Showing posts with label sell online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sell online. Show all posts

Monday, 20 August 2012

How to know if you should be selling on eBay

If you sell items on eBay and are having reasonable levels of success, you may look to try and build on this by creating an eBay store. With many people turning to online stores in order to find products at a discounted price, there is a constant urge for sellers to try and grow their business as fast as they can to try and achieve as many sales and as much profit in a short space of time. However, this over reach can often result in sellers biting off more than they can chew, struggling to keep up with demand and eventually burning out. So, when is the right time for you to try and take your business to the next level?

eBay's guidelines suggest that no one should look to create their own eBay store until they are able to handle having at least 25 listings on eBay at any time. Basically, this is because if you can't handle the demand from these 25 listings, you will struggle to be able to keep up product demand when running a store. Realistically, you want to have been selling on eBay from anywhere between six months to a year, ensuring that you are familiar with the whole process, all of the stipulations and have an understanding of generally what all eBay customers look for when purchasing through this platform. 

The huge benefit of spending this time to hone your skills is that it is going to allow you to build up a decent seller rating. This means that when you do eventually decide to make the transition to opening up your own eBay store, you are already going to have a good seller rating that is going to make you much more trustworthy in the eyes of buyers. Instantly, this sets you out from all other newly formed stores who do not yet have a seller rating, greatly improving your chance for success.

How much you roughly make a month through product sales over eBay is also a huge indication of whether or not to open up your own eBay store. Obviously, if you are not making much of a profit each month, there is no point opening up an eBay store as it wouldn't be a worthwhile endeavour and the added fees would make it difficult for you to turn a profit.

When deciding to set up an eBay store you need to take into account all of these factors, look at your current success and realistically see if growing your business is going to be a worthwhile decision. If you are making a small but consistent profit through just selling a few items of eBay every month, then for you it may be better to not rock the boat and stick with what is already working well. 

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

Wednesday, 8 August 2012

The future of ecommerce selling and customer engagement

Every few years there is the next big boom that is going revolutionise the face of ecommerce selling forever. First it was the creation of a website, then it was the introduction of social media and now it's the growth of mobile commerce. As it currently stands, one out of every ten sales made from an online store are through a mobile device and this is going to continually increase until eventually it surpasses online selling. 

With 27% of all adults in the UK now using smartphones, you should look to invest in mobile commerce for your store if you haven't already. If you don't know what mobile commerce is, essentially it is making your website mobile friendly. If a person goes on a site through a smartphone that isn't mobile friendly, the website is displayed as it would be if they were viewing it through a browser on your computer. Mobile commerce changes how your store will look on a mobile phone, making it easier to navigate through the different pages and purchase a product. 

If a person tries to purchase a product on their smartphone from a store that doesn't have mobile commerce, they are going to find it very tricky to actually purchase the item as they will constantly have to zoom in and go through a number of different pages to actually get to the checkout stage. Having a mobile friendly site allows customers to purchase products much easier without having to zoom in on any pages and only going through a few simple steps to purchase a product. 

Having a mobile commerce option for your online store will great improve your conversion rate on that particular platform as customers will no longer become frustrated and bored by a non-mobile friendly process. With the amount of customers purchasing items items through mobile phones set to continue increasing, it is pivotal that you have a mobile commerce store to truly maximise your sales. 

The increase in the number of smartphone users isn't just changing the way customers purchase products, it is also changing the way store owners target those customers. Mobile marketing allows you to dramatically increase the presence you have in the lives of your customers. The restriction with most other forms of marketing is that, to reach their audience, they would need to actually be sat in front of a computer screen or television. As people are sat within arms reach of their mobile phone for 90% of an entire day, mobile marketing is allowing you to instantly reach your customers at any time. This reach is further amplified through the use of SMS marketing. Although many people consider this form of marketing to be a bit like spam, it ensures that your message is reaching a large audience.  When carrying out an email marketing campaign, your email could be sent out and then placed in the rubbish bin by all of your recipients without them even looking at your message. The benefit of an SMS message is that pretty much all of the recipients will read your message and become aware of your store, even if they then decide to delete the message straight after.

There are many benefits to running and marketing your store across mobile platforms. If you haven't already begun incorporating mobile commerce in to your online ecommerce business, you should now be looking to take steps to ensure you are planning to develop the mobile commerce side of your business in the near future. 



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

Tuesday, 7 August 2012

Facebook stores and the importance of having one

As businesses look to sell their products to as many people as possible, they are now exploring new and innovative ways to sell these products across different platforms. This has resulted in the belief that mobile commerce will be the next big thing in online selling. Although this is true, other platforms for selling your products shouldn't be overlooked as they can still provide you with a large number of customers. One of these platforms that has seemed to have gained a particular bad rep over the last few months is the Facebook store.

The general belief of many people is that Facebook stores are only beneficial to large brands who have millions of followers regularly engaging with them. However, while this selling platform is a great addition to large corporate brands, Facebook stores are equally important for anyone running a small online ecommerce store. The great value of Facebook is, and always will be, the enormous amount of people using the social media site every day. While their numbers and share prices have seemingly dwindled in recent months, the number of active users the site has is still substantially higher than any other social media site. 

Now you may read this and think "I already have a Facebook fan page for my business, why would I need a Facebook store?" Well although a Facebook fan or business page does allow you to make users aware of your online store, having a Facebook store will allow you to take advantage of a customer's buying impulse. If you don't have a Facebook store and a customer sees an item of your Facebook business page that they like, they would then have to leave Facebook in order to navigate to your website, find the product in your store and then complete the checkout process. Right from the start you may end up losing customers as they may be reluctant to leave Facebook to go to a third party site. Furthermore, if the customer does decide to leave Facebook to take a trip to your online store, by the time the customer has gone from Facebook to your site and found the product, they may have lost that impulse to buy that they previously had meaning they will no longer want it.

Having a Facebook store means that customers can instantly buy items from you through Facebook. They don't have to visit another site, they don't have to then locate the product all over again and most importantly, they can instantly act on their buying impulse. When they see an item of yours that they like on Facebook, they simply select it and complete the whole procedure without ever leaving the social media site. 


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