Are you ready for your slice of $13 billion?

Published on May 21, 2012 Are you ready for your slice of $13 billion?

Australia’s ecommerce market is set to grow this year by $3 billion according to new research by eMarketer. This means that in spite of the tough current economic conditions and demanding buyers putting pressure on retailers’ costs and margins, if you’re not already selling online you should be seriously considering it.

With the total ecommerce market in Australia growing from $10 billion in 2011 to $13 billion and the fact that it takes time and investment to build up your online customer base, it really is a good time to be getting an online business started. Otherwise your competitors will be taking your share of the market.

Think of it like this – can you afford not to be online when 70% of Australians will be buying things online before the end of the year and take-up and use of broadband will only increase as more Australians take up the government’s National Broadband Network (NBN)?

Taking a well researched business idea and making it happen with the right attitude could lead you to a windfall in the future.

Mindset matters

Starting a business is about making your money work hard for you. You’re not buying a non-productive asset with your money, you’re investing in making money. The way you structure and approach your business will make a lot of difference in how successful your business is. Here are some things to think about:

• How can you structure your business so that if you are not there to run it that someone else could (under your guidance or direction)? Could you eventually sell it or does it rely on just you to run?
• How can you protect your business so that someone else couldn’t set up in competition to you? Do you have trademarks and other protection on your idea, distribution channel, unique product features or way of selling that can protect you?
• How can you manage your time for maximum effectiveness? Are you doing the things that you need to do to succeed or just the things that must be done on a day to day basis? Are you devoting time to growing your business or just keeping it going?
• Do you treat the people you work with as suppliers that must be controlled or potential business partners? It can make a huge difference as to whether they will go the extra mile for you when it counts. You might still get excellent service by treating suppliers badly, but you might miss out on extra deals or referrals as they do not like the way that you do business.

Setting up to sell online

The main steps when setting up that you’ll need to consider are:

• What is the cost of acquiring your products? do you have to pay minimum orders with your suppliers?
• Who are your customers? What will they buy? Why will they buy it?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• How are your competitors not satisfying your customer’s needs well enough – is it something you can do differently or something that you can do better?
• Have you registered a business name and ABN with your state and the ATO? Will your revenue be over the GST threshold?
• Do you have the right business processes in place for security? for handling growth? out of stock products? dealing with customer complaints? Do you have policies?
• Do you have a plan for growth? Can your cart scale up to other limits?

There are  many more factors that you’ll need to consider – only a few are covered here.  The important thing is getting online to start with as the marketing “to dos” will take time to do (except for instant advertising which won’t go far). The sooner you are online the sooner you’ll be able to benefit from it.