Most businesses benefit from some sort of online presence. It can increase sales and make it easier for people to do business with you.

Before you start, think through your strategy. Which products or services will you take online? Who will your customers be? How will customers find your website? What sort of experience will you give them? How will you protect their information?

Planning to do business online

Are you ready to build your own website, or does it make sense to set up shop in an existing marketplace, like Trade Me? Ideally, you’ll do both, to maximise your brand visibility and reach more customers. But maybe you’d like to start with one and expand to the other later. Here’s a few pros and cons to help you decide where to start.

Sell on a marketplace

Join an existing marketplace

Use your own website

Build your own website

Sell on both

Selling on marketplaces and via your website means you are more likely to be where your customers are. Customers tend to spend more on brands with multiple sales channels. This approach is often known as omnichannel retail.

Other benefits include:

• more website visitors as marketplace customers click through to your site — and vice versa
• centralised control over all the places you sell in NZ or overseas.

Omnichannel retail simplified(external link) — Shopify

An online marketplace is a site with products from many sellers. You set up an account, create your own space, and start selling straight away. Many marketplaces have step-by-step guides to help you.

New Zealand examples include:

• Trade Me(external link)
• Storbie Market NZ(external link)
• Two Doors Down(external link)
• Felt(external link) (for locally made arts and crafts)
• Builderscrack(external link) (for tradespeople to sell services)
• Marketplace(external link) (for selling to NZ government agencies)

International examples include:

• Facebook Marketplace(external link)
• Amazon(external link)
• eBay(external link)
• Walmart(external link)
• Etsy(external link)

Choose a marketplace (or multiple marketplaces) popular with your customers. For example, if you want to export pure New Zealand honey to Europe, choose the marketplace most used by European foodies.

Check any marketplace you want to join has good cyber security measures in place. Do they keep their data encrypted? If they have a security breach, will they tell you?

Selling tips

With limited leeway for branding and personalisation, make every word and image count:

• include excellent images. High-quality photos give a good impression.
• write clear product titles. Include your brand name, keywords people search for, and specifics to help customers tell the difference between similar products. For example, NZBrand Natural Shampoo for Dry Hair, Orange and Vanilla, 320ml.
• write engaging product descriptions. Let your brand voice shine and focus on the benefits to the customer. Be concise, but answer any likely questions. Use bullet points to itemise features or selling points.
• follow style guidelines for each marketplace carefully — they often offer tips to get the best results.
• be honest — customers don’t like it when a product doesn’t match its description.
• respond to customer queries and feedback promptly.

Creating your own website has never been easier, with many do-it-yourself platforms and tools to choose from. It does take time and patience to get set up though. You may decide you’d like an agency or a freelancer to help with things like branding and technical details.

Before you start, check out tips for protecting your website and your customers’ information. CERT NZ, the official cyber security agency, has a handy 12-point checklist:

Protect your website(external link) — Own Your Online

Choose the right platform

You’ll need a website platform that lets you create, edit, and publish your own content. You have plenty of options, so do your research carefully. You’ll need one with a good reputation that fits your technical and design abilities. Also look for:

• good support, eg help forums
• strong security features, eg two-factor authentication, quick resolution of security issues
• good point-of-sale solution (so you can easily link your in-person sales with your online platform)
• help to gather and analyse your customers’ data easily
• support for any growth you expect — you don’t want to be rebuilding in a year’s time.

Make sure it suits your ideal customers.

Define your ideal customers

If you plan to sell via your website, you need sales functionality. Most platforms either offer this, or allow extensions or plugins.

If you’re building an online store from scratch, consider starting with a platform specifically designed for e-commerce. 

Make sure your chosen platform offers mobile-friendly designs, so your website adapts to the screen size of any device — desktop, tablet, or smartphone. This is crucial, as most customers buy online using mobile devices.

Is your webpage mobile friendly?(external link) — Google

Get a domain name and matching email

A domain name is a unique name that identifies an internet site, eg business.govt.nz. Choose a name that’s unique and simple. It should be easy to remember and reflect you well. It could be your business name or a keyword related to your business.

1. Understand domain names

Domain names(external link) — Digital Resources

2. Check your business name

ONECheck helps you make sure your chosen name is available.

3. Register the name with an authorised registrar

Authorised registrars(external link) — Domain Name Commission

4. Get a matching email address

Link your domain name to an email address(external link) — InternetNZ

Secure your site

Make your site secure by enabling HTTPS on every page. This means your web traffic is encrypted, preventing anyone from accessing or changing any information that should be private.

To learn more about cyber security in your business visit Own Your Online. 

Business online security series(external link) — Own Your Online

Benefits of using https across your website(external link) — Own Your Online 

You can provide your customers with one or many different ways to pay you. Some methods are easier to set up than others, so it’s worth understanding the options and knowing the best place to start.

To find out more, click to expand each accordion.

Create clear navigation

Create categories on your website to help your customers find what they need. Keep categories simple and name them in obvious ways. Look at similar businesses and check their website categories — could something similar work for you?

Create your content

At a minimum, you’ll need the following pages:

• Homepage — a place to access everything else from, plus discover current offers and promotions.
• About page — tells customers something about you, your business, and your staff.
• Product pages — where you explain everything about the things you’re selling.
• Contact page — shows your phone number, store location (if you have one), and a contact form so people can ask questions or send feedback.
• Returns and exchanges page — sets out your returns and exchanges policy, eg what things customers can return or exchange, and what they’ll get in return.
• Deliveries page — sets out your delivery policy, eg how long delivery should take and whether packages will be tracked.

Follow these tips for creating good content:

• use good-quality images and avoid generic stock photos.
• be concise. Describe your products fully, but in as few words as possible. Avoid jargon.
• focus on the benefits your customer will get from your business.
• only include a news page or a blog if you can update it regularly.
• add videos to showcase how products work.
• think about common questions people ask. Answer these questions — and make the answers easy to find. You won’t need an FAQ page if you provide information in the right places on your site.

Integrate with social media

Link your website with social media to:

• engage your customers
• build an audience for your social media
• improve your search rankings
• let your customers recommend your products or services to their friends and followers.

Integrating your website with your social media(external link) — Digital Resources

Set up analytics

Website analytics are essential. It’s a wealth of information you can use to measure your performance and improve your site. You can delete content no-one clicks on. Update pages to be more useful. Add content your analytics show is missing. And measure if campaigns or promotions drive more sales.

Useful analytics include:

• how many people visit your site, and for how long
• which pages are most popular
• if visitors are new or returning
• search terms people use
• if people click on marketing campaigns
• dollar value of each sale
• social media stats
• where you rank in internet search results.

Google Analytics(external link) — Google

Start marketing

Once your website goes live, let your customers know. Talk to them. Send emails, post on social media, add signage to your shop window and any company vehicles, and add your site to Google’s local listings.

My Business(external link) — Google

Web traffic doesn’t happen by magic. You need to drive it with ads, email marketing, and other methods.

Advertising to online customers

Strengthening relationships with customers

To get a clear picture of how your online business is tracking, link it to your accounting software. Your software can help track sales, costs, cash flow, and inventory.

If you don’t yet use accounting software, now is a good time to start. It can make selling online a smoother experience for you.

Trusted providers include:

Xero accounting software(external link) — Xero

MYOB accounting software(external link) — MYOB

Get started with business finance:

Introduction to business finance

Customers need to find you easily online — ahead of your competitors. It helps to adapt your web content so search engines like Google rank you better in search results. This is known as search engine optimisation.

It’s a bit of a specialist skill, so consider getting professional help. But you can get started using these techniques:

• include words and phrases customers are likely to search for. For example, an Auckland-based hairdresser will use the words ‘Auckland’, ‘hair’, and ‘hairdresser’. This should come naturally if you write in a simple, honest way about your business and what it offers. Avoid stuffing your pages with too many keywords. This can sound forced and unnatural, and may negatively affect your search rankings.
• regularly add fresh content, eg customer reviews or blog posts.
• add videos.
• encourage customers to share your content on social media.
• get other businesses to link to your site — and link to them.
• make sure pages load quickly.

Learn more:

• SEO Learning Center(external link) — Moz
• SEO starter guide(external link) — Google
• Webmaster Guidelines(external link) — Google

Fresh content:

• gives your customers a reason to return
• encourages search engines like Google to rank your site higher in search results
• can become part of email marketing and online marketing campaigns.

Review the functionality of your site regularly too. Technology changes quickly — make sure your site is keeping up. You need it to stay secure, work well, and be appealing.

Optimise your website to increase sales

Reviewing your website(external link) — Digital Resources

Good cyber security is crucial for your online business. Make sure you know how to:

• keep customer data safe
• reduce the likelihood of cyber-attacks
• reassure your customers, eg provide secure payments, display logos of any security systems you have in place.

To understand the risks and steps you can take, explore these resources:

• Protect your website(external link) — Own Your Online
• Data breaches(external link) — Own Your Online
• Protecting business data
• Protecting customer and employee information
• Avoiding scams and fraud
• What to do if you’ve been hacked

Cookies

If you’re setting up cookies on your website, do you need a pop-up when people enter your website in order to get permission to use them?

It’s good practice to be up-front on what privacy settings you have and if you’re using tracking cookies you should tell your visitors. However, there are no legal requirements to have a pop-up requesting permission to use cookies in New Zealand privacy laws.

If you trade overseas, or your services apply to any overseas market you are required to notify your visitors of cookie usage. By law in the UK, as part of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, websites must get consent from visitors to get and store data.

If you aren’t marketing to an international audience, the best practice is to let your customers know you’re using cookies by including their usage in your privacy statement. If you don’t have a privacy statement on your website yet the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has a Privacy Statement Generator. It takes five minutes to set one up.

Privacy Statement Generator(external link) — Office of the Privacy Commissioner

Set up logs to record issues

Logs record all the actions that people take when they access your website. This information can be really helpful when things go wrong.

But logs often aren’t turned on by default. You may need to turn them on — it’s best to do this before issues arise. Having complete logs will help to diagnose and resolve any issues quickly.

Set up logs and monitoring for your website(external link) — Own Your Online