This guide provides the information that you need to help you get your online business started. It covers all the issues and costs involved. Plus it provides some great tips and advice.
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Getting Started Selling Online
There are many people right now thinking of selling online. What are the real costs associated with
starting an online business or adding an online shop to an existing business? This is a question we
are hearing often and the answer is not always as clear as there are many different views and
opinions in the market place.
This document has been developed to answer common questions and provide advice.
General Online Business Costs
When starting an online business selling products or services there are some costs which you can
expect before you make your first sale. Your online store is a sales channel and acts like a sales
person for your business. Selling online can be very cost effective as there are less human resource
and infrastructure costs unlike a "bricks and mortar" business. But do not be fooled selling online is
not free and your results will be directly dependant on your investment, quality of service and
products.
There are costs which will not be covered in detail in this document such as:
Cost of products
Warehousing
Logistics
Traditional marketing
Business taxes
Accountant and financial institution fees
All these traditional costs still exist and don't magically vanish if you sell online.
If you are reasonably technically capable and don’t mind doing some work yourself then the budget
can be less than $100 a month for the online store. If you have a professional designer and web
developers create a design and add content then your budget will need to start around $2,000 +
$100 / month. The more design and functional complexity the more cost and therefore budget
required.
Your monthly costs may include such items as hosting, software, maintenance, content
management, search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.
But you can start small and add functionality later so the online store and your budget grow with
your business. Successful selling online requires as much business acumen and planning (maybe
more) as any traditional business. Getting started is not hard but there are so many opinions on the
technology that can be confusing to a non‐technically minded person. There are also many technical
terms and issues which often just confuse.
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Online Business Checklist
Business Fundamentals
What is your business model
What kind of resources will you need
What is the demographic focus
What expertise is available
Self managed
Need assistance
Market and demographic shifts occurring
an ABN/ACN/ABRN ...
Tax model
Domain name/s
Technology Fundamentals
Business email addresses
SSL Certificate (recommended if you accept credit cards)
A merchant account or PayPal
Choose a pricing model
Shipping company to deliver products
Design and some development for your website
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Content Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Web analytics to track touch points with visitors
Create a Business Plan
Make sure you know your market
Multi‐channel: Use a clicks‐and‐mortar strategy if possible
Integrate the shopping experience
How you will deal with
Content
Pricing & inventory
Logistics
Service & support
Payment & refund/returns
Security
Develop an easy‐to‐use purchase process
Consider localisation requirements
Consider customer relationship management and personalisation
Make sure that you select a scalable platform or solution
Make sure you have a team in place
Marketing Campaigns and requirements
Integrate to external systems, suppliers or 3PL
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Online Store Costs Estimates
Annual Recurring Costs Small Small + Services Medium Large
Domain name
(max cost / .com.au) $ 99.00 $ 99.00 $ 99.00 $ 99.00
Up to 5 business email address $ 99.00 $ 99.00
Up to 200 business email
address $ 198.00 $ 198.00
SSL Certificate
(2 year licence + Fixed IP
Address and installation) $ 385.00 $ 385.00 $ 385.00
Total Annual Recurring $ 198.00 $ 583.00 $ 682.00 $ 682.00
Monthly Recurring Costs 100 SKUs 150 Services 2,000 SKUs 10,000 SKUs
Website $ 77.00 $ 99.00 $ 122.00 $ 220.00
SEO Assistance (estimate) $ 100.00 $ 200.00
SEM (estimate) $ 1,000.00 $ 2,000.00
Payment provider Based on monthly and transaction fees by payment provider
Shipping costs Based on the number and types of shipments
Total Monthly Recurring $ 77.00 $ 99.00 $ 1,222.00 $ 2,420.00
One time Costs (Optional)
Design $ 600.00 $ 600.00 $ 1,000.00 $ 4,000.00
Customisation $ 1,000.00 $ 5,000.00
Total One Time Costs $ 600.00 $ 600.00 $ 2,000.00 $ 9,000.00
Total First Years Cost Estimate
(from) $ 1,900.00+ $ 2,850.00+ $ 15,000.00+ $ 25,000.00+
For larger enterprises the costs may be significantly more depending on the number of visitors and
level of activity which will impact the amount of traffic and size of the environment. Integration to
third party systems link 3PL, ERP and Financial can require significant customisation. Compliance to
PCI DSS and also to internal Standard Operating Environments may need auditability and checks for
governance.
Turnover and Profits
So what can you expect to make from an online store?
This question is very hard to answer accurately. Most small businesses that operate online fail to
properly track all the costs and expenses that they incur for their online store. The most obvious cost
that is not considered is the business owner’s own time and effort.
The effort that you apply to the online store will be proportional to the success and profitability.
Like any business an online business needs to be run to make money.
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eCorner hosted packages come in a number of different configurations depending on your
requirements and budgets.
Features snapshot Features snapshot Features snapshot Features snapshot
100 products
5GB traffic
1GB storage
PayPal
English only
AU or NZ Dollars
Wagtail Free
150 resources
20 products
5GB traffic
1GB storage
PayPal
eWay
Blogs
Forums
Galleries
Newsletters
eMarketing
Wagtail Free
2,000 products
10 resources
10GB traffic
2GB storage
PayPal
eWay
Worldpay
Australia Post
Newsletters
eMarketing
eBay integration
Forums
Blogs
Galleries
Cross sell / up sell
Product ratings
2 Languages
2 Currencies
Wagtail Free
10,000 products
150 resources
18GB traffic
5GB storage
PayPal
eWay
Worldpay
Australia Post
Newsletters
eMarketing
eBay integration
Forums
Blogs
Galleries
Cross sell / up sell
Product ratings
Product comparison
5 Languages
5 Currencies
Wagtail Free
eCorner can also provide virtual servers (VPS) and dedicated servers hosted in Australia. Our servers
are built for eCommerce and we can also develop highly customised online stores and websites to
meet any requirements.
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Social Media and Social Commerce
In the world of online business today it is important to use every opportunity to connect with people
who can buy from your store. You need to engage with each other via the social media sites such as
Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. By creating business pages on these social media sites you
can help people find your online store.
If you interact and promote using forums and blogs this can also add value and bring you new online
buyers. Blogs do not have to be long and complex just simple posts of a few hundred words that
might be interesting information about your products and services; how best to use them or how
they can deliver value or simply user success stories.
Business blog, forum and guest book
Communicate with your customers
By using a business blog, a forum or a guestbook, you are showing your customers that you are open
and present thus strengthening the customer relationship (i.e. customer retention). The modules
can be integrated into the website from the shop system and do not need to be linked via external
blog or forum software. Content of the integrated business blog as well as the forum are
automatically made available as RSS feeds.
Product review and recommendation
Let your customers decide
Customers prefer to purchase products that other customers have reviewed positively. To enable
this in the ePages shop system, you can activate the "Product rating and review" and "Product
recommendation" or "Tell‐a‐friend" function.
You decide yourself whether this function can be
used equally by all customers or only by registered
customers. When reviews are written by
customers, you can specify whether they will be
visible immediately in the shop or whether they
must first be approved by you.
You can utilize the opinion of satisfied customers
on price comparison and product portals as well as
by eBay.
eCorner packages have link‐ups to Getprice,
shopping.com, Google Base and other platforms as well.
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Questions about products
Help your customers
Don't make your customers have to search for your contact information. Offer them an automated
link to a contact form on every individual product page.
RSS feeds - Stay up-to-date
Search engines and customers love content that's up‐to‐date. That's why you can embed RSS feeds
with appropriate external content into your shop. Here you have the option of using already
specified feeds or creating your own.
As a participant in the free Amazon partner program, you as shop operator, have the option with the
RSS feed function of bringing Amazon products into your shop and earning a commission on their
sale.
Gadgets - Little helpers for your shop
Gadgets are small programs that can be integrated into websites and shops in addition to the shop's
actual content. Increase the entertainment value for your customers and increase the length of time
they spend in your shop. With the ePages’ shop system, you have access to a large number of
predefined gadgets.
The Wikipedia gadget for instance facilitates looking up terms that are marked in the shop or
website directly at the online encyclopaedia. You can thus immediately illustrate particular material
types, for example, in a very elegant way.
The YouTube gadget allows you to quickly and easily integrate your own product videos in your
shop.
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Social Media – Sharing your product content
Your visitors and customers are now more than ever likely to use social networks like Facebook and
Twitter to exchange information with friends and colleagues. So you can make it easy for them to
share your content by adding the social sharing features in your online store. It is easy to
automatically add by just enabling the Social Web feature under Marketing.
Once you have done that you will see the “Like”
and “Share” buttons appear on each of your
product pages. Your customers can click on the
links which will send your page”Llike” to Facebook
or Twitter to be shared with your customers’
friends and network.
Mobile commerce
More and more people are using their iPhones or Smart phones to search and
buy online. With 50% of iPhone users having had some form of online
transaction. We will deliver templates that are specific to iPhones and Smart
Phones that are automatically delivered to consumers browsing from their
phone to make the shopping experience simple.
Product search and buy are simplified with easy to use icons and resized and
proportioned content.
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Running Your Online Business
The Four Pillars
Running an online business is not so very different from running a traditional business and requires
that you spend time each day on some tasks. These are in general around the four key areas of the
business.
User Experience
Business / web analytics
Ask for feedback
Shopping basket abandonment
Fresh content
Place test orders
Monitor using analytics
SEO / SEM
Search engine web master tool
Google / Bing / Yahoo
Trust and Security
Contact and access information
Terms and Conditions, and Privacy Policy
Payment provider – check payment processing and fraud
SSL and Site Seals
Unencrypted content
User
experience,
interaction &
design
Trust &
security
Marketing,
sales &
unique selling
proposition
Customer
service &
support
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HTTP content on HTTPS
Social networks and gadgets
Images
Establish a fraud checking process
Content and Marketing
Keep promotions fresh
Newsletters with coupons and offers
Subscribe / unsubscribe
Spam laws
Shipping as a competitive advantage
Monitor shipping costs and offers
Social networks and communicate
Facebook / Twitter / Forum / Blogs / YouTube
Shop on Facebook
Customer Service and Help Desk
My Account (registered) customers
Deliver the purchase quickly
Parcel tracking
Communicate / Follow‐up / Feedback
Access to service & support
Business eMail responses and follow‐up
Phone (1300 / 1800) responses
Monitor and respond to Support forum
Monitor and respond to Live Chat
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Web Analytics
Visitor and Page Tracking
A good online shop can often fail because the owners don't know what is really happening on the
website. In order to understand the activity on the website you need to collect information about
what visitors there are and what they do. This is collected by a web analytics program like Google
Analytics. There are obviously many areas of analytics but the key issue is that you must, at a
minimum, track activity like:
Visitors
Top content
Geographic location
Page impressions
Entry and exit pages
Order tracking – basket conversion rates
Sales tracking and reporting
Social media
Analytics costs can vary and be more than the cost of the store in large and complex ecommerce
environments but if you use Google Analytics it is free and for a service like Wagtail Analytics from
eCorner, which provides real time data as it happens, the costs start at $20 / month.