Showing posts with label eBay stores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eBay stores. Show all posts

Friday, 5 October 2012

Mobile Commerce - eBay and Facebook can't be wrong

According to statistics produced by online marketplace eBay, every second someone purchases from an ecommerce store on their mobile within the UK. Also, separate figures published yesterday by social media giants Facebook, state that, out of the 1 billion regular monthly users they have, over 600 million of them access the site through their mobile devices. This begs the question that if you have yet to consider mobile users when running your online store, what are you doing?

When you combine the fact that nearly all adults in the UK own a mobile device, with around 50% of those being smartphones and, that the hectic schedules of people mean they no longer have the time to sit at a computer and carry out their shopping from a desktop, many users are now opting to carry out their retail therapy either while on the go or from the comfort of their living room sofa by purchasing from an online store through their mobile devices. According to figures produced by the IMRG Capgermini Quarterly Index, within the next three months, mobile devices will account for around 20% of total online sales.

However, this doesn't just mean you should sit back and think 'Great, people will be visiting my store on their phones and making more purchases.' While this is true for some stores, if you don't have a user friendly mobile store, you will struggle to even get a small fraction of this projected 20%. When a customer tries to make a purchase on their phone, they are usually on the move and using a much smaller screen than in comparison to say a computer screen. If your store displays on a mobile just like it would on a desktop computer, it is going to be difficult for customers to navigate around your site, having to constantly zoom in and scroll around the page to find what they are looking for. This added time and effort makes the whole process much more difficult, most likely resulting in the user growing frustrated and leaving your store to go elsewhere. 

When looking to capitalise on this growing sales platform, it is paramount that you have your online store set up to be mobile friendly. This means that when a user visits your store on their mobile device, they will view a different layout than they would see on a desktop computer. There will be less pages to navigate through, buttons will be bigger and easier to click as well as the whole checkout process being much shorter. The quicker you can have a user go through the process and purchase from the store, the happier the customer is going to be and the more sales you are going to be able to make over a shorter period of time. 

Still need more convincing about the importance of mobile commerce?

This argument is bolstered by the development of mobile phone apps such as eBay's RedLaser app that allows you to find products within a bricks and mortar store and then search online to see if you can find them cheaper. If one your store is one of the stores a user comes across in these search results and it isn't easier for them to navigate around, like I said earlier, they are just going to leave your store and go elsewhere. In addition to the earlier statistics produced by eBay, the online marketplace stated that they have had over 100 million downloads of their mobile application as well as over 100 million products listed on various eBay stores via mobile devices. To put that into some sort of perspective, $275 is spent on average each second through eBay mobile. While this is across all eBay stores, a small fraction of this could make the difference whether your store is a success or failure. 

If you are looking to expand your ecommerce store or haven't fully explored the benefits mobile commerce can bring to your business, I strongly advise you taking a look at our free ecommerce store that allows you to set up an ecommerce store integrated with eBay that also provides you with a Facebook and mobile store all without you having to pay any costs whatsoever. Once you create your free account with eSellution you will be able to set your layout, add your products and literally begin selling in minutes. With under three months to go until Christmas, you can't afford to miss out on the significant amount of sales that the festive period brings because you have an online store that is not efficient for mobile devices. 

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Friday, 7 September 2012

Your browser is more important than you think when selling online

When running an online store, you may think that the important part of online selling comes in having the right products, right descriptions and having an easily accessible store. While these are all incredibly important in ensuring that your store is a success, surprisingly, the browser that your customers uses can also play a significant role in whether a customer decides to purchase from you or not.

The problem is that depending on the browser a customer uses, your listings may appear different on each platform. This means that while you have added the product to your store correctly, in some browsers it may be shown to the customer with the image missing or other aspects of the listing incorrect. This problem has been widely seen particularly with eBay stores.

Problems can include headers being displayed incorrectly or sometimes not at all, text appearing on the wrong part of the page making it difficult for customers to associate it with a particular product and also product images not appearing on the page at all. While this isn't your fault, from the perspective of any visiting customers this makes your website seem much less professional.

According to figures published by web development site, W3Schools, the four most popular browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. In July, 42.9% of all Internet users used Google Chrome, 33.7% used Mozilla Firefox, 16.3% used Internet Explorer and 3.9% used Safari, with the vast majority of Safari users being people accessing websites through their mobile devices. This year, Google Chrome has seem an over usage increase of over 8%, up from 34.6% at the end of 2011. 

How can you fix this?

Well obviously there is nothing you can do to force customers to use a certain browser when visiting your ecommerce store. However, you could place a notification on your website suggesting to customers that the website will run better if they use a particular browser. This notification will not only result in more customers using a more efficient browser when purchasing from your store, it will also let customers know that if any products are displayed incorrectly, the problem lies with the browser rather than being your fault which may help stop the browser errors deterring customers from making a purchase.

As a business owner what you need to do is constantly check that that your website works correctly across all browsers. This means that whenever a browser is updated, you should be downloading it on to your computer as soon as possible in order to check that it works correctly on your store.



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Thursday, 6 September 2012

There's never been a better time to sell Internationally

If you have been running an online store for a while and have been steadily gaining sales and profit, have you ever thought about possibly branching out to begin selling Internationally?

Whether it is something you have looked at or something you may consider further down the line, eBay's up and coming changes to it's platform provides eBay stores with the perfect opportunity to begin giving it a go. 

When selling International, the main thing that online sellers tend to have trouble with is factoring in the various costs you will need to pay in order to ship the products to different countries. With the new update coming to eBay in the near future, online sellers can now input shipping costs to each specific country. What this means is, rather than simply selling Internationally so anyone from any country can purchase products from you store, you can specifically select which countries you would like to sell your products to. If you find  that your products are popular with one specific country, you can focus to sell solely to that country by only entering their shipping costs into the table. 

When entering the shipping costs for each country, you will be able to enter the cost for three different types of shipping; "Economy," "Standard," "Express." This means that when an International buyer visits your store to purchase a product, they will instantly know how much it is going to cost them and how much added cost they are going to have to pay in order to have that product shipped to their country. 

Gaining success through International selling will result in your total sales increasing significantly, resulting in greater brand exposure and greater profit. eBay are now making it easier for high potential countries such as China, Russia and Brazil to find the items they are looking for, increasing the chances of your products coming up within those search results. 

There are only two conditions you must meet on eBay to begin selling on eBay:

  • You must offer International shipping. You do not have to ship to all countries but you must make sure that you are shipping to atleast one international country. You can do this by selecting the countries you want to on the International shipping table. 
  • You must also offer Paypal as the payment method. 
Carrying out these two simple steps will ensure that your products appear to International customers, allowing you to gain extra traffic and sales to your ecommerce store.

However, taking the plunge into selling Internationally is a big step and one which you shouldn't take it lightly. You should only embark on International selling if you have had consistent success selling within the UK. There is no point spending extra money branching out to International markets when you aren't making a regular profit domestically. You also need to consider whether your product or service will appeal to various countries. While you may do well selling domestically, you may find that there just isn't the International demand for it like there is at home.

Get your free ecommerce store now: http://www.esellution.co.uk/pricing.html




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Friday, 17 August 2012

Potential danger for UK stores on the horizon from foreign shores

A competitive market for eBay stores in the UK could be set to get even bigger with Royal Mail's announcement that they will now be sending Chinese imports to the EU.

Royal Mail's European parcel business, GLS, has formed an alliance with Chinese company, ZJS Express, to provide a package delivery service for China to Europe.

This announcement could be both good and bad for online sellers. First let's be positive and look at the good aspects of this. Having the ability to receive products from Chinese suppliers, gives you more options as to where you purchase your products from, allowing you to possibly get cheaper supplies or get items that you previously haven't sold before. The greater variety you can provide your customers with, the happier they are going to be to purchase for you. However, you need to bear in mind that you will not be able to buy items in bulk as that would require you to ship through containers. This option should only be undertaken if you are a relatively small business looking to sell a small number of items.

While Royal Mail's partnership with Chinese suppliers does provide some positives, the potential negatives could cripple an online store in the UK. If a Chinese supplier does decide to sell directly to UK customers through the marketplace, it gives them the ability to provide customers with products at cheaper prices, that you just can't match. This would result in you losing a large number of your customers, lowering your total sales and damaging your overall profit. 

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Wednesday, 15 August 2012

eBay Thrown in to Anarchy

Earlier this week, many eBay stores were brought to a stand still as sellers reported numerous glitches and issues on the eBay website, making it almost impossible for them to run their store.

Some of the many problems customers were reporting, included:

  • Changes in Top Seller rating
  • Missing email notifications from eBay and Paypal
  • Photographs missing from listings
  • Missing item specifications

It is believed that these problems will harm eBay, not only in the amount of revenue they generate, but also their overall public image.

This isn't the first time problems have occurred on the marketplace and while you think a platform with over 100 million active stores is bound to have some problems from time to time, one seller shouldn't be able to see the details of another seller through their dashboard interface, which one seller claimed happened to them. These problems have resulted in some store owners becoming annoyed, preferring to leave eBay to go in search of another platform to run their online stores. 


While the problems were being fixed, many sellers were told not to list any products from anywhere between 24 hours to six days. Although this doesn't seem like very long at all when you look at the bigger picture, this is a time frame where your store competitors maybe selling products that you can't even list, possibly resulting in you losing future business from that customer.

This couldn't have happened at a worse time for eBay sellers as it is right smack in the middle of an eBay promotion that allows sellers to add 5,000 free listings in the fixed price format between the 8th and 18th of this month. 

All this comes in the wake of eBay achieving a record increase of fixed price sales by over 33% through July in comparison to the previous year. Ironic, huh?

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