Organiser: Selangor Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (SITEC)
Class: 10th EC Class of 2015
Title: How to Start an Online Business (BM)
Date: 3 Nov 2015
Time: 2PM
Venue: SDCC
Mohamad Amirul Mohd Mokhtar, Marketing Strategist of EasyStore, and Luqman bin Adris, Co-founder of Square.my, were invited to share guidelines and procedures for starting an online business. Around 40 paricipants joined the class.
Amirul has been in the online business world since he was a university student. He received a degree in Management and Entrepreneurship from Universiti Kuala Lumpur Business School. He has been active in the area of internet marketing and e-commerce, and has been running his online business since 2012.
“There are pros and cons selling products or services through different platforms.”
He pointed out that social media is good for marketing, but not systematic. Marketplaces have high traffic, but there is a high competition over price. Sellers need to spend lots of money to hire designers and programmers if they want to sell on their own websites.
EasyStore is an all-in-one e-commerce platform which allows business owners to create an online store without any technical knowledge. They can manage their online business easily through business tools made available for them.
Luqman introduced Square.my as an all-in-one social e-commerce platform for online sellers to open a webstore that is integrated with Facebook, Blogger, Twitter and other social channels that offer centralized stock management systems, sales reports and multiple channel store front with marketing tools powered by social media platforms.
Square.my helps small and medium enterprises to start business online easily as it integrates with major payment gateways using credit cards and online banking. It also helps online sellers to save time and cost in managing their online business. In addition, all stores are mobile and tablet friendly with mobile applications.
He asserted that 91 percent of online users shop online. Trust is the main reason why online users don’t shop online. 60 percent of internet users in Asia use social media to make purchase decisions.
He also suggested online sellers to recognize their customers through different market segments such as demographic (age, gender), geographic (living places, languages), psychographic (interests) and sociographic (consumer-brand relationship).