Sell More Online

Do you know that in budget 2013, Malaysian government has announced a RM1,000.00 grant to help SMEs get online? It has allocated RM50 Million fund to help 50,000 micro entrepreneurs with priority given to the women entrepreneurs!

These are the Criteria You have to fulfill for the Grant: 

1) Malaysian aged between 18 to 65 years old, priority given to women entrepreneurs

2) Registered business (sole proprietary, partnership or sdn bhd) or business license with SSM

3) Have a website domain with .com.my/.my/.net.my/.edu.my/.org.my (eg. www.webshaper.com.my) and maintain an active website (like webShaper stores)

4) Subscribed to broadband or a registered member of Pusat Internet 1Malaysia (PI1M)

5) Local Bank Account registered with your name / business name

6) Priority given to microentrepreneur (less than 10 fulltime workers and annual turnover less than RM200,000).

Common Q&A (In reference to the official FAQs)

Q: What’s the deadline for the grant application?

Starts from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2013 or as early as the RM50 Million is fully allocated to qualified applicants.

You can start applying online at the official site of SKMM (MCMC). Strictly one application per individual or company.

Q: How would the grant being disbursed?

Directly into your registered bank account with your own name or business name.

Q: How long would it take for my application to be processed?

Within 30 days.

Q: How do i check the status of my application?

Via online at http://gmbo.skmm.gov.my/Public/Check, Just keyin your IC number and Reference No

Q: Is there any contract or signed agreement between the successful applicants with SKMM (MCMC)?
No.

Q: Any additional charges to apply for GMBO Grant?
No.

Q: Do I need to report to SKMM on how the fund is being utilized?
No. SKMM (MCMC) will have continuous efforts and methods to trace the effectiveness of the program.

Q: If I have a facebook page or blogshop, do I qualify for this grant ?

A facebook page or blogshop will not qualify. You will need to have a website with a domain ended with (.com.my /.net.my/.org.my/.edu.my)  or (.my) to market your business.

Any further enquiries ?

You can email to gmbo@cmc.gov.my or  call them at 1-800-88-4040 (Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5.30pm). Take note the online application only operate from 7am to 11pm daily basis.

So what do you need to do now? What’s next?

For webShaper’s merchants who fulfill the criteria stated above, you can apply online here now!

For those merchants who yet to have an online presence and thinking of starting an online store to promote and sell their products now, best time to start! If you love to sit in class to learn, guess what, we have the new miniClass for you!

Follow these simple 4 steps!

1) Sign up a webShaper stores (mini or soho) with a .com.my or .my domain

2) Done setting up your ecommerce store and start selling!

3) Make sure you fulfill all criterias stated above

4) Submit the claim online!

Important: Always refer to SKMM Official Site (https://gmbo.skmm.gov.my/) for details  (in Bahasa Malaysia). The approval is strictly upon SKMM purview and we cannot influence nor guarantee the success of the application.

Official site at:

https://gmbo.skmm.gov.my/

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Here’s what our merchant Felix has to say:

After i sign up webShaer bizStore, my sales increase about 50%! Compare to the previous service provider, i found webShaper has below advantages:
1) Ease of Use – The webShaper store is very easy to learn and control. It has everything in details, such as Product, Customer, Report and etc.

2) Marketing ability – Marketing is the most important thing when you are doing online business as the competition is very stiff! webShaper store has variety marketing tools. One of the remarkable marketing tools i would recommend is “Quantity Discount” This encourage customer buy more and more, and your sales will grow and grow! The other one is “Affiliates”, this provide incentive to your blogger/reseller to promote/sell more for you!

3) Service – webShaper bizStore provides call in service! In case you have any problem which need to be rectified immediately or you prefer to talk to them, just call them!

Last but not least, they are going to arrange more and more tutorial in the near future, which i think it’s very important as i am updated with system and well trained to use the system.

 

Better SEO and Marketing Tools designed to help merchant sell more online couple with right marketing strategies tips from webShaper to Uniqso.com help them achieve 50% higher sales in 3 months time.  (think happy). How about you? Let’s get started (for serious merchant only)

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webShaper is proud to be the Official Webstore Partner for Ecommerce Asia Conference 2012.

And, that’s not all,  we are giving out 2 FREE TICKETS for the conference, worth RM599 each to our customers!

To win is easy, just sign up webShaper stores now and stand a chance to win! T&C Apply.

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To encourage the growth and usage of electronic commerce (E-commerce), Malaysia government has since Year 2002 allows the eligible tax payers: whether individuals, companies, or enterprises to deduct their cost incurred in developing an E-commerce enabled website by introducing The Income Tax (Deduction for Cost of Developing Website) Rules 2003 (“the Rules”).

What is “E-commerce enabled”?

The Rules has defined “E-commerce enabled” as a system of processes where transaction involving the transfer of information, products, services or payments can be made through electronic networks for an electronically confirmed consideration as verified by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (“MCMC”).

How does this tax deduction works?

The Rules is effective as at to date since the year of assessment of 2002. As such, any tax payers: whether individuals, companies, or enterprises, which have gained profits from its business, shall be allowed to deduct the necessary startup cost of E-commerce enabled website in their income tax or company tax audit for that year of assessment. However, pursuant to the Rules, the relevant startup costs shall be divided into five shares whereby one-fifth of the startup costs are allowed for deduction for that year of assessment and the remaining balance of the costs shall be deducted in four following years of assessment in equal share.

The requirement:

Before one is eligible for the above tax deduction, the tax payers must fulfill the following requirements and to submit application to MCMC:

1. The applicant must have a website;

2. The website must be hosted on a web server in Malaysia;

3. There must be server software or applications that supply information to the web server upon request.  Futhermore, there must be:

(a) Shopping cart or any programs that facilitates the collection of information. The program is a way to let web shoppers select the products or services they want, preview the sale amounts, delete items if they change their minds subsequently, enter their payment and       shipping information, and then cancel the order completely if they desire to.

(b) Security capabilities that allow the encryption of data during the transfer of customer information.

4. The collection of payment may be made online or offline. If online payment, there must be:

(a) A software to process transactions and send information to all of the involved parties (seller’s bank, customer’s bank, etc.).

(b) Internet security capabilities that allow the encryption of data during the transfer of customer information

The Procedure:

1. The applicant shall complete and submit the prescribed form entitled “Application Form for    Certification of E-Commerce Website” to MCMC together with the processing fees of RM100.00 by way of cheque payable to MCMC.

2. The application can be submitted to the following address:

Chairman

Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission

63000 Cyberjaya

Selangor Darul Ehsan

Attn: En. Jailani Johari, Head of Regulatory and State Coordination Division

Tel: 03-86888000, Fax: 03-86881002

3. Once the certificate has been obtained, the applicant must attach the certificate to the income              tax return form for submission to the Inland Revenue Board.

Important Notes:

Apart from the information to be provided in the prescribed application form, MCMC may request for additional information from the applicant. Also, MCMC has the reserved rights to amend any of the conditions and criteria for applications over time in accordance to the development of electronic transaction and online system.

Therefore, it is advisable for any interested parties to contact MCMC at the contact below for further enquiries:-

Licensing Department Regulatory and Coordination Division

Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission

63000 Cyberjaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan.

Tel: +603 8688 8000

http://www.mcmc.gov.my

This information is provided by CHUR ASSOCIATES®

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Some clients & prospects check with us whether we have the “new facebook feature” yet, as provided by some of our competitors.

Basically this is what the feature does – when merchant upload new products on the webStore, the products list are updated on the facebook page (wall) too.

Questions is, does it  make sense?

We give it a long & hard thought, It does make sense, if and only if you only upload 1  or 2 products at one time.

What happens if you upload a 10 or more  new products (which is pretty common for most merchants)? so it will become something like this below:

Now, let’s put yourself in a consumer’s shoes, would you even bother LIKE SUCH FACEBOOK PAGE ?

The answer is obvious, it looks like a spammy product page where people will avoid like a plague, and worse, with only one way communication aka ZERO ENGAGEMENT. The chances of your post appearing on your prospects or consumers wall is pretty dim.

That’s NOT how you are going to make your customer love you more (so they will buy even more !)

Now, let’s take a look just a few perfect examples by our wonderful clients. They shows us what engagement is all about.  Try see how many comments & like they are getting for their facebook wall posting.

so, the key is Engagement, by selectively hand pick the topic,  content, promo,  or product which will spur interest, get feedback, excite them to participate, is what Facebook does best. and is what every online merchants should be doing.

Today, most people visit facebook to connect with friends, to checkout fren’s photo, to see what their friends or families up too. Very few of them are in the mood or buying stuff, period.  Hardsell on product list just WON”T WORK.

So it’s time to rethink how you market your page and how you plan to reconnect with your fans / clients with heart!

On last note, We think, deciding on what NOT to do, is far more important than what to do.  It’s way to easy to fall into a trap by trying to be everything everybody else  did (esp competitors).  We just have to say, no, we are so-not going to build this. Have a great weekend ahead.

More valuable posts you shouldn’t miss!

http://mashable.com/2011/04/06/facebook-engagement-data/

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/11953/How-to-Encourage-Engagement-on-Facebook.aspx

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Do you know next week, 12-14th August  2011, Malaysia will have its first ever ecommerce fair organized by Malaysia #1 Online Marketplace – Lelong.my?

Come talk to us at Booth 1001 (Checkout the complete floor plan here) if you

1) Thinking of starting up an online store (and you already know what you want to sell)
2) Thinking of expanding your retail business via e-commerce
3) Already own a blogshop and want to turn your “hobby” into an own-branded webStore!

There’s talk on e-commerce too, we will be talking!
(Speaker: Adrian Oh, co-founder of neowave)

See the full list here

http://ecfair.lelong.com.my/2011/whats-happening-at-the-lelong-my-e-commerce-fair/

And don’t miss out these Online Marketing Workshop brought to you by iTrain + Lelong!

http://www.lelongmail.lelong.com.my/ecfair2011/lelong20110808.html

======================

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Don’t miss this !

Then check out the king of e-commerce
Inspired? You should be!

Rome wasn’t built in one day, and you can do it too!

How? Start selling online now with webShaper miniStore – as low as RM 1 per day only!

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Facebook Login

Social e-commerce is unstoppable! With Facebook conquering 600 millions users around the world, it’s something nobody can ignore (with notable exception like China or North Korea)

Here’s a very neat F-commerce infographics by CreativeFeed

Now, Imagine your eStore visitors could easily sign up an account  with you and do a fast checkout by just using their Facebook login! It’s amazingly easy and instantly boost up your conversion rate!

Easily let your visitors login via their Facebook account

Facebook Login will automatically prompt for Permission

Go to webShaper > Marketing > Social to enable it now! (Follow the tool tip guide)

Upload your icon (16 x 16px) and logo (75 x 75px)

Update the  Site URL and Site Domain (see tool tips for what to put there)

Attention: Don’t miss out these 2 fields or else you will get ERROR! Eg:

Site URL:  http://www.yoursite.com/fb/
Site Domain: yoursite.com

Tada… and you are done! It is really that simple!

A personal thanks from Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg:
“Thank you all for spending (wasting) so much time at Facebook and
made me Time Person of the Year for 2010. “

You can even filter and find out who’s actually login via Facebook! Now how cool is that!?

Image Gallery 

One of the most anticipated (and requested) feature by webShaper clients! It’s finally here! Not merely a simple Image Gallery, this one comes with automated resizing and carousel (thumbnail rotating automatically) and Zooming (support 2 types of zooming, outer zoom and inner zoom!!!)

Image Gallery in Action (see live demo)

Just click on any products, Edit > View Gallery to access the Settings

1-Click Shipping Setup 

Say bye-bye to cumbersome shipping rate setup. We have designed a new 1-click Shipping Setup option, for you to easily setup a shipping rate table and put into use in seconds!

Defaults are PosLaju Domestic, Poslaju International, International Registered Air Mail (Pos malaysia) and Fedex International Economy. Even you are not using any of this, you can take advantage of this to do a super quick setup on shipping rate calculation!!! (note: double check the rate as it changes from time to time).

1-Click Shipping Setup – Fast Shipping Setup + Saves you (lot of) time!

Shipping Rate table is ready with just 1-click! Then you can easily update the rates too!

Dynamic JQuery Menu

For customers with thousands of products, you probably have noticed a slow down in how the old product catalog manager’s menu is loading as it becomes “overweight”.  So we have improved the menu by using the latest Jquery technology, so it only loads the product items as it’s clicked on. This enhancement has made the menu much more “light weight”, it is saving precious server resources, speed up the loading time and result in better User Experience for webShaper Stores.

It loads the sub category or products in real time.

Payment Gateways Update

iPay88 merchants will love this, as we will be the first webStore service to roll out the “ipay88 delay callback notification functionality”, so any delayed in bank notification to ipay88, won’t result in payment status not being updated. Additionally, we have added a new payment gateway too call Smoov Pay.
That’s about all for now. Still yet to kickstart your webStore? What are you waiting for?

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Imagine, wouldn’t it be nice to have 100,000 followers who like you on facebook?

Who doesn’t want that?

Is it even achievable if you are small business? Don’t sweat, the answer is…

(Special thanks to jim for the shooting…)

One of webShaper stores’s client, www.avalonsarees.com, now having a whopping 116,565 fans on the page! see for yourself!

http://www.facebook.com/Avalonsarees

So we are curious, we sms our beloved client, how she did it? so we send her a SMS to dig out her secret to 100,000 strong facebook fans…

So is it that simple? of course NOT! not to mention to do all the above is nothing short of challenges!

However,  we think there is more to that, these are some other critical factors too we think adding to their success too.

1) They command a niche (designer & celebrity sarees)
2) They sell globally and giving out Free shipping Worldwide!
3) Beautiful & sexy models.
4)  They give superb customer service.
5) They are passionate, else you can’t explain why their fans are so engaged!
(one posting update easily a few hundred likes, it’s hard to get this if you are not celebrity)
6) They use webShaper Stores (ok.. i admit i am bias but this is a fact, LOL )

Have any other tips to share on getting Quality Fans for your facebook page?

Share yours on the comment post! we love to hear from you.

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Finally it’s here.  Maxis-PayPal account is ready to rock and roll.

This iphone app is NOT yet released as of this writing.

Maxis-PayPal is claimed as the  world 1st mobile carrier plus online payment provider mash-up, it is set to to fuel the e-commerce eco-system in Malaysia! (hooray!)

The timing has never been better, there’s already a substantial PayPal user base locally to grow with (approximately 1.2 million Malaysia PayPal accounts and growing). And did we mentioned most webShaper clients are on a PayPal Business Account too?

If you have registered PayPal before, here’s how you can easily link it to your  Mobile Number (Prerequisite: You must be a Maxis client)

Logon to Maxis PayPal Page,

Step 1 Key in your mobile number, then request for TAC (Transaction Authorization Code)

Step 2 Key in your TAC (will be SMS to you)

Step 3 Enter your PayPal user ID (your email) and its password, create a new mobile PIN for yourself! (please don’t use your birthday!)

Step 4, It’s done! Simple ya !? (then of course, you will get notification SMS from Maxis-PayPal and also an email from PayPal notifying you that PayPal mobile is setup successfully)

But hold on a second, is that all? Well, sorta.

In every way, A maxis-PayPal account, is really like a co-branded car, imagine Naza importing KIA car slapping Naza-KIA tag on it, it is, still a damn KIA car.  Same goes for Maxis-PayPal.  It’s not obvious how it is distinctive  from a typical PayPal account with a few exceptions that

1) It grants you some exclusive offer only Maxis-PayPal account users
2) It  allows you to pay Maxis bill (postpaid) or prepaid top-up via PayPal (good news for those having spare cash in Paypal, we won’t mind if you want to send the $ to us too), You can login to your online account to see the screenshot below when you are trying to make payment.

PayPal option emerges once you linked up your Maxis mobile account to your PayPal Account

3) It  allows you to access your PayPal account via http://m.paypal.com by just using your mobile and mobile PIN ( as an alternative login for your email and password). Below we take a look at how it works.

fire up your mobile browser, type m.paypal.com
notice you can login using your mobile number + mobile pin?

once login, you can see your account balance.
and you can send money (to us, please) too!

PayPal mobile allows you to send money to
a mobile number too, something not available
in the standard PayPal webapp UI.

Check, and click on send! If the recipients is without a PayPal Account
tied to the mobile number, PayPal will SMS him / her sign up one!

Every transaction will be recorded, just login to  PayPal to see your mobile transaction.

So it’s that really ALL? We don’t think so, it’s just freshly baked, and Maxis Staff preparing the FAQs apparently didn’t have enough sleep (see proof below).

We should expect the capability to utilize SMS to check for PayPal balance, send payment etc soon as it’s covered here on a complete PayPal Mobile Experience (This is for US, so the SMS short code will not be applicable outside US) .

And of course, how can it be complete with an iPhone & iPad app? We look forward to these soon!?

Have anything to add? Please share your thoughts or comment below!

Please don’t tell us this FAQs is outsourced ya…

A Recap, you can see some of the featured merchants in video below:

News around the web

Maxis-PayPal Account FAQs

Maxis and PayPal pushing boundaries in Payment via Online + Mobile

Maxis, PayPal in strategic tie up

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