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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Mobile Storefront –  (bizStore only) - This is the very first, beta release version of webShaper’s mobile store, available only for business store & support only PayPal payment option for now. (Customers we heard your feedback! Next we will build the feature to enable / disable it)

Printing Shipping Label – Still handwriting on your shipping consignment note? Not a big issue if you just manage a few orders a day. But imagine the ability to continuously print (using dotmatix printer for multiply sheets) on consignment notes of your preferred courier service providers (Poslaju, Citylink, Skynet, Fedex, UPS, DHL  etc!).  Think of the time you will save, fewer error you will make and best of all, more time to do sales and customer service!

Facebook Social Commerce - (soho, bizStore only) – This is NOT just about duplicating an eCommerce website inside Facebook itself (Read why)  , we decided to build only gorgeous looking design which sync the “New Arrival”, “Best Seller” and “Featured Products” from the webShaper Store. It smartly integrates Social button like Facebook Like, Pin It, G+1 when you hover over the product images (pic below) to enable the merchants’ customers easily share what they love without leaving Facebook.  If any customers click on the products, it will lead directly to the merchant webStore to complete the whole shopping process without compromising the online shopping experience.  Locate it at Marketing > Social > Facebook Store!

Product Options Improved: Now you can set whether to allow Product Option Price stays at a Fixed Flat Rate (regardless of the quantity) or Let the product option price add up together by multiplying the quantity of product which your customers order.

Eg. Let’s say you want to charge $10 for  text engraving (extra service you can setup using product option), you can choose to charge $10 for each quantity, or you can choose to charge a FLAT rate of $10 for any quantity. so if customer buys either 1 or 10 items..it’s still 10 bucks additional only!

Bulk Upload Enhanced - Bulk Upload using Microsoft Excel File now is even more versatile by supporting both Product Options & Sub Products (Sub SKU)! Users can now bulk upload all at one go and save valuable time! Try it out now, download the new sample file in your webShaper Control Panel. Important Note: If you bulk upload Sub-Products, you must fill in both “Parent SKU” and “Product Item” field. We recommend when you upload, you group subproducts with  1 option in Sheet 1, subproucts with 2 options in Sheet 2, so on and so forth.

 The new Option , Attributes, parent SKU column added!

Thank you page tacking code - Allows new parameters such as [order-id],[order-qty], [order-value], [order-currency],  to be tracked by web stat tracking code like . The code will be deployed on “Thank you page” (The page shows up once customers successfully place orders and payment). Locate it at Marketing > Web Stats !

Note: Google Analytic users: Before you start placing the advanced e-commerce tracking code, please make sure you have set your eStore as an Ecommerce Site and your primary currency tracked.

Reference:

Google Analytis eCommerce Tracking  Setup
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009612

Google Analytic eCommerce Tracking (UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS using the new analytics.js)
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/ecommerce

Google Analytic eCommerce Tracking (Classic Google Analytic using ga.js)
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingEcommerce

New Jquery Chart - - Say goodbye to the old Flash Chart! Sales report on dashboard is now upgraded into JQuery (will extend to all reporting soon) chart format.  So now you can see this on iPhone and iPad too!

Marketing sections - Another way of grouping products, but only available to be used for mobile stores for now.

Stay tuned for more improvement coming! We are committed to innovate on webShaper to help you “sell more online”!

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Good news is, even a small tiny brand (like webShaper) can achieve that. Eg this show when you google for “webShaper”. notice our tiny logo and latest google plus post showing up? Isn’t it COOL ?

Love it? Come on… who doesn’t?  Imagine once you done this, Your brand is displayed very prominently next to the search results. No paid Google ads or organic results can TOP this and People can see your latest shared content on Google+ !!!

1) Setup a Google+ Business Page here

https://plus.google.com/pages/create

Tip: Pick “Brands”, then select  “website”, applies to most online store.

2) Fill up all details

Tagline, Introduction, Contact Info etc and of course don’t forget to input your webStore url!

3) Link your website to your Google+ Business Page

eg shown, copy the code, paste to your footer (login to webShaper > Design > Template files > Edit Footer.html)

4) Build up a followers

Promote your newly created Google+ Page on Your webStore, Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter or any channels you can reach out to your customers! Ask people to follow it! Build up a crowd of  minimum 30 and keep growing it!

A little extra, customize the  G+ badge and put on your webStore too! See how we done on our website’s footer.

https://developers.google.com/+/web/badge/

5) Post RELEVANT & QUALITY contents regularly

Post up relevant, quality contents (new products, tips and tricks to use your products, events photos etc) to your followers regularly!

6) Verify your Google Plus Business Page 

https://support.google.com/plus/contact/page_verification?rd=1

note: we did not complete this step but our brand page show up nevertheless. however, always nice to verify it

Voila!

Power tips: Google your brand or URL name, make sure it already ranks #1 on google search results. Else the Google Page might never show up.

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As a practise, when you sign up a new merchant account with ipay88, a default transaction limit is imposed on your account.

* This applies mainly to malaysia merchants.

** Subject to industry, eg, if you sell clothing, they might limit  up to RM1000 for single transaction, if you sell computers, the limit will be higher at RM4000 per single transaction.

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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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Google has officially announced on 7th December 2012 (GMT+8)  that they have discontinued  the Google App Standard Edition service with immediate effect.

Google Apps Standard, used to be a FREE Service by Google which give SMEs up to a maximum 10 Users Account for your own domain email plus office tools.

See the official annoucement here on Google Blog

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/changes-to-google-apps-for-businesses.html

A bit of history, we first signed up Google App back in early 2008, we found it very useful, we love the versatile, enterprise class email service (spam filter, anyone?) provided by Google App.  It is basically Gmail (we all love) which power your own domain (eg @webshaper.com) Since then, we have been helping new webShaper clients setup Google App Standard (FREE) as a value added service which give small business a solid email tool to kickstart with.

Unfortunately, Google has decided to ceased the offering of Standard Free Version officially. As a result, we would not be able to provide the Google App Setup service to all new clients from this point onwards.

Quick FAQs
Q) Will existing Google Apps users be affected?
A) NO.

Q) Do we still get email when we sign up webShaper Stores?
A) Yes, we will now provide Windows Live Custom Domain (hotmail/outlook to power your own domain) as a default setup for all new webShaper clients.

Q) Can I still use Google Apps?
A) Yes, it’s a fully paid service now. As a start, Google still provide a 30 days free trial, but take note after first 30 days, a user account will cost USD50 / year.
(In our opinion, it is still worth the money given the usefulness of the tools provided by Google)

News around the web:

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/12/google-apps-no-longer-free-to-anyone-new-to-the-service.html

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/google-kills-free-google-apps-for-business-now-only-offering-premium-paid-version-to-companies-of-all-sizes/

http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/free-google-apps/

http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/google-apps-no-longer-free-for-businesse/240144076

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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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This can be very useful and important if you take PayPal payments and you are:-

* Selling cross-border (ship out to other countries)
* Have an unusually large amount order
* Checking on First time paying client

Just type this in your browser URL (must login to PayPal Account)
https://www.paypal.com/us/verified/pal=client@email.com

replace client@email.com with your customer PayPal account email.

If it’s unverified, do more due diligence (eg Call the customer, Get fixed line Work / Home number or to the tune of Identity Card / Water Bill / Electricity Bill) to protect yourself from possible chargeback which might occur later on.

And of course, couple with Fraud Alert System (FAS) provided by webShaper, these steps will reduce your risk exposed to fraudulent orders.

Happy Selling Online!

~ webShaper Team

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