Asia2You.net

Introduction

Asia2You.net promotes the work of indigenous craftspeople, sustaining local economies and allowing for a continuous tradition of the Vietnamese arts through the sale of handmade Vietnamese folk and craft art.  While the parent company is named Asia2You.net, the company uses five much more effective and product specific domain names with which to market and sell their products:

www.VietnameseArtwork.com
www.JustLanterns.com
www.SilkFans.com
www.OrientalTeasets.com
www.EverythingSilk.com

Each website has its own consistently-styled logo:

 

 No official slogan is used, although each “about” page does state that the company is “the leading online source for Asian folk artwork”.

Overview

This case demonstrates the necessity for rapidly-growing small businesses to create a high level of consumer trust and confidence via enhanced branding strategies and professional web design.

Brand/Domain Names

One of the most effective domain name strategies is to select a domain name that is composed of words which are common keywords for the market niche. Asia2You.net has keenly implemented this strategy by using domain names which describe each of their product categories within their primary niche of Vietnamese Art: VietnameseArtwork.com, JustLanterns.com, SilkFans.com, OrientalTeasets.com, and EverythingSilk.com. Each of these is a solid B-grade domain, although OrientalTeasets.com may be a level below the other four. Asia2You may want to consider investing in an even better name, such as VietameseArt.com to replace/supplement VietnameseArtwork.com and Asia2You.net (we were quoted a price of $3800 for VietnameseArt.com by BuyDomains.com, but negotiation should be able to bring this down below $1500). The company may also find it more beneficial to use AsianTeasets.com (currently unregistered) instead of/in addition to OrientalTeasets.com. The company may also want to consider acquiring the following available domains: VietnamFolkArt.com (unregistered), HandmadeVietnam.com (unregistered), FolkArtAsia.com (unregistered), and/or FolkArtShop.com (available on Sedo.com for under $500). Any of these may work better than Asia2You.net as the parent domain.

The importance of these niche-keyword domains cannot be underestimated. The domain SilkFans.com immediately establishes the company (in the minds of consumers) as the best and most appropriate place on the Internet to buy a silk fan. Further, the larger the described niche, the greater the enhancement to a company’s reputation and proficiency in acquiring the highest-quality products in the niche. It is for this reason that we recommended to Asia2You that, if possible, their domain strategies be upgraded, especially with regard to VietnameseArt.com.  

Company Logo

In moving away from an Ebay company to become a legitimate stand-alone Internet business, the entrepreneur should strive to re-acquire the confidence and security of the Internet consumer through, among many other factors, measured improvements in the professionalism of the firm’s brand identity and website design.

Asia2You would therefore benefit from a more conservative, professionally designed logo for each of their websites. Their current set of logos are of consistent design and serve to accurately characterize the products in the category, but do not instill consumer confidence via the professional appearance of a successful Internet company.

Our redesign depicts an oil painting of a Vietnamese cottage next to a red tree.  We feel the depiction is visually engaging while providing the prospective customer a good idea of VietnameseArtwork.com's product offerings, which is primarily paintings.  The logo's color scheme (red/yellow) is consistent with the colors of the Vietnamese flag, which we will suggest below as the color scheme for the entire site. 

The logo appears below. We also submitted "The Internet's Premier Source for Asian Folk Art" to the client as another possible slogan.  The main font is ReedFont. 

Website Design

Additionally, we recommended a number of changes to the website design of Asia2You’s websites which would work to improve the appearance of the sites and the perceived reputability of the company. Their current homepage appears as follows:

 

     

The company could implement some very economical yet extremely effective design modifiations, the elements of which are as follows:

• Use the new logos provided above.
• Strive to make each of the 5 homepages of the sites smaller: Reduce the size of the logo, make the thumbnails smaller and of consistent height for each row, condense text descriptions to only essential information, make category headings smaller and more conservative.
• Improve the quality/resolution of the photographs throughout the site. Use a higher resolution camera, take all photos with a solid backround, try not to "over edit" photos (some minor brightness and contrast adjustments are usually sufficient), and reduce the size of large product photos to a uniform size (between 500 and 600 pixels along the largest dimension).  These changes will not only improve the appearance of the site, but will increase sales as the products will be more attractively represented to prospective consumers.
• Make colors consistent across the five websites. We might suggest using the red and yellow of the Vietnamese flag.  Note that we used these colors in the sample logo designs above. This would further enhance consistency across sites and identify the business as one which acquires its products directly from Vietnam. Color changes should include elements such as text, rollover text colors, borders, buttons, backgrounds, etc…

After implementing these changes, the proposed new web page illustrates a very positive transformation in the site's appearance: