A simple look into Indonesia Internet scene. Where the ideas come from, what inspires the look and feel, how this website building its content and getting the traffic. All the information is an interview with Indonesian Internet evangelist, including: Kapanlagi, Kaskus, Plasa, Bhinneka, Diana Rikasari, Orori, Cotton Ink and Urbanesia. Presented at Accelerate, Singtel Conference.

1. Designing the Indonesia Andi S. Boediman
Chief Innovation Officer
Online Experiences Plasa.com

2. Designing the Online Experiences
The interview conducted around these questions
• Designing the Ideas
How did you come up with the website idea and differentiate among other
website?
• Designing the Content
How do you design a good content for people to keep visiting the site?
• Designing the Traffic
How do you drive traffic to your site?
• Designing the Look and Feel
How do you design the look and feel of the site to relate to your target
audience? Any particular technology and consideration?

3. Steve Christian
Kapanlagi.com
“Main strength is market
positioning, our brand as
entertainment site. People google
keywords KapanLagi.com™
because of our strong brand.”

4. Designing the Ideas
Kapanlagi.com
“Based on our content categories and users favorites, we create a differentiation. The idea is simple to
provide easy navigation and expose our main content categories and to be able to accommodate
our content growth without cluttering users with too many choices. The apps like in iPhone/Android/
Blackberry and recently the iPad influence our homepage design.”

5. Designing the Content & Traffic
Kapanlagi.com
“Google Analytics provide tools to learn from users behavior,
what users click and don't. Editorials focus on users behaviors
including how long they stay in the site, how many pages
they explore, and how long they stay in each page, and
what contents reap clicks what don't. Users adapt new
technology fast, we have to keep pace with Ajax which becomes
de-facto standard in presenting content, and soon HTML5. SEO
drive new visitors from entertainment related keywords.”

6. Designing the Look & Feel
Kapanlagi.com
“The main consideration is how fast. Many users
nationwide don't have the luxury of speedy internet
connection, the foremost consideration is that
users can access our site fast enough but we
absolutely can't ignore beautiful design. The
content keeps users coming back but the
look and feel make users stay longer.
Browsers compatibility are second most
important, despite of Firefox stronghold over
internet browsers in the country, still there are
numerous browsers to be compatible with.
Especially with growing new devices to access our
site, we need to keep compatible with each.”

7. Andrew Darwis
Kaskus.us
“We have a loyal users and we get
the feedback for the design,
content, look and feel. They
become our Business
Development Officer :P”

8. Designing the Look & Feel
Kaskus.us
“Listen to users is not always easy, when we change from forum to the current
design (which is more interesting for advertisers and users), there’s so much
complaints and critics from the users. Even some become cranky and don’t want
to “ngaskus” again. We need to keep improving in the next 3 months. Our email
bombarded with critics and suggestions... moderators got private messages... etc.
At the end, the result is better... not perfect but at least favored by the
users.”

9. Designing the Look & Feel
Kaskus.us
“We use skin design when designing the channels (eg.
Kids Channel with UNICEF).”

10. Designing the Content & Traffic
Kaskus.us
“If users want to create new category, we ask them to gather minimum amount
of users and at least one of them have the knowledge about the category and
supported by their friends to become a moderator. So when we create the new
category it will directly used by the users.
As we know, user in Indonesia is not loyal, come and go... if they go to the
site and no content.. for sure he is not coming back in the future.”

11. Designing the Content & Traffic
Kaskus.us
http://regional.kompas.com/read/2010/09/15/10074617/
http://www.kaskus.us/showthread.php?t=5282891
Tulang.Naga.Berkaki.6.Gegerkan.Bangka-5
“The latest news is the “dragon fossils” at South Bangka. This news become an instant hit and the
journalists pick up the story to be published in the media.”

12. Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo
Plasa.com
“We want a website that is friendly
and pleasing to the users. The
whole idea of Plasa.com should be
a site where people can hang
out, just like in a mall.”

13. Designing the Look & Feel
Plasa.com
“The colors are picked to be bright yet pleasing and
we want all genders and age to be able to relate to
the colors of the site that we pick. We also want the
site structure to be friendly and users know the flow
of the site itself in seconds they open it. We don’t
want this site only screams women or teenage
look... it should be able to invite all ages and
genders since it is meant to be an online mall.”

14. Designing the Content
Plasa.com
“Like in a mall, people will need to create
excitement with promotions. We do weekly
promotions, where we offer great deals with the
merchants. We create stories inside Plasa, to
highlight interesting stories of merchants, so
others can see the values and interesting angles of
the merchants. Soon, we will revive our free
emails, that will definitely create the traffic in the
long run.”

15. Designing the Traffic
Plasa.com
“#sawityowit (saur with your twitter) is a hashtag created
by Ari Dagienkz, Desta and Vincent Rompies as a
morning joke during Ramadhan fasting. By bringing this
hashtag hosted at http://sawityowit.plasa.com, we drive
traffics to plasa.com and bring in new users to sign up.
The program is integrated with major radio talkshow to
amplify the campaign. Celebrity always has a place for
Indonesian users.”

16. Tommy Chandra
Bhinneka.com
“Being an e-commerce website, we
believe in complete information
of the products followed by
good presentation of the
products.”

17. Designing the Look & Feel
Bhinneka.com
“We change the theme of our
design regularly based on
global events or seasons
(something like world cup
soccer, christmas/new year
theme, etc.)
Bhinneka also invite users to
participate by conducting
photography competition.”

18. Designing the Content & Traffic
Bhinneka.com
“IT products changes at a very high pace,
we have to keep up with all the latest
products. To drive traffic, we used to use
print ads, but currently we use SEO and
off-line promotions.
A unique feature in the website is that the
price is negotiable and feature
comparison between products.”

19. Selina Limman
Urbanesia.com
“The problem was it's very hard to
find products and services in
Jakarta especially
recommendations about which
ones are the best.”

20. Designing the Content
Urbanesia.com
“People often say, Content is King and
Presentation is Queen. I think in Indonesia
Content trumps Presentation (design). So try to
focus on content. However Urbanesia's content is
derived from the users. Therefore we provided a
fun and rewarding platform for users to generate
content for Urbanesia. This way people are coming
back to generate more content for Urbanesia. And
if we have good content, people would keep
coming back to Urbanesia. For me good contents
is not commercialized, updated and relevant
to the user.”

21. Designing the Look & Feel
Urbanesia.com
“Before we design the look and feel of the website, we
define the typical target audience of Urbanesia. Then
from there we decided the look and feel of the website.
The typical user of Urbanesia is targeted to be young
and cheerful. That's why we picked the green
Urbanesia color because it's fresh, bright and unisex.
Another key factor was deciding the direction
towards lifestyle info than a directory. That's why
people don't relate Urbanesia to Yellowpages although
we offer similar information.”

22. Diana Rikasari
Hot Chocolate & Mint Blog
“I realize that I ‘don't know much
about fashion’ because I actually
don't read fashion magazines and I
thought it would be interesting to
highlight this. A fashion blog
written by a non-fashionista! :)”

23. Designing the Content & Traffic
Dianarikasari.blogspot.com
“My blog is my personal space where I just wanna to have
fun. I talk on issue that I care...sometime inviting others
to join in a competitions, giveaway, and all that.
It is important to consistently and continuously post on a
regular basis. And I do blogwalking and leave
comments on other people's blog.”

24. Designing the Look & Feel
Dianarikasari.blogspot.com
“I believe that my readers are also more image-driven than text-oriented, hence I try to display more
colorful images rather than long text-posts.”

25. George B. Sumantri
Orori.com
“The key to our site is product
customization that integrate to
our factory production line.”

26. Designing the Traffic
Orori.com
“We use SEM and Facebook ads to drive traffic
to out site. And we find out that Facebook fan
page is the most cost effective and relevant to
stay in touch with the customers.
Engine, products and update is our way to
attract users. And we have to keep up with
current trend such as social media as part of
our website experiences.”

27. Designing the Look & Feel
Orori.com
“Since our product is bought by couples, we
design our site to entice both of them. Our
engine allow users to change specification of the
product such as type of gold, carat size of the
diamond to meet their budget, and etc. Woman
usually buy things more on the design so our
engine allows to zoom easily just by doing mouse
over of the products.
We use a professional photographer specializes
in jewelry in order to get the real touch and feel
for Orori product.”

28. Ria Sarwono &
Carline Darjanto
Cotton Ink
“COTTON INK is casual with a
twist. So, we want to make our
webstore is simple but also, still
got it twist. We are proud to be a
local brand, but its even more
proud to be the local one who can
represent it in international feel.”

29. Designing the Products
Cottonink-shop.com
“We try to put ourself in customer's shoes. If
our webstore give the same pictures for about 3-4
weeks, they'll get bored. So we try to catch the
gap by giving information faster in our webstore,
and whenever people go to our webstore they'll
think that our product is always new. We can't
really tell when they want to shop, or when they
won't.
We launch four collections every year, spring/
summer collection, pre-fall collection, fall/winter
and resort collection.””

30. Designing the Look & Feel
Cottonink-shop.com
“We imagine what kind of person out there
who buy our products. What is her/his
everyday style? What are their job? Where do
they live? Where do they go after work? After
school? What gadget that they use? Where
do they go to buy clothes? After we got the
‘look’ we transfer it to our webstore look &
feel. Photography is our main attraction to
define the look & feel for the website.”

31. Designing the Content & Traffic
Cottonink-shop.com
“We started from Blogspot, Facebook and Youtube. But we never sell via Facebook, it’s only giving
customer information about what's new. Now, we also have Twitter to give people the latest information
about what we have in our webstore. So far, this is successfully attract people to go to our webstore. The
last, the power of word of mouth marketing.”
Brightspot Market (brightspotmarket.com)–an exhibition at the major mall, brings them to mainstream
awareness as visitors voted Cotton Ink to become the Favorite Brand.

32. Key Takeway
• Users
Always listen to users, even though sometimes it’s hard
Allow user participation
• Content
Update regularly and religiously
Content is the main attraction, even more than presentation
Celebrity has its place among Indonesian users
• Look & Feel
Photography will define the site look and feel
Theme and skin design change based seasonal campaign
• Traffic
Promotion drives traffic
SEO, SEM and social media provides direct traffic

33. Special Thanks to
• Steve Christian – Kapanlagi.com @kapanlagi
• Andrew Darwis – Kaskus.us @adarwis
• Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo – Plasa.com @shintabubu
• Tommy Chandra – Bhinneka.com @bhinnekacom
• Selina Limman – Urbanesia.com @urbanesia
• Diana Rikasari – Hot Chocolate and Mint @dianarikasari
• George B. Sumantri – Orori.com @orori
• Ria Sarwono & Carline Darjanto – Cottonink-Shop.com @cottonink

34. Andi S. Boediman
Chief Innovation Officer
Plasa.com
andisboediman@gmail.com
www.ideonomics.com
@andisboediman
Keep ins
pired!