We couldn’t stress how important it is to have an online web presence. You’re might already be aware of other options to what you can do to get ‘online’ but is it necessarily the best way to put your brand and business out there?

Web presence is no longer just having an email, or a landing page. There’s social media to explore, that could reach out to a wider audience. And there’s more avenues to explore with today’s amazing speed of progress for the internet.

We want to get you online and not just that, there’s plenty more… move on to number 2.

2. We want to help you flourish online

So you’re online. What if no one visits your site? What’s the point of being online if no one sees you. We’ll help you strategise ways and tricks for you to get people to your website. You can even get your website up on the first page when people use Google to search for keywords that relate to your industry.

3. We want you to have the best tools

We won’t shove the absolute latest in technology to your face. There are things that will work and some that will not work for you and your purposes. The best tools may not necessarily the latest tools. Nor is it necessary the most expensive of solutions.

A lot of platforms and tools can seem to be perfect for you, but there’s definitely some research that is required before you decide on one, especially if it will end up costing you.

4. We want to help your business

If you’ve never explored the web option, you may not understand how businesses fully utilise this to maximise their outreach. A website is more than a marketing tool. It can do a lot more for you.

It can be your office front – and it can break barriers. A lot of companies out there have simple small offices just for admin but have their website look like a million dollars.

5. We’ll be flexible and deliver the best for your budget.

There’s always a solution. If budget is an issue, we’ll offer you alternatives. We just want to see you online and kicking!

For example, if a full-on shopping cart system is too much for your startup, consider pre-packaged solutions or even Facebook, to do your transactions… just to give you enough boost to start flying. And we’ll be happy to continue working with you once you’ve gain enough speed to upgrade your site.

6. We will help you on important decisions like your baby’s name, which car to get and even what to eat for lunch today.

But really, we love to chat with you on any non-web related issue. We have awesome contacts and you might just get what you’re looking for after a coffee with us.

Therefore, they’re very important.

Websites, like anything else, need to be maintained. Change in trends and technology alone is enough to render a website out of date, or worse – broken.

So what do I mean by a broken website? Here are three things.

1. Left behind in time

So your website was built in the 2000′s. Great! You were actually the forefront adopters of actually having a website, an online presence.

But you neglected it since then and it’s become the Chernobyl of the web.

Technology and trends evolve very very quickly. New versions of web standards are being released every few years. We’re at HTML 5 now and few years back, we’re still using 1.1 standards. We use a totally new way to style the website as compared to early 2000. It was tables back then but now we use div and CSS.

The tools used to make website has changed immensely as well. Dreamweaver today is miles away from what it used to be when it was still under Macromedia. Photoshop can do things that in few years ago, people would call ridiculous or impossible.

Your website is old. The most dangerous thing that can happen is phasing out of the old standards. For example, you could have designed your website on IE6, using tables and ancient style codes. It would’ve looked great back then, but today – IE6 is phasing out, tables are a thing of the past, and the ancient style codes, along with everything else in your old website, will cause the latest updated browsers, IE 9, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, to load it poorly or worse crash the content.

When your visitors cannot view the content on your site, it’s as good as dead. In other words, it’s broken.

2. Style out of date

I’ve already touched on this a bit on the first point, regarding style sheet coding being out of date. But now let’s look at the design trends that have changed drastically.

Wait did you say you have music playing when the site loads up? That’s a BIG no-no today. Surveys show that one of the most hated things on the web is background music, that plays automatically. And let’s not even mention MIDI music. It’s so ancient, few knew it ever existed.

Now let’s look at colours. Different years bring about different trends in colour. It used to be bright and flashy at the dawn of the web. Then it became dark and minimal. Then businesses adopt the web 2.0 styles of lime green, gradients and bubblegum colours. The future looks different as well, 2012 will see more feed-based websites (a bit like your facebook) – which means design has to fit information, and not the other way around. Colours and style change drastically and since it makes up the bulk of what visitor see when they come to your site – your site could look broken if the colours are really crap.

3. Bad construction from the get go

You were starting up back then and funds were limited. Web design firms were charging a bomb to create websites because in the old days, they were niche. Not a lot of people know HTML so they could squeeze their market.

Along came a high school graduate who makes websites as a hobby in his bedroom. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t trust hobbyists, (they can be pretty good actually) but this kid – he’s done umm, ONE website in his web design career. And that one website is his hobby page. He said he’ll do it for 200 bucks. You think it’s a bargain. You get a broken website – to start with.

Add this to all the problems I’ve mentioned in points 1 and 2 and you’ll realise your website is exponentially broken, useless and ready for scrap.

What’s the lesson here?

Firstly, understand that technology and trends are always on the move and constantly changing. To keep up to date, your website has to stay on track as well. Hire a web designer as staff or the very least engage in a contract that allow you to keep your website updated.

Secondly, put your trust in an experienced designer – if the website you’re building is of high stakes. For example, you shouldn’t leave the construction of your e-commerce site, which is your store front and company image, to someone who’s still learning the basics of web design.

If you want to do a landing page for a new product however, I’m all for hiring cheaper, less experienced web designers. Main point is, get experienced designers to work on your important sites.

I wish I still have a screenshot of how the very first ‘Suadref Studios’ looked like. It was all black, with a dark look and feel AND it had music. I’d give myself a punch in the face if I had the chance to go back in time. But back then, it’s alright to have music playing in the background.

We moved on and I entered the realm of info-comms from Temasek Polytechnic. My influence then was Bogaman. I do hope he’ll take up the invitation to be a guest writer on Suadref Studios.

Bogaman was something… He pushed my web development to heights I would never venture otherwise. I find it a waste that he never continued in this line, but I guess network security was far more fascinating for him.

So off I went after Poly into National Service – That’s when I really began to take jobs doing what I love doing.

I had my first clients. I undercharged heavily and spent sleepless nights pondering why I even like this field. I began hating it – because I don’t understand it. But as I got better, I loved it even more. Guess it’s like that with anything you’re passionate about.

Fast forward to today – I’m quite grateful for how far Suadref Studios has come. From a simple hobby to something that gave me a few extra dollars… to working for a multinational software company and having a wide spectrum of clients.

This new revamp of the website will hopefully see Suadref Studios through the next few years and I for one would be very very anxious to see what’s in store.

Obviously this post will only be seen when the site does get launched come first January, 2012.

The past few days had seen me cleaning up all my works, discarding the older or amateurish ones and keeping the nicer ones. And I’ve been uploading them on this new website.

I must say it’s a bit challenging with the new theme construct but insya Allah, eventually we’ll get there.

See you all soon.

It may be plain and empty now, but that’s just a sign of a plethora of content, portfolio and design yummies that will fill this site in days to come. Stay tuned folks!