Showing posts with label product description. Show all posts
Showing posts with label product description. Show all posts

Tuesday, 30 October 2012

Top tips to improving your store's text and images

When selling online, it's not only what you're selling that's important, but also how you show those products in your store. In recent weeks we at eSellution have produced articles for you on how to improve your products by including images and detailed descriptions. However, it isn't just about adding them to your products, how you display the images and the description text also plays a major role in determining how successful your store will be in achieving sales.

Product Images

Whenever you take a product picture from your ecommerce store, there are a number of different things you should do:

  • Make sure the image isn't blurry - A clear image allows the customer to see the product in greater detail. If the image is blurry they aren't really going to be able to see it properly. Not only that, having a blurry image for your product makes your business look unprofessional.
  • Photograph the products against a white background - When you photograph your products, you need to make sure that the product is against a white background. Having all of your images appear on a white background improves the look of your website, as all the images are the same colour. Not only that, having a white background makes it much easier to edit the image as you don't have to worry about having to take a coloured background into account when cropping or cutting the image. Creating a white background for your images is simple enough to do. If your products are small, it could simply mean placing them on top of a white sheet of paper when you take the picture. 
  • Try to avoid using watermarks - Especially on sites like eBay, people want to protect their product images from other people using them so they put big bold images on top of them or have thick borders around the image. While this stops other sellers from using your product images, it makes the product images look less tasteful. If you can help it, you should look to avoid using borders or images over your product photograph. If you do decide to use an image to protect your photo, just use a subtle watermark across the image. That way it doesn't damage the overall look of your image and people still know that the image belongs to your store. 
Product Description

Now that you've taken care of your product images, the next thing to focus on is your product description. Having followed our previous article: Ecommerce success starts with the basics and written a product description that provides all the information your customers need, the next step is presenting that information in the correct way. 

  • Use the right font - With so many different fonts to choose from, it's often tempting to have the wildest font you can find to help your product descriptions start out. However, you need to remember that the wilder it is, the more difficult it is going to be for your customers to read. When selecting a font, you should select one that is professional in appearance and easy to read. Once you have selected a font, you should use that font on every single one of the products you have in your store.
  • Keep the text the same size - Now that you've selected your font, you need to choose a size to display the text at. You don't want the text to be that small that the customer can't read it, but you also don't want it to be too big that it takes up majority of the page. Usually the standard font size of around 12 will be big enough to make it easily readable and not too big on the page. Just like the type of font you use, you want to keep the font size the same across all of your products. A mistake a lot of online sellers make is that they have different products which have descriptions containing different fonts at different sizes. All this does is damage the look of your online store. The cleaner your website is, the more professional your public image will be. 
  • Highlight important information - While all of the information in your product description is important, some bits of it are more important than others. For example if a product is only available in a particular size at the moment or you don't offer refunds on it, you might want to make sure the customer doesn't skim over and miss this information by making it appear bold so that it stands out from the rest. 
  • Check the HTML - If you have both an eBay store and an ecommerce store, you may look to save yourself some time by copying over the product description from eBay and placing it into your ecommerce store. However, when you do this you need to make sure that it is only the text you are copying over. If you copy over text that has HTML in it, it will alter the way your description looks, making it appear unprofessional and harming the look of your store. 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Friday, 10 August 2012

Top tips to make more money for your eBay store

For all eBay store owners the aim of the game is to try and make as many sales as you possibly can. We are eSellution are constantly looking at ways to help you increase the number of sales your eBay store can achieve no matter how long your store has been active for. 

If you are just setting up your own eBay store for the first time, these tips will ensure that you get off to the right start, maximising the potential sales your store can achieve. 

Earlier this week we looked at the foundations you should cover when setting up your eBay store: Build Your Business on Olympic Foundations. Rather than focussing on how to research and prepare your store for success, today we are going to look at some of the ways you can help improve your store when listing your various products for sale. 

Correct title - When selling a product, what you don't want to do is include a number of descriptive words such as 'great', 'awesome', superb, etc. Your product title needs to only contain words that you know your customers will be searching for. If you customer is trying to find denim jeans for example, they are not going to type 'great denim jeans' into the search bar. Keep your titles simple and only include the most important information that customers are actually going to search for.

Lots and lots of pictures - The more pictures you have of an item, the more chance you are going to have of selling it. Allowing your customers to see the product they could potentially buy from a number of different angles is going to reassure them that they can trust your eBay store and that the products you sell are reliable and of a good quality.

Sell as many brands as you can - Like having lots of pictures, selling items that are household brands is going to make your products seem much more reliable. In addition to this, it will greatly help your search relevance as many customers may be looking for a specific item brand. Although selling items that have no major brand label is going to cost you much less from your supplier, having a brand label will most likely be more popular with visiting customers, resulting in more sales. 

Constantly re-evaluate your products - Constantly monitor the sales levels of each of your products to see how well they are performing. Even if a product was incredibly popular for you in the past, if you find that the sales levels are now dropping off, you may need to think about removing that items entirely from your stock.

Host your own pictures - Hosting your images ensures that you avoid the eBay's image hosting fees. However, you can also purchase some ecommerce shopping cart software that will not only drastically improve the the efficiency and sales of your online store, it will also allow you to place as many images as you like on your eBay store at no extra cost. 

Keep it true - When providing information to your customers about each of the products your online store sells, make sure that the information that you add is accurate and truthful. Although you may think including information that stretches the truth is going to allow you to get a few quick sales, it will seriously damage the long term credibility of your store. If you lie about your products and they don't live up to what the customers expect based on your information you provided, they are going to no longer trust your store. This will mean that your eBay store will gain a bad reputation quickly and your sales figures will dramatically decline. 

Choose the right categories for your products - When listing your products, having your products in the correct categories is going to play a big part in whether your product gets found by customers. When a customer carries out a search for a product, they tend to filter their search results to the specific category of item they want. If you have your item placed in an incorrect category, it is going to result in customers not even coming across the product as it won't even appear in their search results. 

Detailed descriptions - While the title of your products needs to be short and concise, the description you provide for each product needs to give the customer as much information as you possibly can. Like having numerous images, the more detailed the description, the more of an informed decision customers can make. If you can provide your customers with plenty of information about the product, it builds up these all important levels of trust and makes them more likely to them purchase the product. 

However, while plenty of information is important, you need to make sure that the length of the description is not too long. Having a description that is too long is only going to make the customer feel bored, reducing that buying impulse they initially felt, making them much less likely to buy the product. Experiment with your description length across a number of different products to find out which is the best length for your customers, while still including all of the information that they require. 

Factor in all costs - Deciding how much to sell each of your products for is going to play a big part in appealing to your customers. However, when deciding on a product price, you need to make sure that you have factored in all of your costs. These include the cost from the supplier, listing fees and shipping fees. Selling products without first factoring in these costs would be a huge oversight that will cost you a lot of your profit.

Store your items correctly - Depending on the size of your eBay business, the amount of stock you have will differ considerably. Whether you have a few items stored away in your garage or a warehouse full to the brim, you need to make sure that each of your items is stored secure place that won't result in them becoming damaged. Each item that you have represents a profit for your business. If any of your items become damaged during storage, this is going to impact the income your business generates. Not only will it lower your profit, but if one of these damaged items are then sent out to a customer, it is going to damage the credibility and brand image of your eBay store. 

Constantly review your courier - You may have a courier service that you prefer to use more than others due to their price and reliability. However, like all businesses, courier services constantly change their pricing structure in order to generate more business. You should look to check the prices of each courier service often to see if you can find one that offers you the same service but at a cheaper price. The less you spend on your courier service, the more profit your online store is going to make. 

Special offers  - Offering your customers something for nothing is always a great way to keep them happy and returning to your store. Special offers will allow you to generate an increase in sales over a short period, while allowing you to get rid of any stock that may not be selling as well as you would have liked. 

Offer Guarantees - Like I have said throughout this piece, reliability and trust are two important factors in establishing relationships with your customers. When customers purchase a product from your store, they like to know that they have some form of security blanket in the form of a money back guarantee. What this means is that if a customer receives a product finds that it is slightly damaged or not what they expected, they can return the product to your store for an exchange or a refund. While this stipulation may cost you money here and there in exchanging a damaged or faulty product, the trust it builds up in your store is going to increase the sales your store makes. 

When offering a money back guarantee, if you find that you are having high numbers of a specific product returned, you should look at discontinuing that product from your store or finding an alternative supplier who may provide the same product but at a higher quality. 

Carrying out all of these tips on your eBay store will result in you improving your store's image, increasing your traffic and sales, resulting in more money for your store.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)