct to your website where you have more control over it.

Yes. I have the skill, experience and knowledge to. However, it might not be a good idea to redesign just one page of your website if your existing website does not have consistent branding elements. I can advise better if you send me your website url, page to redesign and let me know how you would like to do it.

Your interpretation of a basic website could be different from mine.

I can design and develop a basic website that streamlines your work process, sell your products and services, keep you connected with your customers and provide you insight on what your customers are looking for. Your prospects and customers will know what you do, what you provide and how they can reach you. The cost and scale of it depends on the resources you have and plan to acquire.

I could provide an estimate after I have understood your project requirements. I don't charge what you don't need, hence, I do need to know what you have and what you need first.

Yes. I work with Wordpress Content Management System. I can work with most of the popular wordpress frameworks you can find in the market.

Yes. I can design and develop a custom wordpress theme from scratch or customize a wordpress theme you have.

Yes I can. I can help you to install and set up your wordpress site with essential plugins to enhance your website's security and to optimize your website's performance.

I love troubleshooting. Send me your website link and tell me the problems. I can't say I can fix your website's problems without knowing what it is but more often than not, I can identify the issue and come up with a solution for it. However, sometimes, the solution might not be what you want to proceed with. Nonetheless, if I can't tell you where goes wrong and offer you a solution to fix it, you have your money back.

Yes I can. I can convert your HTML website to a wordpress website.

Yes I can. I can include essential plugins to improve your website's security and to optimize your website's performance. I can personalize your wordpress theme with your logo, colour scheme, text and images. I can also tailor the functionalities to your business needs.

You can customize your theme in any way you want as long as time and budget is not a problem.

Good to have but not everyone needs one. Once I have understood your project requirements, I can suggest better.

The best is the one that fits your budget and do what you need. Once I have understood your project requirements, I can recommend one that match your needs.

Yes I do. I work with WooCommerce, Opencart and OSCommerce.

Cash, cheque, credit card, debit card, eNets, Bitcoins, credit systems, gift vouchers, prepaid cards, bank transfers, to name a few. You can accept any payment methods that deem fit.

Technically, you don't need a SSL certificate for your ecommerce store. Your ecommerce store can be functional without a SSL certificate. However, Google made SSL a mandatory requirement

It is highly recommended to use one if you are accepting credit card or sensitive information on your website. The main purpose of a SSL certificate is to provide a secure and encrypted environment for your customers to share sensitive information.

If you want to process credit/debit card payments on your own website, you need one.

You can check with your local banks.

It depends on your sales volume. Once you have the sales figure, the maths will tell you which option is better.

You need a hosting plan that can support the amount of disk space and the bandwidth your website needs. You need a robust shopping cart that is scalable as your business grow. If you have these two aspects taken care of, I don't think there is a restriction on the number of products you can sell on your website.

Not anymore. What I continue to do for my clients is to code with SEO in mind. I use SEO semantic markup. It means I use SEO-friendly coding techniques and methods to improve your search engine rankings. It makes your website more favorable to search engine compared to websites that don't use SEO semantic markup.

Yes, it helps. My suggestion is to use it as part of your SEO strategy but don't rely on it solely. Anyway, there is no reason not to use it.

I did this site www.daintybags.com some time ago, it doesn't have any content writing but landed on first page top 3 in SERP for consecutive months globally. It even ranked higher than the official website and with sites that use targeted keywords as domain name. With zero marketing & advertising, it brings in 100% organic and targeted traffic. It is done simply by SEO semantic markup. At the time of writing, with current SE algorithm, for a website to achieve similar result solely by SEO semantic markup is very unlikely.

Can your website gets organic traffic without generating content? Yes, you can if you are in a very niche field. The main question to consider is how much organic traffic you would like to have?

I don't think SEO is dying but you have to approach SEO differently than it used to be. There are many ways to search the WWW now. You will benefit more by approaching SEO holistically.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking used to be the effort to produce result. It is the opposite now. SERP ranking is more of the result of your consistent effort. You have to adopt a holistic approach to improve your SERP ranking.

Unless you did something to become the next internet sensation, there is no shortcut to improve your SERP ranking overnight. My suggestion is to use SEO semantic markup, focus on building good and fresh content in the form of text, images, sound and videos, find good avenues to distribute your content and do it consistently. Build customer loyalty, build brand awareness and don't overlook to reach out to prospects offline. Be consistent with your effort, it will produce desirable result in the long run.

We are in the filtered bubbles of the WWW, with every click on your content, it increases your credibility in the user's browsing history and preferences. It will push you higher in the personalized SERP of the user's. When you have gathered enough personalized clicks collectively, your overall SERP ranking will improve.

Depends on the result you want to achieve. Your SERP ranking can be influenced by your content and popularity on social media platforms. If you are expecting social media to bring you good amount of traffic to your website daily, the result may not be that satisfactory.

Social Media audience expect to view the full content within the social media platforms itself. They are less likely to click on the links to visit your website. They may check you out on your website if you have been consistent in sharing good, relevant and fresh content. If you are selling products or running a promotion, you will have a higher chance to increase the CTR (click through rate).

My suggestion is to use SMO as one of your SEO strategy, not to focus on it solely.

eDM stands for electronic direct mail. It is a tool use for Email Marketing Campaign. It is similar to the flyers handouts you received but it is send electronically to your email box. eDM is also known as HTML email commonly.

The normal email we use is plain text email and images are delivered as attachment. eDM(HTML email) is similar to having a web page deliver to your email box. It can be styled and displayed like a web page. It can incorporate your corporate branding. The images are embedded into the HTML email.

I don't provide or lease email list. However, I can help to add a mailing list subscription feature on your website for you to build your list.

eDM requires a very different coding approach. It is very unlikely your webpage will work as an eDM(HTML email) without extra effort to enhance the code.

No. It is not supposed to be sent as attachment unless it is your intention to. It is made to display in the email box like a webpage.

You can use an EMSP (email marketing service provider) to blast your eDM(HTML email).

A spam is sending unsolicited emails in bulk. Is interesting to know sending unsolicited emails is not considered as spam. Sending bulk emails is not considered as spam. When you send unsolicited emails in bulk, it is considered as spam.

I can provide all the steps for your email marketing campaign.

1. You need to get an eDM(HTML email) properly designed and developed.

   It should be tested with major desktop-based and web-based email clients, and different types of mobile devices. You want to ensure your eDM(HTML email) look consitently across all platforms and devices.

2. Ensure your eDM(HTML email) content abides by the anti-spam requirements.

   • You have to include an <unsubscribe> feature in your eDM(HTML email). You need to provide the recipient an option to opt out of receiving future emails from you

   • You have to include sender's contact information in your eDM(HTML email)

   • You have to indicate it is a promotional email in the subject title. In Singapore, you have to use <adv> in the subject title of your eDM(HTML email).

   • You have to remind the recipient how/where/why they have opted in to receive your email

   • Don't use spam filter trigger keywords in your subject title and content
3. Do a spam test on your eDM(HTML email) to check if it can get through the gatekeepers' protocols.
4. Schedule a time and date to start your email marketing campaign
5. Use whitelist IPs to send your emails
6. Send it to people who have given you permission to receive your eDM(HTML email)
7. Track and analyse the results of your email marketing campaign

The only reason you want to send using Outlook is to save cost. However, this is not to your best advantage to do so.

When you use email client like Outlook, you are unable to track and analyse your email marketing efforts. Outlook lacks of the features to manage your email marketing campaigns properly. You risk your IP getting blacklisted for sending bulk emails. In addition to that, the codes generated by Outlook are not optimized for cross platforms compatibility. Your HTML email could look different in different devices, browsers and platforms. There is also a possibility for your email to end up in a spam folder due to not using a trusted IP for bulk sending.

Unless your intention is to disseminate information blindly, there is every reason to use an EMSP (email marketing service provider) for your email marketing campaigns. An EMSP provides the tools you need to manage and measure your email marketing efforts.

For instance, you need to be able to manage the unsubscribe list. You don't want to send to the people who have opted out. An EMSP (email marketing service provider) can help to manage your new sign ups, unsubscribes, soft bounces and hard bounces. Soft bounce means the email address is valid but email can't be delivered due to reasons such as recipient's mailbox quota is full, recipient's email server is down or offline, or the message size is too large. For soft bounces, you can try to send them again at another time. Hard bounce means the email address is permanently unreachable. It can be due to reasons such as invalid email address, domain name does not exist or the recipient's email server blocked the delivery completely. In these cases, you want to remove them from the list. You have to be diligent in keeping your subscribers list updated which is an important step in running an email marketing campaign. List management is one great advantage provided by EMSP (email marketing service provider).

With an EMSP (email marketing service provider), you can segment your recipients' lists by setting certain parameters. For eg. age, gender, income level, geographical location, product preferences ... ...etc. It allows you to send more targeted and personalized information to your customers to improve your CTR(click through rate).

There is a limit on how many emails you can send within a stipulated time before triggering the spam filter. If you have a huge list of recipients, an EMSP (email marketing service provider) can automate the process to use several IPs at once or send them in batches. If you use your own IP, or web host to send bulk emails, you risk getting your IP blacklisted by your ISP and webhost. An EMSP(email marketing service provider) uses whitelist IPs which reduce the chance of your emails ending up in spam folder.

You can schedule the date and time to run your email marketing campaign with an EMSP (email marketing service provider). You don't have to manually start the campaign each time. It is extremely helpful if you are targeting subscribers of a different time zone. You want to find the best timing to deliver your emails.

EMSP (email marketing service provider) can provide a set of statistics to help you fine-tune your email marketing campaigns. You get to know your consumers behaviours better. You can track who open your emails, what they do with your emails, which products are more popular among your recipients, which set of information entices their interests... ... etc. You do want your email marketing efforts to produce intended results instead of sending out information blindly.

Other than the cost concern, there are no reasons not to use an EMSP (email marketing service provider) to run your email marketing campaigns. Scrimping on that cost is not to your best advantage.

I don't have the capacity to print in house. I work with different printers to provide print brokering service for my clients.

I don't compare quotations among printers to offer you the cheapest in town or one that gives me higher profit margin. Most of the time, I am able to fetch a good price for my clients and I do have clients who prefer to work with their regular printers too.

You are free to use my print brokering service or work with the printer of your choice. Either decision will not affect the quality of work and my commitment to your project.

I have few printers that I work with on a regular basis. They have different economies of scale and I select suitable printer based on your quantity, print requirements and timeline.

I provide print brokering service mainly for the convenience of my clients. You are free to use my print brokering service or work with the printer of your choice. Either decision will not affect the quality of work and my commitment to your project.

Yes I do. I can register a domain and set up a hosting server for my clients.

Yes you can. You can set up your domain DNS to point to the designated hosting server. I will provide you the information or help to configure for you.

My payment term is 50% upfront and 50% upon project completion.

For smaller scale project, due to its fast turnaround time, full payment is required before starting work. Examples of smaller scale projects are flyer design, banner design, eDM design, eDM updates, website maintenance, bugs fixing, templates updates...etc.

I accept Cheque, Paypal and Bank Transfer.