Africa Web Space

One puzzling thing about a number of local websites in Kenya is the fact that after a lot has been spent in developing or designing a website many organizations and especially those that are targeting online traffic put very little effort of any at all in ensuring that traffic to the site eventually builds up in a consistent way and the assumption is that, people/ surfers will unexpectedly bump on to the site when searching for your product or service. I like to compare a website, your online office to a normal office in some story building in a busy city. An organization will plan about the office set up (website Design and structure), the location ( Domain Name and hosting plan), there after when the doors to the office are eventually opened the assumptions is that someone is going to walk in. In real life it rarely happens that way organizations must create awareness of their products and services using various methods. The same is true online. Search engine optimization is the d...

Getting a good domain at a cheap domain registration registration site is not to difficult. First Go to your domain registrar online and do a domain search. This will check if the domain name is available. Next a good registrar will ask you to pay for the domain name if it is available. And then you are good to go. Oops good to go to do what. Well if you need to use email then you need a hosting service lick wise if you need to make a website the you require a good web designer and a hosting service. You will be able to get free hosting service but this is usually about 20 mb this can hold about 80 emails without attachments. of course if you need both then the same person should do the hosting for both. Google has an email hosting service which is about 2 gb quite good i must say. Ke Domain Registration

I recently did a Google search for the word outsourcing and this produced millions of pages on the results page I was indeed overwhelmed by this information, Of course i quickly started going through the pages in search of relevant information and with a further refinement of my search i kept getting the same results. Numerous of companies in the West, Europe and the USA seeking for other business process outsourcing organisations to do some of the work such as banner creation, content addition, template designs etc and numerous countries in the East that is Asia and a the Far East responding or offering to do the same. Where is Africa in all this was my biggest question. It was in neither of the categories yet Africa could benefit from outsourcing in both ways companies in Africa could use thrid parties to do some of the work that does not require full time staff. And other African freelancers of companies could offer to do it at fee. Another concern was that majority of those who o...

I recently attended a seminar hosted by the local registry of the .ke domain. It was during this seminar that i heard of the phrase cyber space real estate and cyber squatters. Cyber squatters refers to people who purchase domain names and sit on it hoping that years down the line they will sell the domain name for a fortune. It is then i looked up in the blogsphere and came across auctions where this domain names are sold for millions of dollars online. These domain names are like location in real business life the right location of an enterprise can make all the difference. The right domain name can also make all the difference. Kenya domain names that are of premium value have note yet been snapped up yet although quite a few are already taken such as cars.co.ke, weddings.co.ke etc. So if you are interested in owing real estate in the cybersphere with a .ke now is the time as the say the early bird catches the worm, this really is true in domains now is the time. Kenya Registry Ke...

When I first went online try my hand on online marketing I thought it would be a peace of cake. In fact I thought it would generate leads immediately. I thus embarked very excitedly did everything I could do under the sun to increase the hits to the website I was optimizing, form advertising on Google, search engine optimization , site monitoring to link exchanges and joined any social networking website etc i found. This increased my hits considerably in-fact they even went as high as 300 per day, but as the year came to a close I realized that whether the site got hits or not the result was the same. I was not selling, all those hits were useless. The next year I decided to take a break on all online marketing and advertising and let the website just sit. There was no activity for about 6 months the hits went down to about 20-30 per day and somewhere out of the blue I made two sales from one person on separate days but the same month. This got me thinking in terms of where did this...

Yesterday i was meeting with a group of friends who like to play cashflow a board game that teaches you how to get out of the rat race literally. It usually calms my nerves after a busy week. Well after the game I felt I needed to let those who were present my name and what I do and thus distributed my business card. A lady whom I know mentioned what i really do to another lady who was seated next to her and within seconds she indicated she was looking for a good web designer, she indicated that she needed the images edited, and the Hotels worked on (to create a dynamic summary of each property there was already a sample). I told her that i usually prefer to have a one on one session with clients before I embark on the work the reason being that after a powerful application has been put on your site most people do not use the application and instead focus on the images and complain how they are not the ones they wanted. Also I like to tell them that a website will not market itself it...

One of the most depressing situations i have seen is when a website owner has to rely on his/her web designer. The is especially so in Africa and usually the owner is held at ransom for months on end awaiting a simple change. The website therefore becomes obsolete and irrelevant with outdated information hence misleading. It is while I was exposed to such issues i decide to look for a content management system that was easy to use and had a number of useful features that would enhance a website. One the best CMS applications that i came across was Booi Booi I liked the fact that it was very use, another great feature was the SEO features i was able to put meta tags on each page as opposed to only the template, this includes a page title, description, and key words. It has a html module that allows you add javascript to any page. Among other modules the most exciting is the container module it allows you to split the template into 2,3 or as many columns or rows i would like thus i can...

This can defined in very simple terms where the website resides usually on a remote computer generally referred to as a web server. Hosting need not be very expensive especially if you are just starting and a shared server will do. However it must be reliable. Nothing beats a website that is not available. It is equivalent to your office being shut when customers come to your office. You can imagine if i come to your office 3 times and it is closed i might as well assume that you closed down and i will not be coming back in a very long time. Once you purchase your hosting service and a domain name of course and the website had been designed then it is ready to be uploaded on to the server. This should take just a few minutes if the site is not to large. And now your online office is open. The hosting service is usually a windows hosting service which is slightly more expensive and Linux hosting service which cost less and is less vulnerable to attacks. A good hosting service will als...

Before you embark on the website decide what you want from it. Let it not be a just another one those formalities you need to do. Think about the features you would want then identify a reputable company that can assist you to achieve your objectives, research on the third parties you may need to use and how much and how long it will take. A past experience is where a client wanted a certain feature on his site and had projected it would take a day to implement, the third party involved took over six months to complete their part of the work. 1. Decide on the colours you would like to projects 2. Decide on the features. 3. Look for a reputable 4. Ask for references 5. finally ask for a proposal. The proposal should outline very very clearly what will be done , how long it will take and how much it will cost. One last word of Caution. Never be leave everything up to designer to decide put your requirements. Useful links: Kenya Hosting

I really thought i need to begin a blog where i can contribute to various topics that are IT related and what a better way to begin with my favourite topic online marketing. One way small business can survive on a shoe string marketing budget is to use the internet to expose their presence to the online community. This is very similar to traditional marketing methods however it cost much less and you are able to reach larger audience as compared to the traditional method. Some initial steps are. 1. Register a domain: There is nothing as cheap as registering you business online by buying a domain name you are good to go. 2. Get an email address with the domain you have registered. I come accros many business that seem to have a domain registered by they still use free email services. You need to show your client that you are serious, you happen to be chasing a 5000$ in orders but investing less than 10$ (ksh 500) per month on paid email is an uphill task who is going to take you serio...