13 Ecommerce Best Practices for Australian Businesses

Managing a successful online business requires a lot more than great ideas and reliable infrastructure. There are many financial, managerial and legal aspects that become visible only after your business is up and running. Oftentimes a pre-set framework can help you be prepared for these kinds of challenges.

In this article, we will present a basic guideline outlining the best practices for Australian e-commerce businesses. We will focus on those aspects that are essential to make sure your e-commerce business gains the trust of your consumers.

1. Basic business best practices

The basic best practices for Australian business owners are set by fair trading legislation. Though you are certainly familiar with these, we will go through the main points here:

• Never mislead or deceive your consumers. You should not misrepresent any information about your goods or services. For example, you should never provide incorrect information regarding the place of origin or condition (new vs used) of your products.
• Make sure your consumers face no substantial difficulty in the payment processor while receiving the goods or services that they have purchased.
• The product details you provide on your website must be accurate and properly represent your products. For example, if you mention that the socks you are selling are 100% pure cotton, they need to be 100% cotton.

2. Accessibility requirement

If your company is selling a product that needs special software or hardware to function, you should make sure that your consumers are aware of that in advance.

3. Advertising guidelines 

There are a few things to keep in mind to ensure that your ads are consumer friendly and follow all the necessary regulations.

The first thing that you should keep in mind is your ads must be clearly distinguishable from other contents of your site. For example, your customer review section should remain independent and free of self-promotion.

Don’t make any false claims related to your products. Make sure you are able to back up any claim or information that appears in your ads. Providing misleading information in your ads will demote your brand image and may even lead to legal issues.

4. Email marketing guidelines

As an e-commerce business, you will frequently send emails and newsletters to your customers and subscribers. The Spam Act 2003 provides clear instructions regarding which emails will be identified as spam and which are legitimate commercial emails.

Here are the basic requirements set by the Spam Act:

Do not send unsolicited emails

You cannot send any commercial email to a recipient without prior consent. However, in some cases, you can infer consent from how a potential customer interacts with your site.

For example, if a customer hasn’t subscribed to your newsletter but buys products from your site regularly, you may assume that they won’t mind receiving special offer emails from you.

Still, the best practice is to ask your customers for opting into your newsletter at the checkout page. A simple checkbox near the checkout confirmation button is ideal.

Include your company name and identity

If a recipient reads your email, he should easily be able to identify where the email is coming from. You must clearly mention your business name, website and business address.

Make it easy to unsubscribe

Every email must have an “Unsubscribe” button, preferably at the bottom. Your recipients should be able to choose to stop receiving future emails if that’s what they decide.

5. Interaction with minors

Anyone below the age of 16 years old is considered a minor. Your e-commerce site may have visitors who fall into this age group. If your site especially targets this age group then you need to take some extra care.

Children are not usually entitled to any legal capacity to enter into a contract. Your site must verify the age of your consumers before any business transaction or contract is initiated.

Take reasonable steps to ensure your paying consumer is over 16. If they are not, then you should take additional steps to seek the consent of a guardian or parent, who can perform the transaction.

6. Presentation of the required information

For any e-commerce business, it is required that the following information be easily accessible to consumers:

Your business name, address and contact information, including registration info (like ABN or ACN). This makes it clear who owns the website and the business, and which parties are involved in a transaction performed on the site.

Make sure all the contract terms related to purchasing are clear and easily accessible. Your site must include detailed information regarding the price of your products and related costs to help consumers make informed decisions.

Before entering into a transaction, a customer should be able to review the details of the total cost. Upon payment, she should receive a copy of this information.

The transaction terms and conditions need to be separately presented before the transaction takes place.

At the checkout stage, the final price that is displayed should be all-inclusive. That means the delivery and service charges need to be included in the final figure.

In subscription-based services, it might not be feasible to estimate the total cost in advance. In this case, provide all the details on how the recurrent costs will be calculated.

Additional information that your consumers need to be aware of (if applicable) includes – available payment options (mention this before the consumer reaches the checkout page), delivery terms, warranty information, subscription renewal information, after-sales service details, usage restrictions (such as geographical or age restrictions), refund or cancellation terms, special offer time period, etc.

Before a consumer closes a contract with your online business (such as buying a product or subscription) let them review and edit the ordered items. In other words, there must be an additional step before the final purchase is made. For an e-commerce site, this means giving your consumers the option to edit their carts and asking for confirmation before the transaction.

7. Protection of consumer privacy

Consumer privacy is a very important aspect of any e-commerce business, as your consumers have the right to know how their personal information is being used. You should handle personal information with the utmost care.

The best thing to do is to make sure that your business complies with the APPs set by the Privacy Act of 1988. Adopting the APPs will mean that –

• You must notify your consumers if your site collects any personal information about them.
• Your consumers have the right to know what information you have about them.
• Your consumers have the right to update any stored information or replace outdated information if they wish.
• There will be certain limits on the usage of personal information collected by your website.

Adhering to a government-approved privacy act will make it easy to manage personal information collected by your e-commerce site. Moreover, it will make your website more trustworthy to your potential customers.

8. Basic security and authentication requirements

 One of the most important parts of your e-commerce security revolves around the payment method. It’s your duty to set up a reliable and secure payment mechanism for your online store.

Educate your customers by providing information regarding authentication and security, if necessary. For example, you can discourage them from sending sensitive information (like account passwords) via email. Your customers should have access to all the necessary details to assess any risks (associated with using your site) up to a reasonable level.

Ensure your site’s security by making periodic updates and maintaining an appropriate level of technical expertise in your own team.

Remember that you must bear your part of the responsibility if any loss occurs to any of your customers due to your site’s authentication or security failures.

9. Complaint resolution best practices

Give your customers clear instructions regarding the dispute resolution procedure for your e-commerce business. This will build more confidence and trust among people who want to engage in any kind of financial activity with you.

Here are some points that your complaint resolution procedure must honour:

• Consumer complaints should be resolved in the quickest possible time and in a very reasonable manner.
• There should be no fee or charge associated with the resolution procedure.
• Consumers will always have the right to seek legal help if they are not satisfied with the result of your internal resolution process.

In the case where the outcome of a complaint handling procedure is not satisfactory for the consumer, you should provide information related to external bodies which can help in resolving the issue.

10. Declaring the applicable law

 If any transaction with your online business is subject to any specific laws or jurisdiction, it’s your duty to state that clearly as early as possible. Generally, businesses located in Australia will rely on Australian courts for handling consumer disputes, if necessary.

11. Make your website look credible and trustworthy

With too many misleading privacy practices online, today’s customers remain way more sceptical and cautious than ever when it’s to buying something from ecommerce stores. Hence to stay in business, earning your customer’s trust is critical.

And to do so you need to make your ecommerce store more trustworthy and reassure your customers that your business is credible. Once you get it right, it will give your conversions a powerful boost.

Adding legitimate trust badges and seals, posting reviews and enough product-related display is the key way to make a good first impression.

Here are some suggestions you can add to your website:

• SSL certificates
• Payment processor logos
• Third-party endorsement badge
• Product reviews
• Real-time user statistics
• Plenty of product images
• Product and shipping information
• Contact details and physical address

12. Cover a range of FAQs

Often websites overlook The FAQ area while it is one of the ecommerce best practices that cover all the usual bases that all the potential customers look for. Otherwise think, for questions like “what is your return policy”, “what are your shipping times”, “how much does shipping cost”, or “how do I change my password”, no customers would go for a voice call or live chat or email to get answers. They will look for FAQ pages to get instant answers. And leads bounce when they don’t find it.

Build a powerful FAQ page covering all necessary information about your business, products and services. You can try on sorting the questions by category and frequency. Then, focus on the writing by keeping it short and using the right voice. Also, add visuals and contact info as well. And in case you have lots of questions, add some sort of search or filter functionality, so that your customers can search for the answers instead of scrolling through all your list of questions.

13. Improve Page loading times

In this competitive edge, a fast load speed is another key to ecommerce success. So, if you are considering ecommerce best practices in 2023, improving the loading times of your site should be on the list. When it comes to website visits, every second counts. Otherwise, users who are frustrated by your slow-loading sites are most likely to bounce and never return to your site again. Not just it directly influences the conversion rates, but your search engine rankings and repeat business as well.

So, here’s a list of suggestions you can put your focus on for improving page speed:

• Powerful web hosting platform.
• Minimise the number of HTTP requests.
• Limit the number of redirections.
• Optimise the size of files.
• Get rid of unnecessary plugins.
• Enable browser caching.
• Optimise CSS delivery.

The best practices that we have described above will make sure your e-commerce business stands on a solid foundation. But the success of an online store also depends on the quality of products, the marketing strategy of your business and the features of the e-commerce site developed by your ecommerce web design agency that works as your virtual storefront.

Nevertheless, keeping these 13 things in mind will help you gain the trust of your potential customers and give you a good starting point towards building a respectable online brand.

[For preparing this article, we have used the Australian Guidelines for Electronic Commerce as a reference.]