Archives 2020

Businesses today, need to do generate more from their resources. As a business, you need to connect with your prospects in a personalized way while spending less. And businesses that are successful in connecting with their target audience in a personalized way will be successful in generating more revenue and more return their investment.
Is there a better way to connect with your customers other than email marketing. No. And how do you keep your email subscribers growing? With a newsletter subscription form on your website. In this article, we will learn

What is a newsletter subscription form
Why is newsletter subscription required
Main components of an effective newsletter subscription
How to make a newsletter subscription box
Where to place the newsletter subscription box

What is a newsletter subscription form?

You have landed upon a website, and while you are perusing its content, a box suddenly pops up from some where. The box has an alluring offer that you find hard to give up.

To claim the offer,  you need to give your name and email address.
For once, you think of letting it go. I don’t need more emails in my Inbox.
The next second, you are filling up the form. “The offer sounds tempting. I can always unsubscribe if I don’t like it”.
You have just opted in to a “newsletter subscription form”.
If you have entered the correct (no spelling mistakes) email address in the newsletter subscription box, and the email address is legitimately yours, you’ll receive a mail (from the same website), asking you to click on a link. This is called double opt in. And when you click on the link, your email address is verified and your subscription to the website’s newsletter is added to the list of other email recipients like you.

Why is newsletter subscription required?

As a business, you need more clients. The more clients you have, the more business you can expect. But then you may ask who reads email today . Everybody uses social media. Isn’t advertising on social media more productive than email marketing? Well here are the facts.

Email vs Other Online Marketing Techniques

One research reports that there are 43 different ways you can do online marketing. Search Engine Optimization, Podcasts, Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing, and the list goes on.

Many new marketing technologies have sprung up in the last few years; and many have disappeared from the scene.

But only one category has consistently performed well, year after year, and that is email marketing. Email generates the highest ROI. According to one study: for every dollar spent on Email marketing, it  generates $44 in return.

Email has a much larger reach.

While Facebook boasts of having over 1 billion active users, and Twitter having 255 million, one is compelled to conclude that social media is a better option to reach the online community.

But isn’t it surprising that when you sign up for a Facebook or Twitter account you need an email address.

And how do Facebook and Twitter notify users of activity in their account? They do it through email. There are are three times more email accounts then there are are Facebook and Twitter accounts combined.

Email delivers your message

If you post a passage on Facebook how many of your contacts will have a chance of seeing it?

An official study proclaims this to be about 2%. So if you have 1,000 friends on Facebook just about 20 will see your message. Whereas if you send an email to 1,000 contact at least 950 will receive it in their inbox.

The difference is a staggering 45 times. 20 on Facebook and 950 on email.

Your email subscribers have given you their consent to receive your messages. But that is not the case for social media. Everyone just keeps posting, and a few will get to read your post.

Email gives you a higher conversion

The ultimate goal for every business is to convert its potential customers into paying customers.  Social media is more of a personal form of communication; people use it to communicate with family members and friends. 

But when people expect to receive information about new products and services, they want it through email. Email is an open platform. Email isn’t owned or controlled by buy one particular business house. The owners of Social Media brands device new algorithms to increase their own revenue while giving less importance to free posts.

Your subscribers are going to be your asset over a long period of time. Unlike social media following, building your your email list is a a stable long term investment that will pay off in the the years to come.

Main components of an effective newsletter subscription form

1. An enchanting headline: Your headline should clearly describe the benefit to the visitor. It should be noticeable and  succinct.
2. A brief description: Is your description helpful, clear and to the point? Use bullet marks so that the visitor gets the message in a glance.
3. Enticing visuals: Add an image of the incentive you are promising.  Images of smiling human beings are a great way to entice visitors. Do not make it too loud, as it usually distracts visitors.
4. 2 line form: Don’t ask for more than a first name (or name) and email address. Asking for too much information, too soon, will kill your conversions.
5. A Call-to-Action subscribe button: Don’t simply write “Subscribe now”. Use text that compels the visitor to take action  – Click immediately / Subscribe! (that’s why it’s called a call to action button). Use a contrasting color for this button, so that it gets noticed.

How to make a newsletter subscription box.

I will take the example of making a subscription form on ConvertKit. This is the easiest amongst all. You can do it yourself without hiring a developer.

Register on ConvertKit

Go to “Landing Pages & Forms”

Select Form

You will be asked to choose the type of subscription form. The images are self-explanatory.

Modal is a pop-up form which covers the whole screen. The modal disables the main window, while keeping it visible. I have chosen to go ahead with Modal.

The next screen asks you to choose a design/ template/ theme for your newsletter subscription form. You can choose any template that suits your product type. Then you can change the picture, or modify the background colour, or change the text, the font, font size. 

Once you have finalized the design, you need to add this form on your website. Click the “Embed” button.

You will be shown various options to choose from Javascript, HTML, Share, WordPress or Unbounce (a landing page builder platform). If you have chosen WordPress, it will ask you to install the ConvertKit WordPress plugin on your WordPress website and then  embed the form using the shortcode displayed.

You can download the plugin to your computer, and then install it on your WordPress website.

However, prior to that, check out the “SETTINGS” for your newsletter subscription form. You can access the settings in the same row as the “EMBED” button.

There are some very interesting settings which make your form very engaging. I used to be wonder struck  when I saw such forms performing on other websites. But never knew about these tools that make these a child’s play.

You can set up this form to pop-up (trigger) when a visitor tries to leave the page (exit-intent) or when he has spent 5 seconds on your website (you can alter this timing to your needs).

Give it a try. I am sure you too will be wonder-struck.

Where to place the newsletter subscription form

A lot of research has been done by experts in the field of online marketing, and they have identified hot spots where the visitors pay more attention and you are likely to get a higher conversion for your newsletter subscription form. These are

1. Your website’s header
2. Scattered on your Blog Posts
3. In a modal page (we examined this in the beginning of the previous section)
4. Your website’s footer
5. Your “About Us” page
6. In the side-bar

You can experiment for yourself and place the form at various places on your website. Do not limit yourself to just one place. You can have multiple forms (of different types – modal, splash, slide-in, sticky header) and place them at all the above places on your website.

 

Are you sending emails to expand your business?

Do you know that, of all the marketing tools, Email offers the best return on investment?  And, it also offers the best conversion rates?

If your emails are well written, and engaging, they can be highly effective in generating sales. In this post, we will learn:

• Why use Email marketing?
• Why is Email marketing so important?
• Examples of Email marketing
• How to start Email marketing
• Email Service Providers
• A comparison table of Email service providers

Why use Email marketing?

You have a website, and you are painstakingly driving traffic to your website by various means.

Let’s say, someone visits your website. Is there a way you can know who he was, or the reason why he  visited your website.

Maybe he wanted to buy something and came to your website to research and compare with other vendors. He came, he saw and he went away. And there is no way you can connect with him or  follow up with him.

What you need now is a system such that a visitor who comes to your website, leaves his email address or his contact number; so that you can follow up with him.

But why will he give you his email address? He does not want annoying emails or phone calls.

So, to get his email address, you have to offer him a bait, in return of which he will give you his email address. You can offer him a free eBook or a discount coupon, or an entry into some sweepstakes.

Once you have his email address you can send him information on your upcoming products, discount coupons, holiday offers, free eBooks, Infographics, cheat sheets, just to keep in touch with him.

You do all this so that he remembers your name, and should remember it all the more when he is about to order a product or service.

He may not be an immediate customer; but he could be a prospect who would buy maybe 6 months down the line. Or he may have friends who can avail of your service if he can refer you to them.

Why is Email marketing so important?

If you are selling a product or a service, and you do not have email subscribers, you are missing on a lot of opportunities.

How do you expect new customers to reach you and how do you expect your customers to come back with repeat orders?

Email lasts longer than a post on Social Media

I came across a very interesting piece of information which I would like to share with you you.

Have you ever wondered how long your post lasts on Social Media?

Let’s say you post something today, right now; and its lifespan on Twitter shall be just 18 minutes.

Can you believe that? Just 18 minutes. So, if your potential customer uses Twitter within 18 minutes of your posting new content, he will get to view it. Else, he will not.

On Facebook it’s just about 5 hours,

Instagram 21 hours,

LinkedIn  24 hours,

YouTube average is much higher than these, it is around 20 days.

And have you ever wondered how much time an email lasts?  2 years. This is the average time when a user cleans his mailbox, and deletes the unwanted emails.

Taking this discussion further, your target customer can still get to read the messages you posted on Twitter or Facebook, if he has subscribed to the notifications. And notifications are delivered  by ……Email.

So, the ultimate tool is Email.

There is no ranking system for Emails.

Next, Emails are not ranked on the basis of quality or content.  If you have sent a mail, the user is bound to receive it. We simply sort them by date, time, alphabetically or by Subject. Email marketing is direct and personal.

Eventually, if you do not have any email list of subscribers or you have an email list, but you never send out emails, you are missing out on a lot of prospects.

People check Emails several times in a day.

The Radicati Group of UK provides quantitative and qualitative research on email. In a comprehensive analysis of Emails for 2020-2024, their report says:

“Email remains the most ubiquitous form of communication. Email accounts are required for any form of online presence from signing on to social media sites, to shopping online, to gaining access to online portals, as well as access to all forms of online communication. “

Worldwide email traffic is increasing 4% annually.

Revenue for all segments of the email market is experiencing an annual growth of 16%.

Email marketing examples

1. The primary purpose of of sending emails is to bring in more customers to your website. So, plan your email campaigns in relation to some national holiday or event like the Easter or world cup.

2. Make sure that your subscribers have actually requested to receive your emails. Else, you may not realize, and all your emails will be going down their spam box.

3. Give your customers a feeling of importance with exclusive offers news or events. Personalized emails always give better results so always send targeted emails by creating lists in your email database.

4. Design your emails to suit a particular theme.  Keep your emails bright and attractive. This makes them more engaging. While designing your email make sure that it all links are are relevant and clearly visible.

5. Include your social media accounts on the header or footer of your email. These are superb for social interaction in online communities.

6. Check how your email renders on a mobile. Make your emails mobile-friendly to maximize opens.

7. Install a list manager to ensure that all your data is stored in one place, and accessible when it is required. Categorize the images in relevant folders for ease of of navigation. Check the response rating for different subject lines, sender name and delivery date / times.

8. When you bring your visitors to the website, ensure that there is a landing page to capture customer data. Focus on one particular aspect and draw your customers attention to the main story.
   

Email marketing – how to start?

Now that you know how important email marketing is to your business, let’s start off right away. You need two things to begin

1. An email list,
2. Email service provider

The email list you intend to use should be your own. I personally do not recommend buying email lists, or scraping email address off the websites. All your efforts will be lost if the email you sent goes to the Spam folder or if it is deleted the moment it is received by the user.

Take time to develop your email list. Let people opt for receiving your emails. Create such magnetic leads that subscribers immediately double opt the verification mail,  to receive the freebie you promised them. Not just this, they also consent to your terms & conditions without a second thought.

Next, you need an email service provider to send out mails in bulk. If you have ever tried sending bulk mails from your Outlook or GMail account, you will know that the web hosting server will block these emails from being sent. And, you risk your IP address being blacklisted. 

All mail servers use blacklists as their first defense against spammers, when mail arrives at a server, the sender IP address is checked against the blacklists. If you are on the list, your mail is rejected.

So, you need software specialized to send bulk emails. There are tons of such email service providers, and each one has a unique service to offer. As a beginner, you cannot weigh the options each one provides, to settle for  the service best suited for your needs. We have done the homework for you and will share our suggestions with you towards the end of this section

Email Service Providers

Here is a list of some top rated email service providers:

ConstantContact

ConstantContact defines its Email marketing service as “Grow your brand by reaching people where they go every day: their inbox.” If you subscribe to ConstantContact, you will get to use hundreds of templates, which includes industry specific templates, customizable templates and your own branded templates to design your email. 

You can send unlimited emails to a maximum of 500 subscribers for a monthly fee of $20, their starter plan. The free trial period for the service is 30 days.

SendInBlue

Sendinblue is a complete email marketing tool-set that offers SMS (text messaging) too. You can maintain unlimited subscribers, and  pay only for sending emails. But wait, before you jump to conclusions, let me tell you that they offer a FREE plan, where you can send up to 300 emails per day. So, if you need to send about 9000 emails in a month, this plan is good for you. You can continue with the free plan for ever or until your business needs to upgrade to a higher

MailChimp

MailChimp is a very popular email marketing software that has user friendly plans. Their FREE plan offers to accommodate 2000 subscribers and you can send 10,000 emails per month. You can upgrade anytime to paid plans, as your subscriber list grows.

MailChimp has a drag and drop interface to design emails and you can also choose from the huge collection of templates.

Drip

Drip is focused for eCommerce Websites and offers great automation tools for email marketing. Drip offers easy integration with Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce and many other eCommerce platforms.

They offer a 15 day trial for all their plans. The starter plan begins at $19 per month which allows you to send unlimited emails to 500 subscribers. As your subscribers grow, you will need to spend more every month.

aWeber

aWeber is the oldest Email service provider in the market and offers auto responders, segmentation along with an easy email designer.

They also offer a forever FREE plan limited only to 500 subscribers and 300 emails per day.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is the best email service provider that is most suitable for beginners as well as pro marketers. Their starter plan is FREE and offers unlimited emailing for up to 1000 contacts. That is a huge benefit when you are in the initial stages of setting up email marketing.

ConvertKit has a good collection of Pop up forms and landing page designs. So, if you have been wondering how to make engaging pop ups that you see on professional websites, they can now be yours with just a few clicks on ConvertKit.

Email Service Providers

Feature	Constant Contact	Send in Blue	Mail Chimp	Drip	aWeber	Convert Kit
Contacts	500	Unlimited	2000	500	500	1000
Emails per day	Unlimited	300	333	Unlimited	300	Unlimited
Free trial period	30 days	Forever	Forever	14 days	Forever	Forever
Pricing (US$) / month	20	Free	Cell	Free	Free	Free

If you are doing an online business it is almost critical today, to rank on the first page of Google search results.

But why only the first page?

What if you make it to the second page, will people not find you?

According to Moz, the first page of Google gets 71% of the the search traffic; it even goes up to 92% in certain cases.

You might think the second page results would be close.

But, you will be astonished if I tell you that second page results capture below 6% of website clicks.

The words that you use to search anything on Google are called keywords. You very well know that for any given keyword, there are millions of different websites trying to show up on the first page of Google.

But only 10 of them will succeed in making it to the first page.

It would be frustrating if your website does not show up on the 1st page, or even 2nd page of Search Results. after putting in so much of SEO effort, time and money.

Reasons you are not ranking on Google

Let us discuss the most common mistakes that people make while optimizing their website for search engines, and how to fix them.

1. Google does not know about your website
2. Your website has broken links
3. The content is not optimized
4. Your website has duplicate content
5. The website is not mobile friendly
6. Meta tags not optimized
7. Your website does not have good content
8. The website takes a long time to load
9. Your website is missing on Social media
10. You don’t have backlinks to your Website

Let us discuss them one by one.

1. Google does not know about your website

First of all, you need to assess, does Google know about your website? Because, Google will rank your website only if it knows that your website exists.

You can find out by using the following prefix in a Google search site: yoursite.com

You have to enter the domain name without the the www, dot and the slash. If your site appears in the search results it’s fine. This means your website has been indexed. You will find all your web pages listed on this page. But if it is not showing up it is a matter of concern.

You have made a wonderful website. Beautiful banners going in from left to right, you’ve got a  products carousel to catch attention, but after doing all this, if Google does not know that your website exists; how do you expect it to index your website.

One way of Google knowing your website is with a hyperlink from another website, which is indexed by Google.  That way, when Google indexes that website, or crawls that website, it will find you and include your website in its database. But, if your website is a standalone, with no incoming hyperlinks from the internet world,  there is no way Google can find it or index it.

So the next way is you tell Google that this is my website, please add it to your index. You need to have a Google account and you will use Google Search Console to add your website for indexing.

There is one more thing that you need before you proceed to Google search console and that is a sitemap of your website. Depending on what platform you have build your website with, you can find plenty of plugins or tools that will help construct a sitemap for your website. Keep this site map handy so that we do not waste time on Google search console.

2. Your website has broken links.

Does your website have any broken links?

You would have come across Error 404 Page not Found, or Image Missing or 500 Internal Server Error many a time while browsing. The Web Server prompts with these error codes to indicate some malfunction. Everything on the World Wide Web is well documented and you can identify the problem from the error code.

4xx are Client Errors

5xx are Server Errors

A 404 Page not found means that the user is able to communicate with the server, but the server is unable to find the requested file or resource. It could be because of a mis-spelt URL being entered in the address bar, or while linking to a new page, the page URL was not written correctly, resulting in a page not found error.

Similarly, if you have linked to an image, say myimage.jpg and the file you have uploaded to the server is my-image.jpg or myimage.jpeg or Myimage.JPG, it will result in a Image Missing error.

Google Search Console can tell about these errors on your website. You need to fix these broken links and other such errors before you publish your page. This will make your Google rank drastically better.

3. The content is not Optimized

The next thing you have to watch out for is content optimization. This is related to the keywords I spoke to you.

First of all, make a list of the keywords for which you want your website to rank on Google.

Now, using a Keyword Research Tool, you can look for suggestions for similar keywords. All these suggestions may not be useful to you immediately, but  if you analyze carefully, you can extract tons of useful information. In addition to suggestions on keywords, the Keyword Research Tool will also give you

1. Search Volumes (monthly basis)
2. Competition (High, Medium, Low) and
3. Keyword pricing for PPC (Pay per Click).

Use this information to target the keywords for which you want to rank, and where you can rank and develop your content accordingly.

Evaluate the competition for each of these keywords. Most keyword suggestion tools will give you additional keywords or key phrases with their search volumes and the competition. 

Let’s say you make wall papers. Google Adwords shows the search volume between 1-10 million per month, and competition as HIGH. I would not suggest you target this keyword in your SEO planning, as the amount of effort and time required can discourage even seasoned marketers.

However, if you scroll down in the list, there are keywords like black wall papers, or Christmas wall papers, or love wall papers. The competition for these is LOW, and the search volume is respectable. You will rank faster, and with relatively less effort on these key phrases.

While creating content, try to focus on one keyword or a key phrase on one page. Make different pages for different keywords.

4. Your website has duplicate content.

Throughout your website, keep only original content.

Avoid any duplicate content.

Sometimes, when you hire a content writer, he may pass you off a piece of content, as original, but which has actually been copied from some other website.  You may not be able to verify that, but Google can! And in fact, you too can. If Google finds out first, that the content on your website is copied from elsewhere, it will penalize both the web pages, yours as well as the source. Hence, it is better to ensure that the content on your website is not plagiarized before publishing it.

There are a number of tools available on the internet that check and let you know if the content is original or plagiarised. One such website is Duplichecker.

Simply  paste the URL of your web page, or copy and paste the contents of the page page on Duplichecker, and it will flash the results within a few seconds.

You can instantly know what percentage of content is original, and what percentage is plagiarized; Which piece of content has been spotted elsewhere on the Internet. 

There is however, a way out of this situation. There exists an HTML element, called the canonical tag. If you have to use identical or partially identical content, place this in the <head> section of each such page <link href=”https://original-page-url” rel=”canonical”>.

5. Your website is not mobile friendly

Most internet users use some sort of mobile device to access the internet web pages. Google has started considering the mobile friendliness of your website as a key factor in ranking.

You can check whether your website is mobile friendly in Google Chrome. Click on the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner, —> More Tools —> Developer Tools.

Press Ctrl+Shift+M and you can view the website in different screen modes.  If your website renders perfectly on different screen sizes we call it responsive, or mobile-friendly. Making a website responsive is not so much of a daunting task in itself. If you are using WordPress or Joomla, there are a host of themes available which are responsive. Use them directly instead of trying to make the existing theme responsive.

6. Meta tags not optimized.

Search engines use metadata to know about your website.

Meta data are tags placed in the <head> section of your webpage; and each webpage can have its own set of meta tags. Some very important meta tags include the title tag, description tag and the keyword tag.  These tags can be optimized to describe the content of that page.

The information that appears in search results is usually from meta tags. Not all meta data tags are important  for a web page. The keyword meta tag is no longer used by Google or any of the search engines to rank pages.

These days, the title tag plays a dominant role, and also affects your search engine rankings.  Your title tag should always include the keywords you want to rank for. You might have come across instructions about the length of title tag. There is no exact limit, but as a suggestion, title tag should be under 60 characters; this way it displays properly on most devices.

Description tags <meta name=”description” content=”This is an example of a meta description.”> can improve your click rates, if written effectively. Include a call to action in the description tag. I have even come across some websites using a phone number in the meta description to make it easier for people to reach you.

7. Your website does not have good Content

When we say good content, we allude to the quantity as well as quality. We have discussed duplicate or copied content above. This section is about content being relevant to the title and keyword and how its useful to users.

Search engines want content, for their users to feel satisfied. So if you want your web pages to rank better on Google and other search engines, your website should have a lot of relevant content. Relevant to the keywords that you are targeting.

These days I see websites which are very beautiful to look at, but when I go to the page source, I find there is hardly any content behind it. Scrolling banners and special effects rock! But, all these special effects add a lot of script to your webpage.

There is this text to code ratio that you need to watch. This is the ratio of number of characters of visual text to the number of characters as seen in the Page Source. A good text to code ratio for webpages is anything between 25 to 70%.  The more the better. This emphasizes the need of knowing HTML or scripting code which results in a clean code. 

When you add an image to your webpage,  you should inform the search engine what the image is about.   You do this by using an alt image tag. The alt tag is the piece of text which appears on the browser when the image fails to load. Something like <img src=”danceparty.jpg” alt=”My team dancing at New Year’s eve”>.  Ideally, the alt tags should be descriptive to such an extent that if someone is using a text-to-speech tool to read the page, he should get the complete picture.

8. Your website takes a long time to load.

Industry research has shown that users prefer websites that load faster. So, since 2018, Google has included page speeds as a ranking factor for websites.

Though there are many tools on the internet using which you can assess the download speed of your webpage, I suggest using the Page Speed Insights from Google developer tools. Simply enter your URL and it will give you the download time on mobile as well as desktop browsers.

Though there could be many factors affecting the download speed but it will give you a fair average. Page Speed Insights also gives suggestions on what is wrong and where.

One thing is for sure; if your webpage takes more time to download, people will abandon your website and move on to your competitor on a different website.

If you work on reducing page download speeds, research has shown that page abandonment reduces by almost 20% in most cases, and your Google rank gets better.

9. You don’t have backlinks to your website

Back links are hyperlinks to your web pages from other websites. A lot of emphasis is placed on back-links in SEO and Google rankings.

When you have other websites linking to your webpage, Google takes it as a positive factor to rank your web page higher. This indirectly conveys that your page has some relevant information, which users on other websites, consider worthy enough to share with others. And Google will give you a plus for this back-link.

So, when a lot of websites link back to your webpage, your Google ranking improves.

You can use Google Search Console to give you a count of backlinks to your website. It gives an extensive analysis of the backlinks.

10. Your website is missing on Social Media

If you are not on social media you are missing a lot of action. I understand that as a businessman, you cannot keep up with the demands of maintaining presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Presence on social media is a good way to generate traffic to your website and also a way of generating back links.

Look at it this way, most people are hooked on to their mobiles at least 60% of their time. Try to identify your target audience, and also the Social Media Platform they use extensively.  Be there. Set up profiles for your business and share links to new products and new posts on your website.

There is one more thing that you need to keep in mind which effect ranking of your web page and that is  how old it is .

A study has shown that the average age for the first 10 results on the Google search results is 680 days. That is almost 2 years. Therefore, even if you have rectified most of the problems above and your website is still not ranking, it could be because of its age.

Give it sometime.

Patience has its own results.

The only thing that can beat the age criteria is drastically superlative content. with content you can beat even the age factor of the web pages.

One more thing you should do is register your business with Google My Business. It’s easy and it’s free; and it can actually help you rank better. I am sure you have a Google account. You will always need one for Google Search Console or keyword planner, for Google Tag Manager. So, if you register with Google My Business, it gives Google a positive sign that you care about ranking your website. Registering on Google My Business requires very little time or effort but it will help you rank the easy way.

You wish to sell online in Australia. Here in this guide, you will learn everything from registering a .com.au domain to setting up an ecommerce website to finally receiving payment in your bank in Australia. Along with the costing for each head. There are many options to Australian domain names and we will discuss them, further, in this article. Also, is it better to have a website host based in Australia?

While selling you have to account for taxes, mainly the GST, and a website creator who has hands on experience with taxes in Australia, will be able to give you a better ecommerce website.

We will discuss

• Setting up a business in Australia
• Domain name look up in Australia
• Website hosting in Australia
• Ecommerce website Australia
• Payment gateway in Australia

 

Setting up a business in Australia

At the outset, I must suggest that it is always better to take up all government permissions, registrations, licences and sanctions that a business may require. Take advice of business consultants, check the relevant government websites, ask your friends who are already in business about the ones necessary for your business. Sometimes, if these sanctions are not taken, they pose problems at a later date and prove very expensive, either in terms of money or time or loss of goodwill.

The first and foremost decision that you need to make is about the structure of your business. Your business could be structured as a

• Sole trader
• Partnership, or
• Company

Sole Trader:

A sole trader is the simplest and cheapest business structure to set up. If you’re an individual, planning to run a business singularly,  you can be a sole trader. You will be the sole owner of the business; and the income this business generates, belongs to you.

You have to report the income generated from this business in your individual tax return. Tax on your business income is calculated at your individual income tax rate.

You have complete control over your business, and you are responsible for taking all decisions. Your personal assets are at stake, if things go wrong.

If you hire employees for this business, you will be responsible for giving them their minimum employee entitlements as per the stipulate regulations.

You should apply for Australian Business Number (ABN) (https://abr.gov.au/For-Business,-Super-funds—Charities/Applying-for-an-ABN/). Australian Business Number is free. Only if you have an ABN, you will be eligible to register a business name and register an Australian Domain Name.

Partnership:

A partnership structure is a level in between Sole Trader and a Company. Compared to a Company, it is relatively inexpensive and easy to set up and operate. In a partnership structure, you along with your business partners, own the business, and also share its income and losses. Two or more individuals can form a partnership. If the partners are members of a family, the business structure is said to be a family partnership.

Every business partner’s share is mutually decided among the partners. Each partner is required to report his / her share of the business income on their own individual tax return, and pay tax at their individual income tax rate.

In addition, the partnership business must lodge a partnership income tax return every year with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). (This means that a partnership needs its own Tax File Number (TFN). You don’t need to register separately for a TFN. The ATO will automatically issue a TFN to a partnership business if it does not have one already.

You should also get your Australian Business Number(https://abr.gov.au/For-Business,-Super-funds—Charities/Applying-for-an-ABN/) (ABN) which makes you eligible to register a business name and register an Australian Domain Name.

All partners share legal responsibility for the business. This means that the personal assets of all partners are at stake, if things go wrong. However, if some partners want to limit their responsibility for business losses, it would be a good idea to consider forming a limited partnership structure. If your business hires employees or staff, all partners shall be responsible for giving the staff their minimum employee benefits and entitlements (such as superannuation and leave).

Company:

A Company structure is more difficult to set up and has higher running costs. I am not trying to frighten you, it is just that you have to comply with reporting and other requirements under Australian Company Law. The Company structure is better suited to medium and large businesses.

A company is a separate legal entity from an individual. This means the company has the same rights as a natural person and can have debt, sue and be sued. A company has its shareholders, who are the owners. The day to day affairs of the Company are managed by its Directors.

The personal assets of Directors and shareholders are separate from the company, so they can’t be used to pay company debts. In certain cases where directors breach their duties, they may be held personally responsible for company losses.

The income and losses that the business makes belongs to the company, and is reported on a company tax return. The company tax rate applies to the business income. Tax File Number (TFN): A company needs its own TFN. The good news is you don’t need to register. The ATO will automatically issue a company with a TFN (if one doesn’t already exist).

If the company employs staff, the company is responsible for giving them their minimum employee entitlements and conditions (such as superannuation and leave). You can find more information on starting a company in Australia at http://www.asic.gov.au/for-business/starting-a-company/how-to-start-a-company/.

Again, You should get your Australian Business Number(https://abr.gov.au/For-Business,-Super-funds—Charities/Applying-for-an-ABN/) (ABN) which makes you eligible to register a business name and register an Australian Domain Name.

Domain name lookup Australia

Most popular Australian Domains are .com.au and .net.au. So, you can register a domain name like mystore.com.au or mystore.net.au if they are available and subject to fulfilment of a few more terms and conditions.

Other than these, the domains .org.au, .asn.au, .auz.info, .auz.net, .id.au, .melbourne can also be registered.

As mentioned above, you need to have a Australian Business Number (ABN) before you can register any of these domains. In addition, you, the registrant, need to be an Australian, as defined under the eligibility and allocation rules.

Domain names are allotted on a ‘first come first served’ basis. So, you cannot reserve a domain name or pre-register it. Further, you have to follow certain guidelines to register domains for domain monetisation. And you cannot register a domain name for an existing brand name or trademark if it does not belong to you. Something which happens commonly with .com domains.

The domain name you are registering should be an exact match, abbreviation or acronym of the registrant’s name or trademark.

You can read the complete allocation rules for domain names here(https://www.auda.org.au/policies/index-of-published-policies/2012/2012-04/).

To renew the domain name, you again have to ensure that most legal compliances are in place.

It is important to mention that you do not get proprietary rights in the domain name system (DNS). You, the registrant, do not “own” a domain name. Instead, you hold a licence to use a domain name, for a specified period of time and under certain terms and conditions.

If you are not an Australian, you can register an auz.net domain without any restrictions. Using an Australian Domain name demonstrates ample proof of your commitment to local customers.

Web Hosting in Australia

Though there are hundreds of parameters on which web hosting services can be rated, we will primarily focus on download speed, cost and availability of CDN . Google does not differentiate a web page based on its country of hosting. What really matters is that the content should be relevant to the search. Some search engines like Yahoo! and Baidu give preference to local content.

ECommerce Website Australia

As a business owner selling online or getting into ECommerce, what matters most is the ease with which the website can be maintained on a day-to-day basis. Once the website is designed, developed and hosted, you will definitely want to add, delete or modify product listings on your own.

Also, you should have a dashboard to view the vital statistics of your ecommerce store. So that when you get an order, it should be listed boldly right there on your dashboard, or if there is a product that needs to be stocked up, you should know it.

Similarly, you should be able to update the prices and stocks with a few clicks, and not have to wait for your web developer to do it for you. You want to put up a Christmas clearance sale, here, do it in a jiffy. You want to write an article or a blog item, here’s the link to go to.

On the shop front, your website should load quickly, both on the desktop as well as the mobile. The website should be responsive, and should render suitably on any handheld device. Your customers or website visitors should be able to access any product with a few (normally three) clicks from the home page. Ideally, a product should be searchable from anywhere on the web site.

The ecommerce website should suggest relevant products to your customers. The customer registration and checkout process should be smooth. Shipping methods employed should be user friendly and the payment gateways should be secure and protected.

Customer should get information about order dispatches and its tracking at every stage of its progress. Moreover, if you are selling globally, your website should be presentable in different languages and currencies.

You get all the above features and many more with an ecommerce website built by us. We have worked extensively with ZenCart, VirtueMart, WooCommerce, OpenCart, OSCommerce and Prestashop. I say this from the developer, customer and website owner point of view.

It is always beneficial to show prices on the website. If, however, for any reason, you do not want to show prices on the website, or you want to show prices after the customer has registered on your portal, or you want to show the retail prices but not the wholesale prices, you can very easily do it from your ecommerce website.

In addition to the above features, your ecommerce website should also be SEO friendly. Your customers can share your webpages on their own social media pages where they are seen by their friends, who can further share these products with their friends. This way, your product pages get viral. In a way, you only have to focus on making your website or web page appealing to others. Social media will take it up from there to get you more and more sales.

So, how much does an eCommerce website cost?

We base the pricing of an ecommerce website based on the features it offers. To give you an example, our standard ecommerce website with these features costs AUD1,750 inclusive of one Payment Gateway and one Shipping Module set up. This fee includes

1. One Domain Name (for first year)
2. Web Hosting for one year on Standard Plan
3. Website Logo Design
4. Layout design of home page, product pages, cart and checkout pages
5. One Payment Gateway Setup
6. One Shipping Method Setup
7. 5 Information pages like About Us, Shipping Policy, Privacy Policy, GDPR, Terms of Use
8. Demo products added to database
9. Setting up taxes for base country
10. Sample “SALE” set up
11. Configuration with bulk mail account
12. Technical support for 3 months

With such a website, you can host unlimited products in unlimited categories. You can display brand names and manufacturers you are associated with (optional).

Renewal costs are approximately 20% of the first year cost if you do not require any modifications. However, if modifications are required, those are priced very moderately.

Payment Gateway

Another area you need to focus on while setting up an Ecommerce website is the choice of a Payment Gateway. While, most Australia based businesses try to get an ANZ Payment Gateway, I must share with you that the process is tedious and it may take up to 3 months to get an approval. At the same time, there are many other Payment Gateway providers in Australia that give an almost instant approval.

Hosted or Integrated Payment Gateway

It is important to understand here that Payment Gateways are of two types – Hosted and Integrated.
Hosted gateways redirect your customers, at the time of payment, from your website to their own secure platform. The customer enters his Credit Card / Debit Card / Bank information on the Payment Gateway’s page. Needless to say, the payment gateway is equipped with the highest level of security settings.

In an Integrated Gateway, your customers will never have to leave your website to type in payment details (Credit Card / Debit Card / Bank Account information) and to place orders. In this case, it becomes absolute necessary that you have an SSL certificate to ensure website security.

In my opinion, hosted payment gateways are better than Integrated gateways, as they offer peace of mind to the website owner. You cannot look after everything.  And since it concerns another person’s credit card or bank details, let the financial institutions best equipped to handle them, do it.

Payment Gateway Fees

While a good Payment Gateway enhances customer confidence, it should not charge you an exorbitant fee for accepting online payments. Another feature you should check before finalising on a Payment Gateway is the fee on disputed transactions.

Some Payment Gateways are all out bent in customer’s favor. They will penalise the Seller with a high chargeback fees in case a customer asks for a refund. You have to decide if you are ready to give refunds, as well as pay a chargeback fee to the Payment gateway Provider or otherwise.

Extra features

Though some features are basic to every ecommerce website, some others are specific to your needs. If you wish to levy a shipping cost based on the buyer’s State or County, you will need to pay about AUD95 extra to include this feature.

Similarly, if you sell locally and home-deliver the goods, you may need to charge a delivery fee beyond a certain distance. You can have a module which calculates the distance (or time) from your warehouse to the place of delivery.  You can charge a per kilometre fee. This fee will be calculated automatically when the buyer enters his delivery address. This additional feature too will cost you about AUD95.