With the continual change of market, it’s difficult to understand exactly where and how to sell products online whether they’re physical or digital products. Learning how to sell products online can be intimidating. You have to chalk out what products to sell and where to source them. There are many steps involved in starting an online store to sell products online, like getting the domain name, and selecting shipping carrier, which might seem overwhelming as you’re starting out. In this article we’ll discuss the process of selling products online into a few clear steps for you to follow.
1. Decide What Products to Sell Online
The first step is very crucial. Most online sellers simply buy products from wholesalers. You can sell custom made products or goods that ship straight from supplier warehouses.
Followings are the few techniques to work out the demand for your products.
- Google Trends – This is a great tool for working out which products are rising in popularity and which ones are not. Results will be based on the popularity of your chosen search term in Google over time. For example, if you want to sell shirt online, but aren’t sure whether to sell floral shirts, Hawaiian shorts or retro sweatshirts. You can type all three and see which one is growing in popularity. Set the country to where you expect your customers to sell and off you go!
- Keyword research – You can also use Google’s Keyword Analysis tool. By using the tool you’ll see data on how many people search for that product each month (popularity) and how competitive the keywords are (how many other businesses are selling the product).
- Read online forums – There are some forums and review sites that give you a direct insight into the problems facing customers. You can pick out any complaints customers and use them to fashion your product choice and business strategy.
- Learn from big stores – You can use Amazon, Etsy and eBay’s own sales data by frequently checking the ‘Best Sellers’ page of the industry you’re working in.
- Sell what you love – You can also use your passion, that should affect your choice of what to sell. Writing product descriptions, running marketing campaigns and selling your product is much easier if you have confidence upon all these things.
How to Source Products?
Following are the ways you can source products to sell online.
- Purchasing from a wholesaler / manufacturer – You can buy the products you want from a wholesaler or a manufacturer. There are few related issues while purchasing like costs include buying the product (typically in bulk, specially from a manufacturer), storing it in a warehouse, upkeep and shipping. It will be very easy to take decision if you choose a reliable and highly-rated supplier.
- Design & manufacture something yourself – If you’re someone who creates your own products, you already covered this topics. You just need to consider related costs for shipping your online orders.
- Sell products from a dropshipper – Drop shipping is one of the lowest-cost ways to launch an online business. You don’t need to purchase or stock any products. When you make a sale, your supplier handles everything for you and only then you pay the wholesale price for the item. You can read here more on Drop shipping.
2. Pick the right domain name and eCommerce platform
Generally you can do business with any domain name. You can pick one that includes the keywords of the products you want to sell online for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. But stay away from non-descriptive domain names which would also be hard to remember.
In addition to choose the right domain name, you have to also pick the right eCommerce platform. eCommerce platforms provide every tool you need to sell online or to add a shopping cart to your an existing website if you already have one. It’s your all-in-one online selling solution.
Choosing the correct eCommerce platform can be the difference between success and failure of your entire online store. Look for a reputed and reliable company that offers built-in features instead of requiring third-party apps to meet your requirements. Most important, that providers a mobile-friendly and search engine optimized website.
3. Consider the payment option
Getting payment is an important factor in learning how to sell online. There are many payment gateways available for new retailers to selling online. These gateways will give you access to credit card processing for your online store without many of the traditional requirements from larger merchant accounts. PayPal, Square, Chase paymentech, Authorize.net and Stripe are great options. They are easy to setup and already built-in to your eCommerce platform.
In addition to credit card processing, you have to consider digital wallets to appeal to a larger audience of consumers. You can pick Paypal Express, , Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa Checkout, MasterPass among others.
Modern eCommerce is like you will be able to accept payments, anywhere shoppers are from day one. That includes major marketplaces, social media, email inboxes, and your own website.
4. Select a successful shipping strategy
You have to consider another thing how you will deliver your products to your customers and how to charge them the appropriate rate for shipping.
The most common shipping options are:
Free shipping
Most online businesses offer Free Shipping. This option makes you want to pay attention instantly, even if you weren’t tempted to buy anything initially. Calculate your costs, and if you can afford to offer free shipping then go ahead. This strategy will work best in clothing, beauty, accessories, and other similar industries – since the packages are small or average size.
Free delivery over a certain order
Next to free shipping, this is the second best option. This option normally seen in big eCommerce site. You can choose some specific products or certain order to offer free delivery option.
Flat rates shipping
This method allows you to offer a flat fee on every order, which is also a good way to estimate your financials when building your path to how to sell online.
Shipping rates based on weight, total order or distance
This is the most challenging option to set up as you need to figure out exactly how much shipping will cost you in order to get some estimates. You’ll get this built in feature in most eCommerce platforms. Just you have to configure it correctly.
5. Promote and market your online store
Creating a great eCommerce website is only part of the equation, the other part is promoting your store for the purpose to increase sales. You have to establish a plan and use different digital marketing techniques like SEO, Social media marketing, content marketing, PPC to reach out to your potential customers.
From large to small online businesses, the key to success “out there” is marketing. Marketing means convince customers that your products and services can satisfy their needs and that they can trust your website to make a purchase.
Below are the some ways on how to do that.
- Run a facebook campaign.
- Use google adwords.
- Use bing ads.
- start blogging.
- Start a newsletter or email marketing.
- Create an android or apple apps.
- create a chrome app.
- Do guest posting on other websites.
- Do SEO.
6. Grow your business
After your online store takes off and start selling online at an increased rate, you will have to process those orders and fulfill them as quickly as possible. That means give enough time to provide your customers with excellent customer service. Some eCommerce business tools will help you grow your online business while streamlining your processes. Some more will view store trends to help you plan your inventory, connect to popular accounting programs like QuickBooks and synchronize your business, send automated responses to your customers when they complete a purchase, automatically print labels.
Conclusion
When learning how to sell products online, it can be difficult to know where to start. In this article we’ve discussed some of the most popular and effective ways to sell your products online.
You can sell on a marketplace like Amazon, a social media platform like Facebook or an online store you’ve created and you control.
Thanks to eCommerce platforms, which give you the opportunity to sell across multiple channels but manage your business from one place.
