Archive for December, 2013

Season’s Greetings

Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
Photo credit; Epic Fireworks

Photo credit; Epic Fireworks on Flickr

Happy New Year from your friends at OPMC!

 

 

Keane family takes organic digital with great success

Monday, December 30th, 2013
Photo credit; Umstwit on Flickr

Photo credit; Umstwit on Flickr

The Keane family started their organic fruit and vegetable delivery business, Keane’s Organic Food almost by accident in 2008 and thanks to a cleverly designed website, it’s been growing ever since.

Melissa Keane, a former marketing executive at the University of South Australia, runs the business with her husband Simon,  a former South Australia Police detective and their daughter Millie.

The couple set up the business in 2008 as a part-time co-operative venture, sourcing and delivering organic produce in bulk for a few neighbours in the Unley area.

“I’ve always eaten organic food for its nutrition and taste, but when I was pregnant I wanted to find an easier way to purchase it in bulk and did a simple letterbox drop in my street to see who was interested in a co-op arrangement,” Melissa says. “The demand among other mums was clearly there, and before we knew it our business was born. In the past three years alone, sales have increased threefold and we’ve now employed two part-time delivery drivers to support our growth into new regions.”

Most of the orders come from mums who have little time and some older people.

Growing demand through mostly word-of-mouth referrals led to the more formal set up as Keane’s Organic Food, which now delivers to multiple regions within South Australia.

To read more about this story, click here.

Everything you wanted to know about WooCommerce

Friday, December 27th, 2013

affiliates-pro-woocommerceEcommerceBytes Contributing Editor Greg Holden tells you all you need to know about WooCommerce in an editorial piece he wrote about it.

In the editorial, the tech editor talks about how WooCommerce is specifically designed to work with WordPress, which is great for helping to monetize a regular blog or website.

To read Holden’s full review of WooCommerce, click here

Happy Holidays

Wednesday, December 25th, 2013

Blue Xmas Tree lights - Sebastian Dooris

Merry Christmas from your friends at OPMC.

 

 

 

Conventional insurance may not cover cyber security breaches: Centre for Internet Safety

Wednesday, December 25th, 2013
Photo credit; elhombredenegro on Flickr

Photo credit; elhombredenegro on Flickr

Companies with an online presence need to look beyond conventional insurance policies to ensure they are protected against more than just cyber attacks, a new report from the Centre for Internet Safety (CIS) has warned.

The University of Canberra-based thinktank warned in the report that many organisations are unprepared to manage risk from a variety of factors beyond simple cyber-attacks. Negligence and human factors accounted for 35% of data breaches in one recent Ponemon Institute-Symantec study, while 29% were due to system glitches and the remainder due to the stereotypical malicious attack.

“Traditional business insurance policies have tended to only cover ‘tangible’ assets such as PCs, laptops and other mobile devices,” the report warns.

“Developing exposures have highlighted that electronic data is not always considered to fall under the definition of tangible assets and is just one area where cyber insurance is designed to fill a gap. Some organisations have discovered gaps in what is and isn’t covered after an attack. Unfortunately for them, by then it is too late.”

The report identified five key issues organisations needed to consider in assessing their cyber risk:

  • identifying the organisation’s tangible assets
  • evaluating its ability to survive without them
  • establishing whether it is principally a business-to-business or business-to-consumer operation
  • evaluating the burden of managing fully automated IT systems
  • assessing the privacy and data breach laws for the markets where it operates.

Companies need to make sure their insurance regimes also cover the ancillary effects of a data breach and its aftermath.

These include:

  • cover for business interruption
  • the cost of notifying customers
  • the cost of regulatory investigations or actions in the event of a breach, “without the requirement for physical damage that is a standard trigger under property policies.”

Other expenses that should be included in cyber-insurance policies include:

  • crisis management
  • hiring a public relations firm to manage a data breach incident
  • forensic analysis
  • repairing and restoring computer systems
  • the loss of business income resulting from the incident.

“An effective cyber insurance policy will include explicit wording which covers first party and third party claims,” the report advises, warning that the nature and scope of cyber-insurance policies must be managed at the business level and not just by the IT organisation.

The 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report found 570 of 855 recorded attacks were targeted at businesses with 11 to 100 employees.

To read more about this story, click here.

Young Australian entrepreneur shares secrets in new book

Monday, December 23rd, 2013

5 minutes - MarkusAustralian entrepreneur Mark Middo aims to share his business knowledge with the world in his new book 5 Minute Business.

Middo and a business partner founded online voting system Reminisce Entertainment, which nightclubs use to allow patrons to vote for what songs they want to hear on a certain night. Prior to that, he started his own online company and sold it three months later.

In his new book, Middo explains how people can go from simply having an idea to bringing it to life in five minutes.

“I believe freedom can be built online, and I would like to share my framework to help people do something they love rather than trading their precious time on this earth for money through the outdated 9-5,” says Middo. “I was lucky enough to escape the 9-5 by applying these techniques, and I want to share them with the world.”

To read more on this story, click here.

E-commerce to grow by leaps and bounds in Asia-Pacific report predicts

Friday, December 20th, 2013

Asia Pacific - Brisbane City CouncilEcommerce sales in five of the largest markets in the Asia-Pacific region will soon surpass all e-retail sales in North America and Europe combined, Forrester Research Inc. has predicted.

Taken together, online retail sales in the five markets — Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and India — are growing rapidly, from $398 billion in 2013 to $858 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 16.61%, Forrester projects in the report, entitled “Asia Pacific Online Retail Forecast, 2013 to 2018,” by analyst Zia Daniell Wigder.

Forrester predicts e-retail sales in these five Asia-Pacific markets will reach $768 billion in 2017, nearly 17% more than the $658 billion Forrester predicts in 2017 for the U.S., Canada and Western Europe combined. (Forrester has not yet issued 2018 e-commerce projections for the U.S. and Europe.)

The report states that Australian online retail sales will grow 10% per year from $23 billion in 2013 to $38 billion in 2018. Australians buy a lot from foreign online retailers, encouraged both by a relatively small number of domestic players and the fact that the first A$1,000 in purchases made from a foreign retailer enter the country duty-free. Purchases made under this exemption, the government reports, totaled $6.23 billion in 2011-12. More global brands are entering the online space in Australia, taking advantage of the relatively minor localization required for brands that operate in the United States or United Kingdom.

To read more on this story, click here.

Australian Woodwork switches focus exclusively to online business

Wednesday, December 18th, 2013
Photo credit; Jordanhill School D&T Dept. on Flickr

Photo credit; Jordanhill School D&T Dept. on Flickr

New South Wales-based Australian Woodwork, one of Australia’s top woodcraft companies, recently announced its decision to completely move its business online.

By becoming an internet-only business, Australian Woodwork hopes to appeal more to a larger online market.

The company’s goals include successfully developing an interactive website for its customers where they can view and purchase furniture and one-off items, as well as talk to company representatives in real time. Australian Woodwork is also developing an advanced virtual showroom for customers who want to see the company’s selection of products.

It will also integrate Australia Post services into its site. This ensures that domestic and international customers can obtain live quotes on postage charges.

To read more on this story, click here.

Western Australia tourism business discovers power of social media just in time

Monday, December 16th, 2013
Photo credit; Jason A. Howie on Flickr

Photo credit; Jason A. Howie on Flickr

A Western Australia tourism business on the brink of bankruptcy discovered just how powerful social media could be in the nick of time.

After spending tens of thousands of dollars on traditional advertising for his one-man Margaret River Discovery Company and getting nothing in return, Sean Blocksidge was five days away from packing it in for good when the social media gods smiled on him. A few couples who had partaken in tours with his company, which provides 4WD tours of the rocky coast and canoeing on Margaret River’s famous waterway, left positive reviews on TripAdvisor and opened the floodgates for Blocksidge.

“I didn’t understand the power of this thing,” said Blocksidge. “And the algorithms behind it suddenly spun me up into the number one thing to do in Margaret River. That was it. The next morning, everything turned around. The phone and email went nuts and I’ve never looked back. Chock-a-block every day.”

For two straight years, it was then listed as the number one tourist activity in Australia.

And every day, Blocksidge does his due diligence by spending 15 minutes taking and uploading a photo of the region to his Facebook page, which auto-links to Twitter, and he then re-posts it to Instagram.

If it’s picked up by TourismWA, his image is viewed by millions.

To read more on this story, click here.

Click Frenzy sale exceeds expectations according to founder

Friday, December 13th, 2013
Photo credit; Matt Trostle on Flickr

Photo credit; Matt Trostle on Flickr

Last month’s Click Frenzy online shopping event was a huge success, founder Grant Arnott said.

The 24 hour shopping bonanza ended at 7pm on Nov. 20 and over the course of the event, Arnott said the site had received over 1 million visitors and driven 1.6 million clicks through to the 300 participating retailers.

Local online retailer, The Iconic announced its first $1 million shopping day thanks to the event.

“We’re now thinking our initial estimates of $15 to $20 million in revenue [generated by the event] are pretty conservative,” Arnott said.

To read more about this story, click here.