Coming from the UK and with a background in IT and marketing I never cease to be amazed at the complacent attitude of small business owners in Thailand and in Pattaya in particular. This applies equally to Thai and Farang owned establishments.

Given the highly competive environment here (one which gets MORE competitive by the day) it is actually alarming how many “owners” are all but ignoring the worlds fastest growing (advertising) medium but are still ploughing useless baht into the various rags read by the SAME old peope day in day out.

To give you a good idea of what I mean you can take THIS website. Its a bog standard (free) blog that is maintained infrequently. However it gets over 1,800 individual visitors EVERY day. The vast majority of those, it has to be said, are OUTSIDE Thailand - but so what, they are probably ALL coming (or returning) here soon! Pattaya is HUGE on the world wide web.

There tends to be 3 categories;-

1. The business that has NO website. Invariably these fall into those who have the attitude that its a waste of time or haven’t allocated personal time yet to getting it sorted out.

2. Businesses that DO have a website but they not only LOOK awful but have little chance of visitors due to a total lack of search engine compatability. One particular “portal” in Pattaya is particularly guilt of this churnig out soe of the most appalling websites I have ever seen AND charging people for the privilege. This particualr outfit even has the gall to put adverts on its clients “pages” and then doesnt share the revenue - talk about double pricing.

3. Business that have a NICE looking website but again no search engine ability - just look at your web-stats.

The latter is common all over the world for the simple reason that website (smaller) “designers” usually have little optimisation ormarketing skills but are in self denial about the need for this type of service. Its a boring old story but the really IS no point in having a website of no-one is looking at it. Repeat visitors or customers who are ALREADY regulars looks nice on paper but its NEW business you need.

Whilst I am sure there ARE some good websites out there I can say with 100% honesty that i have yet to see one that has ALL the elements required to actually “work” i.e. that looks great AND attracts high volume visitor numbers.

The argument against quality design AND marketing has always been one of cost - but that doesn’t apply here. You can get a GREAT looking website for under 6000 baht and have it marketed and maintained properly for under 400 baht a month. If you can’t afford to spend that kind of money on business developement you probably shouldn’t be in business in the first place. For heavens sake WHY use a “friend of a friend” when a professional service is so cheap here anyway.

What is that? One customer a year in a hotel or small handful in a bar or restaurant? Imagine what ten or twenty would do for you, maybe even more if you work it correctly.

Ok so where is the sales pitch? Well there isn’t one - I couldnt design a website to save my life - but I know people who can. If you want the optimisation and marketing “on top” then YES I am your man but that is “up to you handsome”.

I WILL design you one of you want - it wont be great but it will be far better than the crap around at the moment and will be highly optimised to boot.

For further info and a FREE appraisal of your existing site just email me at andy@pattaya-news.com