Determine your Product and Business Nature

First and foremost step while starting an online business is to figure out why you want to start an online business. It always starts with nicely structured business plan. Identify your mission statement and long-term vision for your business. The mission statement of your business helps you in figuring out the value of your business and the reason why your business exist online.

Register your Company Name and Business with SSM

Once you decide your business plan and mission statement, the next step is to legally register your online business in Malaysia with Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM). There are different procedures for different types of businesses

(i) Sole proprietorship

If you are going to run your business alone making business liability as your personal liability, you may consider registering it under sole proprietorship. If you want to register your business under your personal name, the charges would be RM30 per year. If you want stock-trade-alike name like “Yyter”, the charges would be RM 60 per year.

(ii)Partnership

If you are going to run your business with one or more of your partners, you may consider registering it under “Partnership” type. One thing to keep in mind while working in partnership business is, when any of your partner decides to leave the business, you will have to register a new business if you want to continue running it. Charges for partnership business registration is RM60 per year.

(iii)Company

Procedure for company registration is bit complex than two mentioned above. This option applies if you want to get yourself a totally separate entity. As compared to other two options, application forms and fees are bit complicated. To be safe with this kind of business registration, you might consider taking help from an SSM officer.

Build a Website, Get Hosting, Domain Name and Email Addresses

You are done with all the legal procedures. Now, it’s time to actually get an identity for your business by registering a nice domain name, getting a good hosting and a proper business email address. For domain name, there are plethora of domain registrars available. You may search for reviews and feel free to proceed with right one. As far as hosting an online business in Malaysia is concerned, you need to figure out technical needs of your business. After getting your business registered in Malaysia, you will be provided with unique business registration number or ID. Using this ID, you can register localized domains like .com.my making it look more credible in Malaysia. If you are starting ecommerce business in Malaysia, you have to get trustable and secured payment gateway!

Design Your Website and Manage Your Content

Once you get good hosting and a domain name, the next step is to design a website with great user experience. If you feel the need to hire a team to help you with this task, go ahead and do that as your website is where your target customers would hangout. Also, take care of the load-time as slow-loading turns of lot of potential customers. Avoid the use of high-end animations to speed-up the loading time.

Start Advertising and Promotions

Once you are done setting up all the crucial parts of your business, it’s time to get customers. And, the best way to attract the customers is through advertising and promoting products on social media. The highly effective methods of online advertising are Google Adwords and Facebook Ads. Other than these two, there are multiple options available for social media marketing. Depending on what types of products you are selling and where your target audience hangs out most, you may prefer that medium over another.