Nepali Web Design :

Past Scenario: In the past as early as the year 2000, only a few companies could afford to have a website and not many people knew about the web concept. There we just a few internet service providers who themselves where the web designers, and the design and hosting cost were high enough to call them as a luxury of a company! There were no specialized computer institutions offering web-designing courses in those times.

The year 2001 was a break through, as this is the year of cheaper Internet access and many web design companies came into existence. Many web sites of tours and travel companies were first seen on the Internet. The market, failed to be grabbed by Internet service providers, went to new and specialized web companies like Yomari, View Nepal, Visit Nepal and many others who came with competitive packages to rescue the web-design-need in Nepal.

In the year 2001, many tours and travel sites appeared on the Internet, and most of them looked almost identical expect for the name of the company! When you visited a tours and travel website of Nepal, you could see familiar buttons such as Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and Mount Everest Fly!!. Everyone who had a web page wanted to promote Nepal, for they knew visitors must be introduced to this country. So you could find a page or a nice link on every website that said 'Click here to know About Nepal'. Some websites of today still carry this elegant touch of introducing Nepal to the world while others are much focused on offering information about their company and products.

All Nepali websites were in plain HTML. There were no dynamic (so called website that change every time you visit it) sites. The trend was to have a website anyhow and the requirement for quality was overlooked. The type of web design upto the year 2001 as a `brochure' type of website, where you have a few photos of your company, contact details and a few pages on Nepal. During the year 2001, websites of tourism sector mainly dominated the portion of Nepali websites.

In the mid 2001, we saw the site cloning or rather spamming mostly from tours and travel companies. A technique used to create duplicate websites and host them in different domain names to get visitors from both the websites. This spamming took its toll as some of the web designing companies offered this service as a solution to get better results on search. This unusual and false method of attracting business from someone who already has a website created new business for the new web designers while it created further problems for the customer. Those who had duplicate sites required paying for additional services such as cost for domain name and hosting charges and the results from the web were unsatisfactory.

Current Situation: Today the Internet is affordable in Nepal and the idea of creating website that can actually answer our questions is now a reality. Many company today want their website to interact with users and sell products online.

Nepal's web technology has also ventured into the foreign market, as the technology is universal, and web programming and designing costs are relatively cheaper here. Some are busy exporting their services while small to medium sized web designers are busy capturing newer domestic markets. For foreign web design projects, materials such as photo, and texts are sent to Nepal by courier or by personal visit. Most popular of the foreign web designing is the web programming for dynamic websites in ASP and PHP language. Today on average a medium sized web designing company can afford to have two secretary, one personal assistant and up to 10 web designers and programmers. Some of the companies here in Katmandu have as many as 80 web programmers alone! Currently there is a bit of saturation in the web designing field specially for the tours and travel sector, so for domestic market, many are targeting the schools, universities, auto distributors, lawyers, doctors and government where still 70% of the total web designing market exists. Currently web designers are expanding their base in other cities including Pokhara, Biratnagar, Chitwan and Butwal.

Nilam Gurkhali, Administrator Web Services of World Link Pvt Ltd says, "Today web business in Nepal is excellent. More and more small companies are now aware of this technically and want their presence on the Internet. These days, customers seek better site design, upgrades and quality of hosting service. Today many small to large companies have their own web designers but for quality many prefer to go to professional web designers to use their specialized tools and skills. "

Today's customers are demanding and have clear understanding of the objectives to achieve through their websites and hence demand the best in web design and web content. An unofficial report indicates, that web companies that focus on increasing customer base will lose out more than those who focus on quality design. The report tells us that on average 25% of the web designers worldwide lose their old customers due to competition, or failure to update customer's website on time or by choice of customers. In web, getting a new customer is easy but keeping the old customers have become increasingly difficult. In Nepal, for better customer service, web designers and hosting companies are offering free email addresses, free training on web design or even training in computers, and free banner advertisement services. Today our web design industry is lead by more than five thousand professionals, 500% more than last year, which is perhaps the highest in any IT field in Nepal.

Future Scenario: By the end of year 2003, we can expect to see as many as 1000 New Nepali Websites. By year 2005, there will be at least 100 e-commerce website. Some of us will use them to pay our bills, some will use to order 'momo' from Bakery café, some will log on to school's to see our children's scores, and some of us will work from home. All these are already a reality in the east and west, clock is just ticking for it's SHOW in Nepal!

More developers will come in this business, rates of web designing will be cheaper and more and more web-enabled software will be in use. The web companies offering innovative ideas in design, programming and understanding of customer's problems and solving them through creative web solutions will survive!  ..Top 20 Nepali sites of the year 2002.. Next>>