If it shows up fast, people will stop to take a look.
If it doesn't, they will leave, never to return.
So, how do you increase site speed?
Start with a good web hosting service.
Yes it's basic. Like people who don't understand how critical it is to control and renew business domain names
A website put up in 2010 or earlier is long past it's expiry date.
Worse, it tells potential prospects you're out of touch.
Like wearing bell bottoms to a party
If there's only one thing you do this year, take existing content and flow it into a modern container
Focus on speed. Followed by navigation.
Why do people come to your site ?
When you break it down, there are only three types of websites.
The ones that inform, the ones that entertain and the ones you buy from.
Most digital businesses are rocket ships.
The slower the site, the more customers they lose
Strip everything that slows your site down.
Large images. Pages with outdated information.
Tables and charts stuck in limbo
It's like turning away people who have arrived at your doorstep.
Because they see a museum piece in a digital age.
Why do you want to chase business away?
Software code is the new abcdef
Will Java replace nursery rhymes? And C++ share space with ABC?
30 years of living in a digital world has made it clear. Software code is the new alphabet
Estonia figured it out a couple of decades ago. What a digital nation means.
Learning to code early was as important as math and science and history.
In India, most coders start off on their own in high school or college.
The coding introductions in school are more theory than practice. Hardly the way to learn.
That was the opportunity an Indian company saw in 2018.
The universe of Indian schools was untapped
Parents who already were into IT saw the opportunity much earlier.
So, does it make sense to start teaching children to code at age six?
It gives them a decade long head-start
It was just a question of time before an entrepreneur capitalised on it
According to the UNICEF : The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with more than 1.5 million schools, 8.5 million teachers and 250 million children.
That's the size of the pie.
Now, does Byju's snapping up White Hat Jr. for Rs. 300 million make sense?
Next question.
Of Hamam soap and pitch jingles
Back in the early 90s, when I worked at Mudra communications, we got a chance to pitch for Hamam soap.
As usual, some last minute work had to be done overnight.
At the studio, the sound engineer suggested a recent entrant to Chennai, 'Bombay' Jayashri.
Some South Indian names are fairly common, so the place or a little quirk differentiates one from the other.
'Bombay' Jayashri came in and rendered the jingle in a few minutes. With her talent and ability, it was a stroll in the park.
We didn't win the pitch but that was my first and only interaction with the singer.
She went on to make a major impact on the Carnatic Music scene in Chennai and her body of work shines.
She's one of the revered stars at the Chennai Music season and performs at prime time to packed houses.
So, it was a pleasant surprise to come across her son and brother sing an old Talat Mahmood song on YouTube.
'Aansoo samajh ke yoon mujhe' is beautifully rendered and the ease took me back to that studio decades ago.
Strange how the mind makes connections with forgotten threads.
The song link if you’d like to listen
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