We have been using web tools developed by American for years. Well, is American the best developer in the World for web tools such as forum, blog, shopping cart, CMS, content editor?

I would said yes in 15 years ago and they are still good in technology and product quality nowadays, we can’t deny the true that any imported products stamped with ‘Made in US’ are more expensive than others.

Today, I would like to introduce 2 ‘Made In China’ web tools:

Bulletin Board System (BBS)/Internet Forum: Discuz! by Comsenz (http://www.comsenz.com/products/discuz)

Discuz! is the most use BBS product in Internet, this is not my personal justification but rated by Internet users. Most Chinese forum are powered by this web application, good features and it’s free. Compare to vBulletin, Invision Power Board and PhpBB, Discuz! has more creative layout and better flexibility.

Imagine the different of style and culture between Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, China) and US comics.

Shopping Cart/ e-Shopping Mall: ECShop (http://www.ecshop.com) and ECMall (http://ecmall.shopex.cn) by ShopEx

EC: E-Commerce. ECShop is a web tool to build an e-commerce website, a solution for online shop. It is similar like Zen Cart, OScommerce and MagentoCommerce. I have 2 websites powered by Zen Cart and OScommerce, they are not as interactive as one of my website powered by ECShop (comments from website visitors).

ECMall is a web tool to build a virtual shopping mall which allow merchants and buyers participation. Merchants can setup their shop and promote their products; buyers can give their comment and feedback on the products or rate the merchants. The powerful of ECMall is website owner can integrate the virtual shopping mall with Comsenz’s Discuz! and UCenter (tool for all Comsenz’s products integration, U – you/user). Assuming you have a website feature eBay + forum + blog + flickr.

Bottom line

Using these 2 web tools is nothing more than easy, regardless you can read Simplified Chinese. Try it out, you will know how powerful is it.

I just conducted a research on Malaysia’s major banking and financial institutions website, and found many bankers still can grow their online market and brand if they put in more effort into online promotions.

Malaysia Banking and Financial Institutions Website Research

If you have very limit budget for email marketing, you may consider one-time off software instead of subscription based service.

The email marketing solutions I mentioned in the previous post ‘Effective Email Marketing‘ are subscription based services. The pros and conds as below:

Pros:
- Outsource to expert
- Facility (server, database) is not required. All sources (image, file and etc) store on service provider’s server
- No software license or upgrade fee
- No need DIY setup and maintenance free
- The chances that ISPs flagged your email newsletters as spam are lower

Conds:
- Its fee based on volume of contact (email addresses). The more contact you have, the higher fee you need to pay.
- Commitment. Whether you blast email or not, you still need to pay the subscription fee.
- Limited email blast. The email blast usage based on ‘monthly quota’, average 4 times a month or once a week.

To some users, especially those have high volume of contact but least marketing budget. Paying the subscription is a heavy commitment, so an one-time off Email Marketing Software is an alternative solution.

ActiveCampaign 1.2.All Email Marketing Software

For personal or SME use, I will recommend ActiveCampaign 1.2.All email marketing software (http://www.activecampaign.com/). It is a shareware (commercial software), the one-time off license fee is USD229 for Lite version. Basically it can provides the same features as Email Marketing Service such as open rate, click-through rate, bounces statistic, invalid addresses tracking and etc. Moreover, system administrator has full control over the whole Email Marketing system application and able to keep the contact list in own database instead of service provider’s database. Most important, user don’t need commit to any subscription plan.

This is a cost effective email marketing solution to SME or starter, I have recommended it to a few clients that just started website and with hundreds contact profile. I would not say this is the best email marketing software in the market but it can deliver basic need in more cost effective way in long term. Btw, to setup ActiveCampaign 1.2.All you need to have some knowledge on website administration and a website that hosted on Linux platform.

For more on ActiveCampaign 1.2.All email marketing software, you can visit their website at http://www.activecampaign.com/email-marketing/.

Case Study. Who is currently using this software for email marketing?

Exabytes. I found ActiveCampaign 1.2.All email marketing software two years ago through studied Exabytes newsletters. I seem Exabytes conducted a successful Email Marketing and ‘workable’ email delivery solutions for Malaysia market, the proven result is best convincing example and considerable for me.

Email marketer needs to know what are subscribers receiving

If you are in-charge of email marketing, please check whether your newsletters are flagged as spam in recipient’s mail box. It is a negative impact to your company image or brand if subscribers receiving email newsletters with ‘***SPAM***’ in the subject.

Many large size firms may not aware they are actually spamming, for example:

Email messages flagged as spam

Email newsletters flagged as spam could be avoided if using a reliable Email Marketing solution, for example:

Email messages would not flagged as spam if sender using a reliable email marketing tool/solution

Everyone can do email marketing: Insert promotion details and a few images into an email, then Bcc (blind carbon copy) to the mailing list (group of recipients).

This practice will be fine if sender is a small-size firm, there are many Malaysian companies actually using this method for email marketing, because it needs no cost, easy to use and no technical knowledge required.

Question is, how does sender measure the effectiveness of email marketing that has been made? Blindly sending email to recipients is not a good idea or solution for email marketing, it might bring negative impact to the company image (recipient flagged/categorized sender’s email as unwanted email, junk mail, spam).

Understand Recipients’ Response

To conduct an effective email marketing campaign, sender need to know recipient’s response, behaviors and the market trend. For example, timing (day and time), target market (age group, gender, industry, region), valid email addresses, process flow (email bounce, read, unread, block by firewall/ISP and etc), open rate, click-through rate (promo link/image in the email), email forwarded within an organization (track by reader IP) and etc. Compare these information to the sale report, sender can measure how effective the email marketing has been conducted and what’s good strategy for next. One of the well-known company in Malaysia has been using this method for years is AirAsia.

The Technology Behind – Open Rate and Click Through Rate

A transparent 1 pixel height and width image ‘hidding’ within the email, this image’s URL contains an unique code for tracking purpose, it can only be successfully initiated when reader open the email with “download the image”. Once reader downloads the images (including the tracking image), the image’s URL server record the details such as date, time and email address that open the email. Because image’s URL is a script run on the server, readers don’t know they are actually being tracked. Moreover, sender server even can track how many times an email has been forwarded to different recipient (regardless recipient open email and download its images). With all these data, sender knows the email Open Rate.

This is how the tracking code looks like, the ‘<IMG…’ is an image tag in HTML:
<IMG SRC=http://www.domainname.com/cgi-bin3/flosensing?y=BvBA1UGAc26sSe4BI3>

Some people call this 1×1 pixel hidden image as ‘web bug’. Because it is not necessary but purposely.

Every promotion link/banner/image in an email has an unique code, when reader click through to access the web, it has actually recorded by the server.  This is how sender measures each promotion result in the email by Click Through Rate statistic.

Effective Email Marketing Solutions

Applying this email tracking technology on your own server is not easy, it needs a lot of resources and good relationship with ISPs. Many companies out there offering such services, why not out source to experts and focus on the email marketing plan or seat back to relax?

There are 4 email marketing services that I have been used, they are:

- DoubleClick (http://www.doubleclick.com/) – DART for Advertisers (it used to be called DartMail). DoubleClick is one of Google Group company.

- iContact (http://www.icontact.com/)

- Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com/)

- Vertical Response (http://www.verticalresponse.com/)

By the way, all the above Email Marketing Services are fee based service, the pricing is either on monthly or yearly plan. Individual service has different price based on the volume of email addresses.

My Comment

So which one is AirAsia using? Answer: DoubleClick. Well, I will not recommend it if you have tied budget constraints, because DoubleClick’s pricing is the highest among others above. However, it has the strongest portfolio in the industry and back by Google. If you are looking for a complete Online Marketing Services (online advertisement, email marketing, website traffic and etc), DoubleClick will do.

iContact: iContact’s pricing is reasonable. Malaysia company PYOtravel (subsidiary of Reliance Group) is currently using this service for their email marketing.

Constant Contact: They have good relationship with the ISPs in US, however the pricing not as good as iContact. I used this service when I worked with a cruise line 5 years ago.

Vertical Response: It used to be my preference for email marketing services but I have changed to iContact because of pricing.

Email Marketing Services Comparison

There are many other email marketing services available on the market, to compare their features and read the review, you can visit this page:

http://email-marketing-service-review.toptenreviews.com/

Main Post: Free and Useful Web Applications

Web Wikis:

MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.mediawiki.org/

PmWiki
PmWiki is a system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites. Pages created with pmWiki look and act like normal web pages, except they have a link that makes it easy to modify existing pages and add new pages into the website.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.pmwiki.org/

TWiki
TWiki is a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser. Users without programming skills can create web applications. Developers can extend the functionality of TWiki with Plugins.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.twiki.org/

Main Post: Free and Useful Web Applications

Website Add-Ons:

Advanced Guestbook
Advanced Guestbook is a PHP script that you can use to add a guest book to your Web site.
Free: Yes
Platform: Windows/Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://proxy2.de/scripts.php

Kampyle Feedback
Use Kampyle to: Collect, analyze and manage your website visitor’s feedback. The Kampyle on-demand (SaaS) application combines: Fully customizable feedback forms, Powerful reporting and analysis tools, Easy-to-use feedback management application. Discover how Kampyle lets you leverage valuable customer feedback to improve your website and increase customer satisfaction.
Free: Yes
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.kampyle.com/

Network for Good
Network for is a nonprofit organization that helps other nonprofits raise money and reach supporters online. Founded in 2001 by AOL, Cisco and Yahoo!, Network for Good has processed over $250 million in donations for more than 45,000 nonprofits.
Free: Yes
Review Rating: No Rating
Homepage: http://www.networkforgood.org/

PHCDownload
A file content management and manipulation system unlike any other available on the market today, with unique innovations, tools, and design, customizing and producing your database is made easy.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.phpcredo.com/Software/PHCDownload/

phpMyFAQ
phpMyFaq is a multilingual, database-driven FAQ management system that you can use to create and manage a FAQ on your Web site.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.phpmyfaq.de/

phpmyvisites
phpMyVisites is a free and powerful open source (GNU/GPL) software for websites statistics and audience measurements. phpMyVisites gives a lot of information on websites visitors, visited pages, software/hardware utilization, etc… The GUI Interface is fun and practical. Statistics are very complete and use many clear graphics to present data. The web analytics software is translated in more than 30 languages!
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.phpmyvisites.us/

WebCalendar
WebCalendar is a PHP-based calendar application that can be configured as a single-user calendar, a multi-user calendar for groups of users, or as an event calendar viewable by visitors.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php

WWW Paint Board
WWW Paint Board (Wpb) is a tool where users can draw dynamically on the web with VML (Vector Markup Language) technology.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://obiewebsite.sourceforge.net/obie.php?WWW_Pa

Main Post: Free and Useful Web Applications

Website Tools/Scripts:

Scripts and tools are libraries, not applications. They may require some programming knowledge.

jQuery
jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://jquery.com/

script.aculo.us
script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use, cross-browser user interface JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://script.aculo.us/

Main Post: Free and Useful Web Applications

Online Social Networking:

elgg
Elgg is an open, flexible social networking engine, designed to run at the heart of any socially-aware application. Building on Elgg is easy, and because the engine handles common web application and social functionality for you, you can concentrate on developing your idea. Elgg is open source. That means, when you use Elgg, you have the benefit of being part of a large developer community, with the security and stability that hundreds of eyes can provide. It’s also headed and used by Curverider and its partners, so you can be assured that it’s in commercial use and will cope with the demands of a popular application.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.elgg.org/

KickApps
Create your own social network with photo & video sharing, blogs, message boards, widgets, video players and much more. Your social network is hosted by KickApps and can be integrated directly into your website. Customize it with your design, mask its DNS and go global with multiple languages. It’s an easy way to make your website social. Sign up today, and receive an extra 10% off.
Free: Yes
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.kickapps.com/

Main Post: Free and Useful Web Applications

Web Project Management:

Brim
Brim is a personal information manager which provides online management of your bookmarks/favorites, your calendar, tasks, notes, recipes, passwords and much more!
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.brim-project.org/


dotProject
dotProject is a web-based project management application, designed to provide project layout and control functions. dotProject aims to provide the project manager with a tool to manage tasks, schedules, communication and sharing.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.dotproject.net/

Mantis
Mantis is a free popular web-based bugtracking system.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.mantisbt.org/

phpCollab
phpCollab is a collaboration and project management system that enables you to set up and manage a projects and share files.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.php-collab.org/blog/

PHProjekt
PHProjekt is a modular application for the coordination of group activities and to share informations and documents via the web.
Free: Yes
Platform: Linux
Review Rating:
Homepage: http://www.phprojekt.com/