In the era of technology, when it comes to showcasing your product on various platforms, ‘the more is always the merrier’. By this, it means that it’s just not enough for you to have your sales through an offline store where taking your business online can turn out to be all the more rewarding. Another way to look at it is how business expansion works these days and that is when you decide to take a leap towards doing business online.
Curious to learn about how to sell products online? Well, it only takes a few minutes if you have the right information and that’s why we pulled together this guide, to make sure that you have all the right information & resources you need for selling on an ideal online platform. Let’s get started-
1. What exactly is online product selling?
Any type of commercial transactions i.e. any buying and selling of something that takes place using the Internet can be termed as e-commerce. It’s a convenient way of doing business as all the transactions happen online with the help of just a few clicks. And that is one of the primary reasons that various traditional merchants are now offering their products and services online.
This tribe mainly includes online retailers, educators, online consultants, freelancers and digital product companies. For these merchants, ‘how to sell online’ questions are answered by the ‘websites’ which are the most common channels of e-commerce. Such websites can be classified according to
- The products or services being sold
- The parties with which the business is done with
- The platforms on which a seller chooses to operate, like a self-hosted branded website or a hosted marketplace like shopmatic.com selling through social media platforms.
Advantages of selling a product online
The first and foremost advantage of an online transaction is that it allows businesses to sell to consumers anywhere, anytime. The staggering popularity of e-commerce continues to grow by leaps and bounds and at the current pace of technological progress, there seems to be no looking back. It’s time to brace ourselves up to take the business online.
How to sell a product online?
Traditionally, to start a business, a shop would be the place where you showcase your products. In the online space, the basic ideas of the business remain the same, the only difference is that now you leverage a virtual platform that saves up on the shop rent, displays your products on an e-commerce platform and you also save a good amount of shop rent.
2. Wondering how to do online business?
To sell products online, you need the configuration of a fully functional e-commerce store where people visit and explore your store and place items in the online shopping cart and make payments for the selected items. You will have to select between a hosted or self-hosted e-commerce platform. Although both the methods require hosting, let us get to know how are they different-
1. Hosted e-commerce Platform
If you’re looking for a ready-made e-commerce platform then hosted platforms are the best to choose. One such platform is goshopmatic.com with which you don’t have to worry about anything. The e-commerce ecosystem provided by Shopmatic is a great platform to sell online in India.
It has a glitch-free backend interface which is quite easy to implement for beginners and even for those who are not well-versed with the coding or technological side of e-commerce web development. It also has over hundreds of ready-made templates and they all look quite vibrant and are editable too.
A few of the many advantages of a hosted e-commerce platform:
- All-inclusive packaged services available at a monthly or yearly fee
- Webstore template pool
- Integrated website domain buying service (depends on the platform you choose)
- Web services & tools available in one place
- Robust site speed, cloud hosting, file handling & security ensured
- Provides secure payment integration
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Self-hosted e-commerce Platform
The self-hosted platforms offer a greater degree of design freedom but all the toiling for web development has to be endured till your website is up and running.
Some key points about a self-hosted e-commerce platform:
- One has complete control over the look and feel of the website.
- One has to figure out, manage and make regular payments for the site host and also the domain name.
- It is not recommended for beginners.
- One needs to have a knack for selecting the right templates, plugins and should have a piece of good coding knowledge.
The choice of an e-commerce platform is as important as the choice of location for a brick and mortar shop. Hence, choose wisely!
Things to consider when selling a product online
The stiff competition in the online space these days needs a well-thought groundwork to make your product stand out from the crowd. A good strategy right from starting a new online store to optimising, scaling up, and diversifying over time, goes a long way in establishing your brand as a trusted one!
Here are five secrets to selling online successfully-
1. Monitor Website Traffic
There might be a possibility that hundreds of competitor websites are already fighting for user attention and for you to emerge triumphantly, you have to drive traffic to your website, through great service and some amazing products.
You should also have a dynamic presence on social media and routinely work on website content for search optimisation, and might use paid advertising once in a while. You might want to use a platform like Shopmatic which comes with an Insights & Analytics feature appended to improve your selling strategies with relevant sales data insights and a link to your Google Analytics.
2. Target the Right Niche
Choosing the right niche market is important if you are starting an online business. Smaller and specific niche tend to have lesser competition which provides you with a better chance to connect with potential buyers. It is advisable that you think clearly about your niche and try to balance the competition level with the market size.
3. Ensure A Seamless Checkout Process
For this, try buying your own product as a prospective buyer, then maybe you will have exactly what you want in order to ensure a smooth shopping experience on your website.
The crux of saying it is, “Make it easy for the buyer to purchase” from your website and watch out for any technical snags in the process. This will enhance the conversion rate of your business when you sell your products online. The integrated payment & shipping features of a platform as Shopmatic will free you from all the worries of getting it right!
4. Offer Amazing Customer Service
Trust is the foundation stone in e-commerce and if you want to ensure that a buyer returns for the next purchase you have to reassure them by helping them shop with confidence and by offering them a good bunch of services. Live tracking updates, quick shipping, easy returns are some of the services which make sure that the customer would visit again.
An e-commerce platform as Shopmatic offers an in-built feature of ‘Interactive Chat’ tools to offer instant customer service with popular mediums like Whatsapp & Facebook Messenger will definitely come in handy for good customer interaction.
5. Promote your store
A great website and a blog are essential but not enough to bring in traffic and sales in the long run. In the buzzing world of internet and social media, one needs to attract people to your store and prompt them to make a purchase. You will definitely need to rev-up your social media presence, get email marketing in process, paid ads, and more to promote your website.
You must be wondering if everything mentioned above to sell items online will burn a hole in your pocket then you should know that it will be lesser than the cost overheads of maintaining a physical store and the returns are all the more rewarding.
Well, Patience is the key, here as well.
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