This is the blog of Vinaganda (a tiny web design studio in Ha Noi-Viet Nam) where we are discussing about things around what we are doing without playing the web gurus.
IMO, One of the best thing that the Vietnamese government ever made to boost the local internet entrepreneurship was to blacklist Facebook in 2009. And so on: blacklist the proxies to access it.
Let’s get back in time:
Few communities portal was struggle to get the brand new internet users while the penetration of internet was especially made only out of a possible 20 million internet users, and at this stage foreigners social website was not considered as concurrents, maybe due to the fact of the language barrier. But there was something called Facebook that all the world was talking about. Mostly used by foreigners at that time. In less than a year everybody was jumping into it, a splendid growth, something like 2 millions users challenging the local ones who been there since the beginning.
So you got the picture: Facebook started to be a menace for the revenues of the local networks (exclusively based on ad). But not the concern of the administrations monitoring the Internet despite anti-parti political contains, until Facebook added a Vietnamese-language interface and FB dissidents pages increased. That was the signal: It was too much!
November 2009, Vietnamese Facebook users reported being unable to access the website.Access had been intermittent in the previous weeks and there were reports of technicians ordered by the government to block access to Facebook.
In 2010, Zing.Me led social networks in Vietnam with 4.6 million users, followed by Facebook.
Despite the blackout, by December 2010, Facebook reached 1.1 billion page views in Vietnam alone … Until websites offering some proxies get blocked one by one.
There are still some options to visit Facebook but it is getting harder week after week.
2011
This ban was a new Eldorado for Vietnamese entrepreneurs, especially Go.vn a social website between Facebook and Yahoo, coming just after the ban, backed by some officials with a lot of title in the press. Go.vn was criticized for it poor features, now it is over: This week Go.vn reports that it now has more than 12 million members. To give you a clear picture what it means : According to official figures, 30,516,587 Internet users as of Nov.30, 2011, 33.7% penetration, per VNNIC.
In December 2011, the vietnamese Facebook users was estimated at 3,607,220 .
To summarize: don’ t waste your time to promote your biz on Facebook if your market is in Vietnam.
A significant break through came earlier last year when a preferred developer consultant was introduced in the country, giving Facebook a ‘shop front’ to get local business onto its platform, to increase usage and relevance. Which is totally untrue in reality as most of the business and individuals don’ t have the time and resources to get trough the “bamboo wall”.
Maybe & If…
Too much water went under the bridge, it will be hard for FB to catch up Go.vn, excepted if they can show that they are able to monitor and wipe out all dissident accounts, and pay taxes on their ad revenues. I really doubt about that!
But let’s say that I am wrong: Facebook is back. Just imagine the lost for the local social websites. To grown in this field you should have close relation link with some people upstairs… In this case of biz, by experience I can say that it is more question of nationalism: Officials will not let a foreigner “media” having any monopole here alone by himself.
For Facebook to get back here, it would mean a partnership and be under control of Go.vn by example. But hey! this is just my opinion.
Here a very good demo of a website usability testing on paper with a kid. YouTube might be your best friend for found out some great resource of usability test.
It looks like we are redesigning this website every 8 months. The goal was to cut on the fancies stuffs, more corporate aka borring, but not too much, in order to get ready for their next big things: Conztellation, an app that for aid program analysis and information management.
There was a issue with Illustrator that gave me some headaches: scaling an object with a stroke: Why this #$%$ stroke does not scale?
The solution is so easy: Illustrator>Preferences> check Scale Strokes & Effects.
So Simple.
Since the beginning of Vinaganda I have the idea that the vast majority of the local companies cannot afford a website costing more than 500$, including the hardware. And the one who could provide them a kickass website in this budget and still be able to pay the bills at the end of the month, will win the war. Of course you got folks who actually do that in freelance, but the quality is hrrrr… Whatever. There are different options like the free template, or working underpaid wich is the common case. You are free to try, but as a wise man said: If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Butttttttt there is an other option: the single page website.
A single plage website is a great solution for selling one or free product, like a book, app or simply having a web presence. And it’s a valuable way of creating an uncluttered site that still contains a fair amount of content. Headaches free: A single page website does not need any maintenance at all.
Many entrepreneurs who are starting a small business find themselves without the time or budget to get a full website developed. A perfect solution is to build a one page website which you can use to display all your basic business information.
Don’ t misunderstood me: It is not only question about money, sometime a single page is simply what you need. Like Carat Jewerly (Hanoi), their budget was just a bit less than 1,000$. After review their requirements, ressources and content, I proposed to cut the budget in half by proposing a single page website, until they decide to jump into a bigger website, or to have some ego with a 1000$ website than will be oversized.
Sometimes you just really don’ t need a multipage website. And guess what: I got an other single page website on the grill.
I really, really happy to share with you the website pre-lauch of an amazing Lounge that will open next week. You might say “ah! again an other lounge in Hanoi!? Uh?”. And I understand the point, this is what I said beginning of this year before visiting the construction site: There was nothing excepted a name: TabOo and a boat, yeah a boat ready to get pimped by my friend and partner: Linh, designer and architect, who is actually the left hand of Vinaganda since day 1. So to make it short: I went there, see how it is, and I just said to the owner: I want it all!
Taboo Lounge & Bar is a floating vessel on Westlake, docked right at Ly Tu Trong Park, on the corner of Thanh Nien and Thuy Khue Road.
It is hard to believe, and honesthly I don’t believe it at all:
Dot VN, Inc. ( www.DotVN.com ) announced today that since its official launch of the Vietnamese Native Language Internationalised Domain Names (“Vietnamese IDN”) on April 28, 2011, registrations have exceeded 294,000 domain names. Which surpasses the total number of standard Vietnamese ccTLD registrations.
So to summarize: in less 3 months they made better than everybody since 2007 (FYI the same company DotVN Inc. signed an agreement with VNNIC, the registry operator, for marketing the .vn top-level domain abroad).
Since the 28 April, you can have your domain in Vietnamese, with all the accents, and all the fancies stuff of the vietnamese alphabet, as the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center (VNNIC/Ministry of Information and Communications ) provide it.
Great! But why do I feel that is a bad move, for the companies and the national suffex:
Now some companies will not have others choice to register again theirs domains name with the accents, in order to prevent tremendous effort to take back their IP from smarts guy who got nothing else to do in their life, except buying the domain name of your company and waiting that you come with some cash. (more…)
“Basically” in Vietnam, all services related to the software industry is exempt of VAT. Which means that I do not have to include the 10% VAT in my prices, as after further research websites design and development are considered as software.
Some folks will tell me so “why I get 10% from other?” and some previous clients will ask me why they get the VAT.
So let’s clarify: after 8 months using the “red book”, nobody from the taxes told me that, which is quite surprising. Until one day, a good soul informed us that I might have to pay some penalties for pricing the VAT on websites. The point is as I wrote above: none informed me about it, and any papers justify it would be good, instead of bird talk. Uh? Because the problem is between a taxe office and an other one, there is a different interpretation of the decree (i forgot the ref), as it is not clearly indicated “web design / web development” I know some companies here that will never leave this 10%, and not question about denying the decree, just because their district taxes department will fire at them.
To get back to my case, all the work done on website are exempt of VAT for the first 3 years of the company… basically. Meaning that until 2012, no VAT for all!
As muslim running a web studio. It was logical that get my hands into the website of the only one mosque in Hanoi: Al-Noor Masjid. Thing that I was quite honored to do for a mosque of more than 100 years old. Praise to God.
Al Noor mosque needed a website for a lot of reasons but mosthly for 2 reasons: To introducing Islam to the Vietnamese folks (some folks born, raised and living in Hanoi don’ t even know about this mosque) and reason 2: for the Muslim travelers who complained about how did they not found any website helping them.
Talking about the travelers: let’s go not so mobile!
Do you have an ipad? Or something like that? I ask the question because I got one, and there is something that I found anoying: You spend a lot of time holding the tablet with one hand, because the other is acting as a mousse. And as the thing is not lightweight after 20 mn holding it, your hands just feel tired. I am talking in growman perspective, but what about children?
So with my ipad, my tired hands, and this website. I found myself looking for a way make it a little bit easier by testing something old like the disco: sidebar at the right and the left. Using few thumbs for the visual references instead of tiny links, and the result (picture below) is that I can hold my ipad while the thumbs for the navigation, without going trough a whole mobile website design.
Flushing the Déjà vu
I tried to not fall in the stereotype than believers and non believers have about Islam: Islam is not a religion labelled “for the arabs only”. You don’ t have to dress like bedouins and especially in my field: we don’ t have to put a bunch of arab ornaments, desert landscape and camels in your website to make it credible. No disrespect, even if there are great mosque website out there, most of them are terrible in term of concept.
Design for an Islamic media is not that easy: No picture or photo is allowed, or at least very few if there is any purpose that might bring any benefit. And an important thing: The aesthetic must takes over the message. This is why you will not found any photos. Just the strict minimum.
The Content
Basically I do not touch the content, I just leave it to the Client. But for this time, i decided to put some of my rules in practice.
Once a day, a wise man said: Muslims are the worse sellers of the best product. And this is totally true, most of them are not good for explaining Islam to non believers. Not good in their behavior that is contradicting the message and their explanation who make more difficult to understand it.
As I had the hands free, i took a marketing approach: I must introduce a new product to my next Clients who don’ t know anything about my product excepted what the see on TV. This is why the site content is mostly focused on the demystification and some clear and simple explanations of the basis of Islam based on the works of well know converted scholars like Suhaib Webb and Bilal Philips. Without forgetting a brief description of the muslim in Vietnam that are mostly based in the south of Vietnam.
The use of “9″ sends a signal that an item is a great value and possibly the lowest price available. Sale prices end in 9s and .99 so often that shoppers associate these numbers with a markdown even when the starting price contains a 9.
Consumers tend to place more emphasis on left digits than right ones (also known as the left-digit effect). And they “ignore the least significant digits rather than do the proper rounding.” I like to think that I round $19.99 up to $20.00 rather than mentally truncating the last two digits to $19.00, but research suggests that most people retain the first two numbers only, possibly because people have gotten used to .99 as a price ending.
[...]
Sellers use 0s and .00 to convey that products are of premium quality.
From the buyer’s perspective, these prices seem arbitrary, not reflecting cost but rather the seller’s preference. Actually, that is the message intended by those selling luxury and high-end brands. A designer handbag at Neiman Marcus is priced at $625.00, not $624.99; similarly, Godiva sells its chocolate truffle assortment for $36.00, not $35.99. The seller can, theoretically, name a price rather than be subject to clamor by consumers for lower pricing. [..]
To summarize: If you want it to looks like a good deal use “9″ at the end. If you want to play the luxe stuff, use “0″. Now let’s see how we can implemente that in a quotation .
Jason Fried gives his idea about how to look the competition and the copycat. But most of, he is telling why he is not afraid about the big companies, instead the watch out the small ones.
Jason Fried is the co-founder of 37signals, developer of popular business collaboration tools like Basecamp and Campfire.
The finest website of the Finest Gym Dedicated to Rock-Climbing in Vietnam
If God wills, in the coming days, there few sites that will come out from my kitchen, but right now let’s introduce “Viet Climb” that is as far I know the one that I like the most. Why? Because from the first to the last pixel, it is just like i wanted it to be. And anyone who is working in a design field knows that’s not easy to get green card for the Client for everything.
Especially when following your guts, you are pushing the Client to emphasize his company website as a blog style, focusing more on the club than the corporate, in order to give to the menbers a comfortable feeling, while we still making a visual balance for keep up with the professionalism.
The ones who got a little bit a climbing culure will notice the homage made to Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, the first climber knowns to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.
VietClimb is the one and only Climbing gym in Vietnam, soft opening tomorrow night (april 5)!
And even if it is not my thing, I advise you to take a look ath the outdoor guides, where you will find useful informations like “how to climb the Halong Bay?” and pretty photos.
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“Open Source Tool To Backup Gmail Accounts: Gmvault