Guide on how to start your online business in Australia in 2025
The eCommerce and digital service landscape in Australia is rapidly on the upswing. Despite growing attention in this industry, there are still plenty of untapped niches that businesses can explore within this space.
If you want to create a business that can thrive digitally in Australia, that’s a possibility in this day and age. Fortunately for Australians, there are numerous resources, funding options, and tools that budding entrepreneurs can tap into to support their online business.
Having said all that, opening an online business—just like opening any other traditional venture—requires a lot of careful and strategic planning. It also demands a proper approach to ensure that you’re operating legally and cost-effectively.
But if you’ve complied with all the steps to open an online business, it’s more than possible to thrive in the Australian market and beyond. To help you get closer to achieving profits with your online venture, this article will teach you the steps to follow to open a successful online business in Australia.
Let’s get into it.
1) Identify your business idea
Every business first starts with an idea. What problem are you eager and skilled enough to solve? What makes your solution stand out from the rest of the competition? Once you have an answer to these questions, you can formalise the proceeding steps.
Knowing your edge is the cornerstone of your business. It’s the first step you’ll have to make, and it’ll set the tone for where you’re headed moving forward.
For instance, let’s say you want to create a tool that automates economical flight bookings for busy professionals. From that idea, look at Google Trends, potential competitors, and industry reports to see if it’s a viable and profitable idea that you can set into motion.
That said, a majority of these ideas will get scrapped after a thorough market feasibility analysis, and that’s okay. Don’t commit to a half-hearted idea. You must be practical and rational with your business approach.
On top of that, not everyone will create a business idea that’s the next big thing. There are many niches you can plant yourself and excel in as a skilled self-employed individual—such as graphic design, coding, and video editing.
Once you have a solid business idea, though, that’s when you can build around that idea and position yourself towards growing it into a tangible offering.
2) Register your business name and number
To open a legitimate online business in Australia, there are a few vital things you have to set up before launching it to the public.
The first one is a business name. Create a business name and look at the National Names Index to ensure that it hasn’t been taken yet. Then, register the business name and domain in the state you’ll operate in through the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) website.
You should also get an Australian Business Number (ABN). This number will be your identity in banks, taxation offices, and government departments. An ABN can also be tracked by customers through invoices.
You should also register your business to the Australian Taxation Office for Goods and Service Tax (GST) if you estimate that it’ll earn more than $75,000 annually. This ensures that you’ll abide by local tax obligations.
You should also register for a brand logo and necessary copyrights to ensure nobody steals your brand. Once you’ve made these registrations, wait until you get approval and move forward once everything is secured.
3) Create a business plan
While you tick your registration to-do list, you can also use this time to formalise and create a business plan. This plan is a comprehensive documentation that will outline the goals, strategies, and identity of your business. It’ll also outline financial projections.
A business plan helps you lay out the roadmap of your business and what it’s built to solve—giving you guidance throughout the stages of operating the business. It can be used to show to employees to help align them with your company’s vision.
It’s also useful for establishing and writing down strategies in your operations, sales, and marketing efforts. Financial projections are also a key part of the business plan, covering startup costs and revenue goals to aim for throughout periodic milestones.
Having all these things written down not only helps you and your team stay focused but it can also be used to attract investors and partners. This makes a business plan a crucial resource for every business, no matter how small or different it is.
4) Organise your banking, communication, and payment solutions
Another crucial thing you should organise before launching your business is clearing your behind-the-scenes checklist. The contents in this (hypothetical) checklist differ from company to company, but there are usually some overlaps.
For instance, it’s a good idea to use the business’s early stages to open a business bank account. A business-type account has exclusive features that make it easier for you to track transactions and make accurate tax reports. They also can connect with different payment gateways like digital wallets and credit cards.
Besides that, having a professional email address and inbound phone number for your business helps heaps too. If you’re planning to expand all over Australia, selecting a business number from Teleca’s inbound numbers can help you expand your service to people beyond your local area code.
5) Purchase any necessary equipment
While a lot of online businesses only need a laptop and internet connection to get things done, some business types warrant specialised equipment to fulfil customer orders.
It’s necessary for you to acquire these supplies and equipment before you start accepting customers. For instance, if you have a physical product, you should prepare things like label printers, packages, and wrapping paper on top of the product’s specific materials.
Moreover, you should also secure the equipment necessary to provide the service or product to your customer. This may mean getting a sewing machine if you’re selling homemade apparel online, or renting a secondary laptop for work purposes.
In any case, it’s important to know what your business needs before you jumpstart your operations. You don’t have to pay for equipment outright, as you can finance them through many means like leasing out from a lender.
But by having this equipment ready, you’ll be able to fulfil your operations smoothly from the start.
6) Refine your operational strategy
Timely product fulfilment is the single most critical component of developing a successful online business. It’s also an activity where a lot of things can get overlooked and falter, especially in its early stages.
During the start of your business journey, it’s important to approach things with an adaptive mindset. Your well-thought-out plan may seem nice on paper, but it could very easily fall apart in reality. You need to be prepared to adapt your approaches to ensure that your business will survive long enough to plant down its feet.
A normal business workflow involves a lot of moving parts, from getting in touch with your supplier (or subscribing to the right SaaS tool, for service-based companies) to shipping out your order to your clientele. Things can go wrong during the order fulfillment, and it’s important to know potential setbacks so you can approach it methodically.
By using tools like an inbound number’s built-in performance metrics, or survey results from your customers, you can optimize your operations based on customer feedback—thus leading to improved customer satisfaction and a good shot at business success.
7) Create and boost your online presence
An online business is nothing if no one knows about its existence. As such, marketing is a must so that it can funnel in leads from various digital sources, whether it’s the search bar or a social media platform.
But first up, you need to create a professional website that reflects your brand. You can use web designing tools like Shopify or WordPress to mark your first digital footprint or you can look for custom web development services if you’re unsure on how to start your own professional website.
You should also create social media pages on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or other platforms where you can easily reach out to your customers, both new and old. An email campaign effort is also helpful to engage your core customer base and get them to keep coming back to your company.
Using online marketing tactics like using PPC strategies to boost ad placement in search bars or following SEO practices to organically stay on top of search bars are also strategies you should consider to sustainably grow your business.
By having a robust online presence, growing your online business will be much easier. This is if your product also speaks to your audience, of course.
We hope this article will help you in growing your next online business. Good luck!
