December 2008: Start small but think diverse, is the approach that has been successful for CreativEdge Concepts, a Web-focused jack-of-all-trade.

“We started our business in 2002 getting small projects via word-of-mouth,” says Mabel Loo (picture above, left), a mechanical engineer by training and, as she admits, without any in-depth knowledge of HTML coding which she leaves to her partner, Ashley Wong (right).

It was almost by accident that the pair began their business. At that time, Ashley was working as a full-time employee handling Web projects. She was also freelancing and one day she realised she was earning more money on her part-time than full-time work.

So she left, and together with Mabel, started CreativEdge. Start-ups must get business immediately if they are to remain afloat, and fortunately both girls – they were only 21 then – had a ready stream of companies who were Ashley’s previous freelance customers.

“We started working from home initially and registered our business with a virtual office,” says Ashley of the early days.

“After six months we managed to get a small office space which we shared with another friend. That was when more work came in and we moved to a bigger office at Paya Lebar. As the landlords kept increasing their office rentals, we had no choice but to keep shifting and our next location was at Amoy Street, a place where every Web and graphics designer would want their office space to be.

“Of course with the boom in the property market last year, our rental went up threefold and we now find ourselves back in the east with a very comfortable office. It wasn’t easy and there were lots of obstacles but we’re happy to be able to work as a small team to overcome all of it.”

Another cheap but effective approach in getting customers was advertising in the newspaper Classifieds.

“We tried to accumulate as many projects as possible,” says Mabel who takes care of marketing, seeing customers, money matter and general administration. “We want to collect enough job portfolios to gain a certain level of respectability. Lately, we are more into online advertising and search engines advertisements which we try it out for ourselves before marketing the success of it to our clients.

“Over the years, we learnt that honesty and good turnaround time are key factors to building good relationships. Through word of mouth recommendations, more customers came, and some have even become friends.”
So while the firm began as a pure Web project business, it also took on all kinds of offline jobs such as designing and printing corporate logos, name cards and letterheads, and producing brochures, as well as handling e-mail blasting of newsletters and other marketing alerts.

Unburdened, uncluttered Web sites

Creating and deploying a Web site, remains its bread-and-butter business. The focus is on customisation as the company believes every company has a different set of requirements.

One of its core customers is a restaurant chain, Menu Pte Ltd with its well-known outlets: Brewerkz, Café Iguana and Wine Garage.

Ashley says they maintain the site for Menu, but designed and handle the separate Brewerkz site. As you can see in the screen capture (picture below) the layout and display of the Web content for Brewerkz is bright and bold, but uncluttered, and, most crucial, fast-to-download – a refreshing change from other arty-farty sites that are so burdened with Flash and animation that they took forever to appear on your browser.

Brewerkz.com has legible body text, straightforward layout and appealing pictures that make you want to go there to sip its beer. Tilting the main picture adds a creative tension to the look-and-feel. It is also a sly hint of how you will look at the world when you have too much to drink!

Standard design package

For small and midsized companies, CreativEdge suggests a standard Web design package comprising 8-10 pages, containing mostly passive information that needs only minimal programming. The number of pages are more than enough to display all the information about the company, its profile, products, services and staff.

A good design rule, says Ashley, is to size each Web page to fit a typical laptop screen. The Brewerkz Home Page (967 x 675 pixels) is a good example of a page that doesn’t require vertical scrolling.

Promoting your site

Other issues to take into consideration when creating and managing a site is the customers’ database, the hosting server, and the sending of e-newsletters to promote the site.

“Sending out e-newsletters is vital to remind readers, customers and the public about the site. It is also essential if the company has regular events and activities that must be made known as widely as possible,” Ashley says.

It is an unwelcomed but necessary fact of life that if you build a site, nobody will know, or care to know about it, unless you shout from the rooftop with regular e-newsletters and short e-mail announcements about forthcoming events, promotions and offers.

A shopping cart and a simple online payment scheme may be all the transaction needed for an SME site. But having online order means that you need to have a backend inventory updating so that customers know when an item is unavailable.

The final issue is the content management system. The most convenient arrangement is to customise a CMS application for the customer’s employees to add fresh content and make quick amendments, and then publish directly online. Such a CMS has to be easy to use and doesn’t need extensive training nor intricate knowledge of obscure functions.

As any school kid will tell you, building a Web site is easy, but building one that is easy on the eye, easy to navigate, easy to update, and easy to promote, needs professional, creative help. Just ask CreativEdge.