Archive for the ‘internet usage’ Category

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Step-by-step guide to registering your own small business online

Friday, November 22nd, 2013
Photo credit; Midiman on Flickr

Photo credit; Midiman on Flickr

The Sydney Morning Herald recently published a step-by-step guide for who want to register their own small business online.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Decide on your business structure.

2. Apply for your Australian Business Number (ABN).

3. Check that your chosen business name is available.

4. Register your business name.

5. Register your website domain name.

Step 1: Decide on your business structure
When starting a business choose the business structure that best suits your needs.
Your business structure (aka applicant or entity type) refers to the way you will operate your business.
These include:
  • Sole trader: an individual trading on their own
  • Partnership: an association of people or entities running a business together, but not as a company
  • Trust: an entity that holds property or income for the benefit of others
  • Company: a legal entity separate from its shareholders.
You can change your business structure as your business grows.
Visit the Australian Taxation Office website for more information on each business structure.
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Step 2: Applying for your Australian Business Number (ABN)
Your ABN is a unique number that allows you to identify your business to government and other businesses.
You can get your ABN online at the Australian Business Register.
Applying for an ABN is free and should take about 30 minutes.
Things you will need to provide:
  • your personal details
  • your business information
  • your associate details
  • reasons for your application
  • your business activity details and
  • a declaration that the information you have provided throughout the application is true.
Your new ABN will appear on the completed application screen and will be ready for you to use right away.
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Step 3: Checking your chosen business name is available
You can check the availability of a business name online at the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) website.
To check if your proposed business name is available:
  1. Search business names register on the ASIC Connect website.
  2. From the drop down menu select ‘Check business name availability’.
  3. Enter the name you would like to search in the field below.
  4. Submit your search by pressing the ‘Go’ button.
If your name is not available, keep searching until you find one that isn’t claimed.
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Step 4: Registering your business name
After you have found an available business name, register the name with the ASIC to secure it by:
  1. Going to the ASIC Connect website.
  2. Signing up to create an account with ASIC prior to beginning your application. Once you have your account you can begin the application.
  3. Completing the application. This should take you around 15-20 minutes to complete and at the end of the application you will receive confirmation that your chosen name has been registered.
Applying for a business name costs $33 AUD for one year or $76 for three years. Visit the ASIC website for more information on business name payments and fees.
Your business name is only your identification and registering it does not give you full rights over the name. You should trade mark your business name, too.
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Step 5: Registering your website domain name
Your domain name is your website address on the internet and gives your business an online identity or brand for your customers.
When picking a website name it’s best to go with a name that:
  • represents your business
  • is easy to remember, pronounce and spell
  • is three syllables or less.
If you want to buy a .com.au or .net.au web address you will need to have an ABN.
To register your domain name go to the .au Domain Administration Ltd (.auDA) website for links to registrars and resellers, and to confirm current fees and options.

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Posted in Australia, business, domain names, E-mail & the internet, Federal Government, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »

David Jones online sales up 1,000%

Wednesday, November 20th, 2013
1000 - Miguel

Photo credit; Miguel on Flickr

While sales growth for David Jones is flat-lining, its online sales increased by more than 1,000% in the first quarter of this financial year just ended.

Compare that to total sales revenue of $424.2 million, up just 2.1 per cent.

David Jones didn’t put a dollar figure to the online sales.

The key takeouts from the quarterly David Jones report:

* New South Wales and Victoria stores are the strongest for sales.

* Online sales up more than 1,000 per cent in the quarter. Its relaunched webstore is 12 months old next week.

* Total Sales up 2.1 per cent to $424.2 million from the same quarter the previous year of $415.6 million.

* Like for Like Sales down 0.3% to $414.2 million from $415.6 million.

* Sales were up 0.6 per cent excluding the disruption impact of the Canberra Centre store
refurbishment

To read more about this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »

CEO of eWay vows to drag Aussie businesses to ecommerce, even if they are kicking and screaming

Monday, November 18th, 2013
Illustration credit; Tsahi Levent-Levi on Flickr

Illustration credit; Tsahi Levent-Levi on Flickr

The CEO of Australian online payment gateway provider eWay has taken it upon himself to try and coax more Australian businesses to embrace ecommerce by dramatically overhauling the speed at which businesses can gain a merchant account and get paid after transacting.

“We are going to change the speed of how long it takes to get a merchant account. Right now, if you try to get a merchant account, it takes four weeks, six weeks, six months,” eWay CEO and founder Matt Bullock says. “We are pushing it down to four days, and then we will change that down to four hours next year, then eventually get that down to nought hours. That is by getting rid of a whole bunch of banking processes which are busted, and us fixing them and doing them properly.”

The increased speed comes at a price: 2.2 percent and AU$0.30 per transaction, and an AU$25 per month fee. However, that also includes 24/7 support, which banks don’t offer.

Bullock says the higher cost won’t deter merchants, as they are more concerned with the issue of the time taken to get online, get trading, and get paid.

“You talk to the [payment] gateway [company], they say, ‘go away and talk to a bank’,” Bullock says. “You talk to the bank, and that is a long and painful process; sometimes you finish through it and sometimes you don’t. We’re saying, ‘talk to us, you don’t need to talk to your bank. We will do it all and we’ll do it quicker than the banks have ever done it before.’”

To read more about this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, innovation, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »

CMS Critic gives you 10 reasons to embrace WooCommerce for your online startup

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

 

Photo credit; SEOPlanter on Flickr

Photo credit; SEOPlanter on Flickr

CMS Critic has published its 10 reasons why people thinking of creating an online store should think about using WooCommerce.

Kaya Ismail, who wrote the piece, says you’d be hard-pressed to find a similar plugin which holds the same level of potential as WooCommerce.

WooCommerce now supports a sizeable slice of the ever-growing ecommerce pie, with over 1.6M downloads from around the world.

The open-source platform provides users with a feature extensive, yet hugely user-friendly experience, making it perfect for ecommerce startups to get a feel for online business in a way which is easy to digest, and doesn’t cost too much money.

CMS Critic’s reasons to check out WooCommerce for online startups:

1. It’s Free

Despite being free and open-source, WooCommerce offers extensive features out of the box, whilst also being extremely flexible both by nature, and via the additional of extensions.

2. Huge Flexibility

Merchants using the platform can exercise a whole lot of flexibility with their products, without having to know too much about the technical side of things.

3. More Than Ecommerce

WooCommerce doesn’t force users to go beyond their comfort zone when building their online store, yet at the same time, it readily opens the door for more than just ecommerce.

For example, WooCommerce users can build a fully functioning store within a professional website, alongside an integrated blog.

4. Familiar Friendliness

With WooCommerce being a WordPress plugin, past users of the platform will benefit from being able to recognize the user-friendly WordPress interface. That kind of familiarity when building an online store could easily save time and confusion, whilst bolstering creativity.

5. Vast Customization Options

Currently, users can choose between 39 different WooCommerce enabled themes. Once a theme has been selected, you can then get to work on changing pre-set CSS styles and colour themes, tweaking the code and experimenting with the special features which each theme offers.

6. Professional Yet Simple

Built into the platform can be found detailed order tracking and customer engagement tools, which allow merchants to view past and open orders, update delivery statuses, apply discounts and so forth. Pretty much everything else you need for a professional ecommerce setup, is part of WooCommerce, right out of the box.

7. Analytics Made Easy

The built in analytics system makes a wide array of statistics crystal clear. Figures like total sales, sales by date, average order totals, individual customer statistics and much more are all neatly presented via graphs, without the user ever having to leave their admin panel.

8. Apps Galore

There are hundreds of WooCommerce Extensions available, some of which are free, and some of which require a fee. From these extensions, one can find applications relating to accounting, payment gateways, marketing, reporting and more.

9. Room For Growth

As simple as WooCommerce is as an ecommerce platform, it also allows you to exercise some growth and expansion in terms of how you manage your store, products and customers.

10. Because WooThemes

They  have a wonderful track record of being reliable and exceedingly professional with both their products, and their support system. On top of a myriad of real, contactable people to talk to, WooThemes users can benefit from community forums, video tutorials, and more.

To read more about this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, Woo extensions, Woo Plugins, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Extensions, WooCommerce Themes | No Comments »

Australian businesses ready to embrace cloud computing

Monday, November 11th, 2013
Photo credit; Kei51

Photo credit; Kei51

Australia is the second-most cloud ready country in the world, according to the Business Software Alliance.

A report from the International Data Corporation (IDC) revealed that about 86% of businesses in Australia were using the cloud in some aspect in July this year, which was a 15% increase compared to the same time last year.

The IDC also predicted that the Australian market for public cloud services will grow at a compound annual rate of 24.7% over the next five years, reaching about A$2.6 billion in 2017.

The Australia Business Review says more Australian businesses should embrace cloud computing because:

  • It is relatively easy and inexpensive to set up a cloud computing system.
  • The cloud enables you to streamline your computing processes and achieve economies of scale.
  • You can complete your computing tasks in less time and increase your productivity with fewer workers.
  • It provides easy and secure data backup and recovery.
  • Cloud computing technology will continue to evolve and get better in the future.

To read more about this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, cloud computing, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, technology, web-based | No Comments »

Harvey Norman is late to the online party, but a welcomed guest nonetheless

Friday, November 8th, 2013
Photo credit; Nicolas Nova on Flickr

Photo credit; Nicolas Nova on Flickr

Harvey Norman has moved from confrontation to convert when it comes to online sales.

The retailer’s executive chairman Gerry Harvey famously described internet retail as “a lot of crap” in 1999 and was skeptical about it even as recently as 2006.

In November 2011 Harvey Norman finally joined the 21st Century and launched a website  that now accounts for 2% of group sales and is reporting annualised growth of more than 100% as sales from the Australian business overall have fallen for six of the past eight quarters.

“We were a little bit behind but we’re catching up,” says Gary Wheelhouse, Harvey Norman head of digital. Harvey Norman was so behind, in fact, that Wheelhouse’s job title didn’t even exist three years ago.

But he agrees with the prediction of Myer boss Bernie Brookes that Australia will follow the US and British markets, where big department stores such as Nordstrom and John Lewis are the biggest players in the online sector.

“Pure plays are great but one of the challenges that they have which we don’t is having inventory close to where customers are, and that’s really driving a lot of our thoughts on development,” Wheelhouse says.

“Very few online retailers would be able to get a camera to a customer in Karratha this afternoon, but we can because we have inventory in 170-odd locations across Australia. A lot of our products are about instant gratification — Lumia 1020 phones and Grand Theft Auto 5, people want it right now. That’s one of the big things driving our growth.”

The store network, mostly franchised outlets, are used as “click and collect” points for customers. The payoff for franchisees is that they have a chance to sell the customer picking up their online purchases something else — on that visit or in the future.

“We think of our store network as being our fulfilment partners, and click-and-collect customers buy more when they go into the store,” Wheelhouse says.

“It’s a local Harvey Norman customer, so sometimes they’re buying online and picking up in store, and other times they’re doing research online and then going into the store, so it works both ways. The benefits for franchisees are about servicing their local customer who is going to do the majority of their business with that store.”

To read more on this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »

Australian small business websites hit by hackers in wake of spying scandal

Wednesday, November 6th, 2013
Photo credit; Eliot Phillips on Flickr

Photo credit; Eliot Phillips on Flickr

Hackers claiming links to international activist group Anonymous defaced dozens of websites belonging to Australian businesses recently.

A group calling itself Anonymous Indonesia posted on Twitter a list of more than 100 Australian sites it had hacked, saying the action was in response to reports of spying by Australia.

The websites were defaced with a message reading “Stop Spying on Indonesia” and are mainly owned by small Australian businesses. They seemed to have been chosen at random.

Australia has been implicated in spying by its role in a U.S.-led surveillance network.

Reports that the Australian embassy in Jakarta was being used for spying prompted Indonesia to summon the Australian ambassador last week. And China demanded an explanation from the United States after the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported Australian embassies across Asia were part of the U.S. operation.

To read more on this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, controversy, cybercrime, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business, online stores | No Comments »

Survey shows majority of Australian businesses suffer from digital illiteracy

Wednesday, November 6th, 2013
Photo credit; Justin Marty on Flickr

Photo credit; Justin Marty on Flickr

A survey commissioned by PayPal Australia has found that 57 percent of local businesses identify as having such low levels of digital literacy that it is preventing the business from operating more efficiently.

The survey also found:

  • only 51 percent of respondents said they have tried to improve their digital skills.
  • only 26 percent of respondants were selling online
  • just over a third were listing the business contact details online,
  • 65 percent said that conducting business online is the key to growing.

The survey was conducted by Lonergan Research, which sampled 507 Australian businesses with less than 20 employees.

“Small businesses are a cornerstone of the Australian economy; it is vitally important that public and private sector unite to empower their ongoing success, ensuring that technology does not serve to disproportionately favour geographies, demographics, or industry sectors,” said Jeff Clementz, managing director of PayPal Australia.

To read more on this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, Paypal, selling online | No Comments »

Regional Development Australia Southern Inland wants to boost Australian online business presence

Tuesday, November 5th, 2013
Photo credit; Angela Thomas on Flickr

Photo credit; Angela Thomas on Flickr

Regional Development Australia Southern Inland aims to help local community organisations and small to medium businesses navigate their way around the internet and take advantage of high speed broadband with the Capital Digital Enterprise Program.

“The Australia Government has done research and the reason this program exists is because it showed that only 23% of Australian businesses have a proper online presence,” project officer Richard Everson said. “So 75% of businesses could do better online, there’s a huge potential there.”

The program will be delivered through a series of free weekly workshops facilitated by Three Sides Marketing as well as one-on-one mentoring sessions.

The two-hour workshops include topics such as:

  • creating a website
  • online marketing principles
  • e-commerce
  • online security, and
  • online business tools.

“There’s 16 workshops in total and we’ll run the circuit three times. There’ll be plenty of opportunity to attend workshops over the two years,” he said.

The program is designed for total novices to those who have already ventured into the online world.

Everson encouraged local community groups not just businesses to take advantage of the program which is scheduled to run until August 2015.

“Almost every single person in Queanbeyan belongs to a sporting group or a church group or a youth group or some sort of association. Don’t think just because it’s technology, it has to be a business,” he said.

“Sporting groups can run a website, send text messages to their players if the game’s cancelled, things like that.

“There’s something for everybody.”

An Introduction to the Capital Region Digital Enterprise Program will be held on Tuesday, November 5 at the Airport International Hotel from 5.30 – 7.30pm. Workshops will be held every Tuesday after that. For more information or to book, visit www.crde.com.au.

To read more on this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »

iSelect to miss revenue target, CEO resigns

Monday, November 4th, 2013
Photo credit; Dan DeChiaro on Flickr

Photo credit; Dan DeChiaro on Flickr

Australian online comparison company iSelect Ltd said recently it would miss its revenue target for the first half of fiscal year 2014 and revealed that its chief executive, Matt McCann, who had been with iSelect for six years, had resigned just four months after taking the firm public.

iSelect has lost almost 30 percent or about A$120 million ($113.56 million) of its market value since its June listing as earnings missed prospectus projections, raising doubts about the firm’s management of its initial public offering.

“They missed the mark in terms of expectations. There are issues around the whole IPO process – over-promised and under-delivered,” said Peter Esho, chief market analyst at Invast Financial Services.

To read more about this story, click here.

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Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, investment, online business | No Comments »

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