Is your business eligible?
Applicants must meet all of the following general eligibility criteria:
- The business is owned by a B.C. resident or residents;
- The business’s sole or primary operations are located in B.C.
- The business:
- Is currently operating;
- Is registered in B.C.;
- Employs less than 149 B.C. residents;
- Pays taxes in B.C.
- Maintains a
- Business number
- GST number
- PST and WorkSafeBC number (where applicable)
- Customer registration and information security features
- Shopping cart and order management capabilities
- Payment processing options including application of appropriate taxes and shipping costs at time of ordering
- Product catalogue, search and inventory status
- Website analytics and reporting capabilities
What expenses are covered?
Funding will help cover up to 75% of costs for expenses such as:
- Service provider costs:
- Platform and website development
- Copy and online content writing
- Developing an online inventory of goods and products
- Pictures (including hiring a photographer), stock photos or related graphics needed
- Digital customer costs:
- E-commerce platform subscription (up to 1 year)
- Online advertising (up to 1 year)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Creating banners and other embedded advertising
- Staff training to manage the online shop, learn about digital marketing, etc.
Successful applicants must use one or more B.C.-based service provider(s) to build or improve their online store. The only non-B.C.-based eligible expenses include:
- Platform subscription costs
- Purchase of online photos and graphics
- Purchase of online promotional space such as Facebook ads
Mandatory features of your online shop
At the end of the 12-weeks your online shop will need to have:
- Customer registration and information security features
- Shopping cart and order management capabilities
- Payment processing options including taxes and shipping costs at time of ordering
- Product catalogue, search and inventory status
- Website analytics and reporting capabilities
How we can help
Like many of you, our business has suffered due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Our owner Jordan Caron is born and raised on Vancouver Island and currently living in Victoria where he has called home for 20 years. This is an amazing opportunity afford by the BC Government for businesses to get online and increase their presence and drive traffic to their online stores. It’s also an amazing opportunity for us to showcase our web development and online marketing skills.
We can help with:
- E-commerce website development on Shopify and WordPress through Woocommerce
- Developing an online inventory of goods and products
- Online advertising (up to 1 year)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Creating banners and other embedded advertising
- Staff training to manage the online shop, learn about digital marketing, etc through our SEO consulting
Contact Us & Apply Online
Contact us below for how we can help. You can apply online and learn more about the Launch Online Program here.