On-line or brick and mortar? Nowadays there is actually no clear distinction as most businesses have an on-line presence and many have both channels from marketing to sales. However, the rule here is to start a business entirely using the internet as your store front without any need to have a "physical" presence.

In the Malaysian context, all businesses have to be registered with the Registra of Business, there after you would have to have a web-address. Here you have many choices of either a dot com, dot net, dot biz, or a dot com dot my for example, www.example.com.my, which indicates that your web address or domain is registered in Malaysia, and for that you could contact MyNic. It does not really matter which domain name you choose as anybody will be able to find you on the web. But remember to have a catchy and memorable name connected to your product or service. You could register your chosen domain name on the many websites selling domains on the internet.

Now, having a web presence means your business is exposed to anyone globally, you may find your customers or have inquiries from outside the national boundary, as such you may have to cater to the needs of your potential customers by carefully choosing how to create your website. Should it be in English, Malay or Chinese? Asked yourself who your audience are and where will they come from. This is important as you may want to market your products or services to the widest consumers available on the web or you may choose to target only certain segments of the global market. Creating a website, thereafter is easy as all you need is content, doing it yourself is also possible with the right software and some web portals like yahoo.com, provides web design packages to small businesses. There are also professional web designers whom you may commission to create a professionally designed webside, with features like shopping cart, credit card payment, tracking of orders etc. It must be highlighted that there are fixed cost associated with a web presence, for instance, a fee for setting up a website, web hosting and other features like number of e-mails addresses and the size of your webpage.

Remember that there are millions of website on the internet, so think about how could your customers find you. Here you may want to consider advertising your website to increase the chances of customers finding you and to ensure that your webpage is ranked high on the popular search engines like google and yahoo.

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