Tag: eCommerce sales

How To Improve the Sales of Your eCommerce Store?

An online website can be successfully launched by setting up an eCommerce store by keeping some key points in mind with strategy. Additionally, to boost eCommerce sales, you must develop a long-term strategy.

Using a campaign is a key component of eCommerce marketing to attract new clients and reward loyal ones. The correct tools will make it simple for you to put your ideas into practice and apply eCommerce methods for businesses of all sizes.

It’s not as difficult to increase the sales of your e-commerce website. It is not to be of use at the expense of your burnout. To help you achieve your targets, it’s typically a matter of a collection of tiny tactics working together in harmony.

Strategies to help you Increase eCommerce Sales:

Improving Checkout Process

To enhance customer experience and boost online sales, optimize your e-commerce store’s checkout flow. Cart abandonment is more likely to happen the longer a consumer takes to enter personal information and payment information. Some customers might not be eager to register before making a purchase. Others could only be at ease with a particular form of payment. Nevertheless, some people could find the website’s design puzzling.

The customer journey may be greatly streamlined and sales increase by making little adjustments. These adjustments can be including guest checkouts, numerous payment methods, incorporating CTA buttons into items, and making it simple to reset passwords. This is a straightforward but incredibly powerful strategy for increasing e-commerce sales.

You can use one-page checkout solution to make your checkout better. The one-step checkout plugin of our company is also well recommended by our customers which you can use for the same.

Building An Email List

Building an email list for your e-commerce company may at first seem like an overwhelming task. But there are various approaches you can take without creating the list from scratch.

Several important business-building tasks are not complete until you create a tribe of devoted clients. People who have previously expressed an interest in your items are your loyal customers and you can reach out to them. You are having authority to distribute promotional materials without spending money on social media advertisements. Because your clients choose to receive more information from you via email rather than from paid advertisements, email marketing is extremely effective. Furthermore, unlike social media platforms, your email list is completely under your control.

You can use some eCommerce plugins like exit popups to lure customers to enter their email and register on the website. Moreover, using the abandoned cart module, you can get the customer’s email which you can use in the future for marketing campaigns.

Utilize SEO Plugins

Your organic traffic will improve if you optimize your e-commerce site for search engines. Especially if you can appear on Google’s first page of results for a particular phrase. Additionally, everyone enjoys free traffic on their website. I understand if the mention of SEO makes you want to flee as the discipline of SEO is a formidable one.

However, SEO for e-commerce stores isn’t that time-consuming. Furthermore, you can choose from a variety of fantastic plugins to make the process simpler. These plugins come in a variety of price points some are not free, some are free. When these are usable to their full extent, they are generally inexpensive and offer a fantastic return on investment.

Utilize Scarcity to Persuade Individuals to Take Action

To increase eCommerce sales, you must create a sense of urgency even if your goal isn’t to completely rebuild your online store and increase sales. Moreover, it will finally make it a magnet for supercharged customers to complete the purchase. Sufficiency is the simplest approach to accomplish this. In real, scarcity encourages visitors to recognize the benefit of completing an immediate transaction.

On product sites, for instance, you can display supply levels to appeal to shoppers’ concerns about missing out. Customers are occasionally motivated to take action even when emails are sent warning them that a certain product is running low on stock. Demonstrating competition is also a method for triggering a scarcity mindset. Some shops achieve this by displaying the number of customers who are browsing or who have purchased a specific item. In conclusion, you will experience a surge in your eCommerce sales if clients perceive your products as a limited-time or vanishing commodity.

Make the Website Mobile Friendly

More than half of all all-eCommerce transactions are happening through mobile devices. It should come as no surprise that customers buying on mobile is commonplace. Nothing, however, is more discouraging to a consumer than finding that the website they’re buying on is too large for their screen or is more challenging to use on their smaller device.

It’s crucial that your clients can visit your website from anywhere, but there’s also an added benefit. Moreover, Google’s algorithm now favors mobile-friendly sites with higher results. Because it’s hard to test your website on every single cell phone model and browser out there, third-party tools are quite helpful. Mobile app plugins are the very trending solution for the same.

Wrapping Up

We have discussed some of the points which help improve eCommerce sales. We can also assist with customizations in our module. In case you have issues or concerns with our module then connect with us at support@knowband.com. We can also provide business-based customizations depending on your needs too. Kindly connect with us so that we can assist you accordingly if you need assistance with your store optimizations.

Start a Blog to Increase eCommerce Sales

Nothing comes with ease. You have to put continuous efforts and do hard work to achieve something. Similarly, when you start an eCommerce business, it takes time to make your name in the market.

The ultimate goal of any entrepreneur is to get sales and make revenue. But you don’t achieve it overnight. As your business grows, you start getting good results with time.

Many people start their online business but give up very soon. They struggle to get their business off the ground and are not clear on how to take it forward.

So, when trying to grow your business, focus on doing it efficiently as you have a limited budget to spend on its marketing and other things. Initially, your primary focus should be on your website’s growth. Try to attract as many users as you can to your website.

One of the best ways to do it is by starting a blog for your business. It’s simple and affordable yet effective. By having a blog for your business, you will be able to expand the reach of your business on the Internet and eventually it will help you drive traffic to your website.

A blog is the best way to promote your brand, products and services. But again, just having a blog is not going to help. There are hundreds of blogs on the same niche and tons of content is posted daily.

The internet is already occupied with too much content. So make sure that your content is amazing and creative. It should be unique and intriguing as well to make it stand out from the rest of the contents.

If you deliver what the users expect, you will get sales for sure. Let’s understand how you can make the best use of your blog to increase your eCommerce sales.

1. Give a Professional Look to your Blog

Your blog should be designed in such a way that when visitors enter it, they do not feel like taking an exit. Before even reading your content, the first thing that the user will notice is how appealing your blog section looks.

It has happened to me many times. When I open any blog and find everything so cluttered or untidy, I do not even pay attention to the content and bounce off immediately. Do not make this mistake with your blog.

Your blog should reflect professionalism. It should look neat and clean with the use of professional fonts and proper spacing between everything.

2. Write Amazing Content

The key to growing your eCommerce sales through your blog is by writing amazing content. The more quality you put in your content, the more people will like and share it.

Don’t try to use fancy words. Use plain English so that it can be easily understood by everyone. The content should be crisp and engaging, and most importantly the flow of the content should be maintained. Write from the reader’s point of view.

Also, make sure to add visuals to your content to make it more appealing. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” it applies here as well. Use images of your products or screenshots to grab user attention. There are multiple websites that provide free and premium images for blogs.

3. Boost Brand Awareness

A blog is a great platform to boost brand awareness and make your customers aware of your products and services. If people search a query on Google and land on your blog for that query, you can drive a huge amount of traffic on your website.

Moreover, a blog provides you with the opportunity to explain your products and offerings in great detail. There is no limit as to what you write. Just focus on presenting your thoughts in the best way possible. You can even inspire people by letting them know how you started your journey. This builds a personal connection between the brand and the users.

4. Promote on Social Media

Today, a brand that is not present on social media is seriously missing out on a great opportunity to scale-up their business. If you have a good follower base on social media, promoting your blog posts on different social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. can help you drive a significant amount of traffic on your website.

It is always a good idea to share your blog post content on social media. It gives reach to your content. Just make sure that you use good headlines when talking about a blog post to persuade readers else they will likely skip it on their feed. Never use click-bait titles.

Final Thoughts

To ensure your blog posts stand out, you must have a little knowledge of SEO too. No matter how amazing you write, if it is not reaching the desired audience, efforts seem to go in vain. Focus on the keywords related to your niche and find out how you can those keywords in your blog posts.

I hope the information that I shared above was helpful and helped you understand the importance of a blog to increase eCommerce sales.

8 tips to drive more customers on a Marketplace

Customers are the life force of an eCommerce Marketplace. It’s important to keep them engaged and happy in your eCommerce store because it is one of the ways to compel them for buying products. Each and every aspect is important in driving more customers to a marketplace. The tactics applied by you must be relevant and should engage customers on your website.

Selling on a Marketplace like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, etc. in between thousands of competitors is not a cakewalk. Maintaining a healthy relationship with customers is the basic step to be taken for better sales and revenues. Customers play a key role in bringing new users to your website. At times, it could be a love-hate relationship between customers and sellers which can lead to the downfall of sales. So, it’s pretty obvious that if there would be no potential customers, there would be no sales.

As the eCommerce industry is steadily growing every day including new trends and ideas, sellers should keep an eye on the growing competition to apply some new strategies to overcome it. It’s very important to draw the eye of the customers on your Marketplace.

Taking this into action, here are 8 tips that enable you to drive more customer traffic on your online Marketplace and results in good sales and revenues:

1. Take heed of every angle associated:

The services offered by a seller could be at their best only when you pay attention to each and every minor aspect associated with customer traffic. A good seller should also be a good brainstormer who can think of every aspect to give the best services to its customers. Every mind has a great plan and these plans could be implemented to generate profits. Analyze the targeted customers by knowing their demands and try to fulfill them. This will attract users to your website which can later turn into potential customers.

Brainstorm a little and target customers by following these tips:

  • Keep track of your targeted customers on social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc. You can get to know more about them and build your personal brand accordingly.
  • Always remain updated with the latest technology to provide a great shopping experience for your customers.
  • Provide them a smooth checkout process. If we believe Statista, 69.23% of digital shopping carts were abandoned in the year 2017. It could be due to a complex checkout process. You can reduce your cart abandonment rate by making the check-out process easier for the customer. Have a look at PrestaShop one-page checkout addon for your eCommerce store.

2. Drive Organic traffic to your website by excellent SEO:

Involving huge organic traffic from all over the world is definitely not a cakewalk. Like you, there are many more Marketplaces dreaming of potential traffic on their store but unable to achieve the same.

To overcome this competition, you must be well equipped with an excellent SEO to stay an extra edge over others. SEO is like the backbone for the marketplace which gives accurate balance to it. And the foremost way of excellent SEO is back-links. Back-links generate the highest amount of traffic on any website on Google. It also helps to rank you high in the Google search results. High ranking automatically gives you more traffic and relevant customers too.

3. The advertisement game:

Imagine you are searching for a product on Google and got some Google Ads in search results for the same product at different prices. Purchasers will definitely compare the prices by visiting different websites and will go for the best purchase. Focus on advertising your eCommerce store can optimize your website traffic. Customers will get to know about your Marketplace and will attract them to visit the same.

There are 3 varieties of campaigns you can run with Google ads is Search, Display, and Response. You can also show an ad on social media sites too. Now, you have to choose and advertise your products on any of these according to the availability of targeted customers. If you are targeting young people, then you can advertise your eCommerce store on social media. This can help you generate good leads on a daily basis.

4. Generating leads through Email Marketing:

Email Marketing is one of the most popular and advantageous strategies to convert prospects into customers. It helps in building the trust of customers and eventually generating loyal customers, making you capable to acquire profitable leads 24*7.

Email notifications are the most common way today to inform customers about the latest offers and discounts going on a Marketplace. It is a fact that people who buy through email notifications pay more as compared to the people who don’t avail of these offers. So, this means email notifications are also helping you in generating more revenues. So, start working from today to avail of good leads. In the market, there are lots of solutions present which make your email marketing easier.

5. Think like a customer, perform like a seller:

This is the utmost important tip to drive customer traffic on the eCommerce Marketplace. The product and service provided by the store admin could solely impact the purchasing decisions of customers. Remember one thing to catch a thief a policeman also have to think like a thief. Therefore, your strategies should be specialized according to the customer’s thinking strategy.

You should provide some tempting options which attract potential customers towards your goods and services. This will not only generate good leads but will also attract new users to your website. Since Marketplace has access to millions of customers worldwide, sellers can promote their products according to the demands of different communities and improve their cross-border sales too.

6. Focus on Quality, not Quantity:

Although your promotion is too good that you are getting immense traffic of customers but that doesn’t mean you will avail a huge chunk of profits. The quality of a product plays the most important role in acquiring the trust of the customers and confirming repeat sales too. Quality is always a one-step important factor than quantity.

Selling bad quality products demotes the reputation of the Marketplace and leads to the downfall of sales and revenues. So, it’s important to keep the focus on the quality of the products sold by sellers otherwise, it will lead to a serious downfall of your Marketplace platform.

7. Result-oriented behavior of sellers:

Sellers should already comprehend the demands made by the targeted audience and fulfill them by their goods and services to generate good revenues. The result-oriented approach towards your goods and services may enable you to inspect the whole scenario from a customer’s perspective.

However, the above fact can’t give assurance for the huge revenues as all potential customers are different from each other. The approach made by you should be precise and accurate and should generate better results.

8. Choose your social media wisely:

You may clearly have an idea that social media engages a huge number of audiences and is the best way to attract the eyes of purchasers towards your profile. However, it’s also important to choose the right social media platform by examining them closely and looking for the best one where you can find your targeted community of shoppers on a high scale.

Finally,

The above-mentioned points will definitely increase your website traffic which will result in higher sales and revenues. Regardless of whatever you sell on your eCommerce website, being a digital entrepreneur makes you responsible to analyze the traffic. On the website, implement some diligent strategies to convert them into potential leads. This will not only increase your website’s conversion rate but also make you earn a huge chunk of profits.

Convert your traffic into meaningful leads with KnowBand. Explore Marketplace integrators that enable sellers to integrate their eCommerce website to some renowned Marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Google Shopping, Newegg, and many more.

Features of Marketplace Integrators:

  1. Effortless product listing process with the bulk uploading feature.
  2. Mapping of the store attribute and category with the respective Marketplace attributes and category.
  3. Effective management of the product inventory.
  4. Effective management of the Marketplace orders.

Find out some more related articles here:

  1. 9 tips to help you sell more on Walmart Marketplace
  2. Why Marketplace is in trend?
  3. eCommerce Website or Marketplace? Where to sell on?

7 ways to boost up your sales using Social Media

Social media platforms are emerging as a new stage for eCommerce and retail companies to market their brands.

Just think about the last time you visited an eCommerce website to buy something, went to the check-out page, stepped back, and left the cart abandoned.

However, we can say either you were in no mood to purchase the product or you stepped back because of expensive shipping charges or got baffled with the super tricky checkout process.

According to Statista, 69.23% is the average cart abandonment rate for online shopping which clearly shows the slipping off of potential leads you have been continuously hustling down the line. However, there could be many reasons for the incomplete conversion of your potential leads.

How social media can help you out?

Social Media is a great tool and the most popular way of promoting your business or brand in between audiences. Today, every individual is present on at least one social media platform. In fact, 86% of the people follow the social media handles of the brands they want to get associated with. Still, these brands are unable to generate great revenues by leveraging the benefits of social media. So, how social media could help you out in achieving your sales targets?

Today’s generation is dependent on technology for the latest updates and offers and also wants great support in favor. This makes social media play a crucial role in promoting these brands either small or large, in fact, social media also serves in promoting well-established industries too.

Well, let’s take a ride through some of the ways in which social media can help you to boost up your sale are as follows:

1. The Hashtag Game:

It’s the best way to stand out from the competition and appear on the top of the list in any hashtag look searched out by your potential customers on social media platforms. Many organisations are working on the same strategy by keeping the hashtag game consistent. If you are planning to launch a new product or coming up with some new scheme, there is no need to hesitate in adding multiple hashtags as it will provide you transparency from other brands.

Here you can see the example:

#sales#marketing#socialmedia#clothing#productmarketing
#digitalmarketing#advertisemnts#entrepreneurship#realestate
#motivation#encourage#seo#hustle#potential#technology
#strategy#brand#like#onlineshopping#instagood#instalike
#startup#eCommerce#love#style#onlinemarketing#success

Make sure to use the closest and related hashtags that represent your business’s core interest as clear as possible. Confusing customers by using irrelevant hashtags could also lead you to the pitfall of your business sales. Utilise the hashtags wherever needed and stick to one medium only.

2. Disseminate deals via Social Media:

Social media works great in broadcasting the latest deals you have come up with. Offering an extraordinary price on your products but just for a limited time. This will attract customers to your website and compel them to go for instant purchase. Reveal the deal to generate some amazing leads on your online eCommerce store but be sure not to reveal the exact time frame of the same.

This strategy will assure you that customers will regularly check their feeds for some latest deals and offers and also could visit your social profile to know some more glimmer deal. Since many customers will visit to your online store so be prepared for heavy traffic on your website.

3. Offer discounts and coupons:

Coupons can help you sell more products as individuals always try to look up for the best deal and discounts on the products. Offering a coupon could attract customers towards your product and will help you convert your traffic into potential leads. You can facilitate your customers by providing them coupon code that is only accessible to the individuals who have liked your page on social media platforms like Facebook or followed you on Instagram or twitter etc.

The above methods are truly functional and will surely attract huge amount of audience through social sites to your brand store. This will lead to an increment in a number of supporters and followers.

4. Provide free shipping:

Free shipping is a blessing for every individual out there. If we believe Statista, 73 percent of respondents stated that free delivery greatly impacts their decision to purchase an item online. Shipping charges are the top reason behind cart abandonment as customers don’t want to pay delivery charges. So try to provide free shipping to your social media followers and grab the maximum leads. Make sure to provide the free shipping on any festival occasions as it is the season of maximum sale and this can help you in generating huge revenues and profits through social media platforms.

5. Exercise Giveaway contests!

This is the most attractive way of luring your customers towards your website as it could efficiently return you a good amount of revenues. Perform a giveaway contest on your social media page that requires individuals to sign up on your brand store. This exciting way would definitely increase the possibility to produce new leads. These contests provide good offers and discounts which incorporate a motivating force in customers to go for instant purchase and take your business to a new horizon!

The individual should be able to choose in between three distinct modes of a similar subject and enter to win the prize. This strategy is not only to generate leads or serve as an acknowledgment of the brand, but it also enables to expand the social stage online. Make sure that each individual who enters the advancement must like the Facebook page to look at the endowments.

6. Post Multiple pictures:

Whenever you post a picture on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, it’s obvious to get a reaction. You can urge your followers to like share and comment on your daily posts and feed. Facebook simply actualised another calculation that will re-post a connection each time somebody remarks on it. It’s important to remain consistent towards social media posting. Posting a picture implies more presentation and information about the product. Getting a huge number of “likes” prompts more individuals towards your post, so make sure to post multiple pictures of your products with each advancement you post.

7. Increase your exposure on Social Media Platforms:

It’s important for a seller to mark their presence on a social platform. They should ask their customers to follow and share their social media profile. It’s a meaningful way of connecting to online networking accounts, which can result in a higher conversion of leads. This is the most incredible method to get the word out.

You should also generate your email signature on your blog entries, press releases or pamphlets. It eventually acquires followers which helps you to find out more business deals and resulting in a huge chunk of profits.

Over to You:

The above mentioned points are some of the effective ways in embracing the standards of your brand store online. However, it would also help you in grabbing some good leads on your plate. So, start working from the day itself by luring your customers with various discounts and offers through your social media handle. Regardless of whether you owe a local store or an eCommerce store, creating your profile on social media platforms is very important. It encourages your brand among huge number of audience to generate good sales and revenues.

How KnowBand can help you?

KnowBand is a technical solution provider specifically for eCommerce platforms. The extensions provided by us are loaded with multiple features which helps in the full fledged development of your eCommerce store. KnowBand offers multi vendor Marketplace Extensions which enables you to convert your eCommerce website into a Marketplace like eBay, Etsy, Walmart, Amazon etc. It is available for different CMS platforms like PrestaShop, Magento, Magento2, OpenCart

Key features of Multi vendor  Marketplace are following:

  • Manage sellers
  • Approval configuration
  • Manage the commission from the sellers
  • Customised e-mail templates for notification
  • Product management
  • Compatible with Mobile App of the same Multi-Vendor Marketplace.

Related Articles:

Dropshipping – Future of eCommerce

eCommerce is one of the biggest industries in the world today. Due to its hassle-free usage, many retailers preferred to go online for any business purposes. However, if you are a start-up business owner, it’s difficult for you to invest a huge amount of revenue in the initial phase. As the latest trends of customers keep changing, keeping a huge stock of products could lead to loss of revenues at a high scale.

The latest trend which has taken over the eCommerce industry is dropshipping. This is the most reliable way to overcome the loss of efforts and revenues. Many store owners converted their business to dropshipping business which helped them to improve their overall business growth.

But before we go in detail, let us know the exact meaning of dropshipping:

Drop Shipping is a retail method in which sellers don’t keep products in stock. Instead, sellers come into a partnership with a supplier that stocks its own inventory. Seller transfers customer orders and shipment details to them, and the suppliers ship the order directly to the customer.

This latest trend is a blessing for small business owners who can’t invest much in the initial stage of their startup. Many people wonder how actually dropshipping could be profitable because there are many ways to dropship. Well, there are some ways that work while some don’t.

The Dropship Model:

The Dropshipping Model consists of 4 steps:

Step 1: Seller lists the supplier’s products on your store for customers to buy.

Step 2: The customer purchases something from the seller’s eCommerce store.

Step 3: Seller orders that same exact item that the customer paid for from your supplier.

Step 4: Seller drop shipping supplier ships this item directly to your customer. So, the customer receives the item that they’ve ordered from seller’s website.

Customer’s experience is utmost for a successful eCommerce business and for that it’s really important to choose a right supplier who supplies genuine products to otherwise, customers would not be happy by your product and this would lead to the downfall of your website.

Benefits of Dropshipping in Business:

1. Unlimited Inventory:

The first and utmost benefit of dropshipping is having unlimited virtual stock. Without investing a single penny, you own huge stock of products provided by the supplier. This helps retailers and suppliers to combat inventory distortion and save their revenues from investing in inventory.

2. Increase the lifetime value of customers:

You have the ability to add more and new trending products consistently for your customers. It helps you to keep your existing customers engaged on your website as they would be eager to see some new items acquired by you. It also attracts new visitors who can turn into potential customers. This all can be done without doing any advance investments.

3. No Handling Returns:

Another benefit of dropshipping is not handling any return requests. Sellers don’t even have to deal with the email for return request. If a customer returns an item, it is directly shipped back to the supplier, and according to their policy, they will either ship the replaced product or will give a refund for the product to the customers.

4. Minimize Risk:

In dropshipping, there is no need to invest money for acquiring the whole inventory at a time. This strategy helps to save the revenue of seller if their eCommerce business does not pan out due to any reason. The only money a seller will lose will be the money he paid to get his website started.

The seller’s business will resist to loss of revenue if the taste and trend of a customer change because there is no such thing as excess inventory owned by a seller which clearly minimises the risk of loss of revenues.

5. Lowers cost of products:

Sellers can launch new products at low costs because they are free of any pre-advancements and can be sold at their real cost. This strategy attracts more customers and results in high sales.

The rate of damaged goods during shipment becomes considerably lower when using dropshipping because it reduces the number of times that the product has to change hands.

6. Provides Practicality:

In dropshipping business, there is no need for a storage facility or retail location. You can sell your items just by the website only. Dropshipping helps the seller to offer a wider variety of products which were not possible if he had to buy and store all of the items at his physical store. This practically provides sellers to sell more in less revenue. The seller can also sell products which cannot be stored for a long time like perishable products, food items, medicines, etc.

The Downside of Dropshipping:

While there are millions of buyers and sellers who have had positive experiences with drop shipping strategy, even without even realising it. However, sellers don’t actually have the inventory they’re selling on the premises, this can lead to some major drop shipping problems.

Some of them are:

  • Sellers are making sales on a virtual inventory as it is not actually available with them.
  • Delivery times are longer than they would be if the seller had their own inventory and logistics.
  • Customers get interacted with companies from whom they did not purchase directly at the time of return and exchange processes.
  • All of these problems can be avoided by drop shipping sellers that work diligently to provide a great customer experience, but there are huge tendencies that can quickly turn shopper experiences bad if sellers don’t energetically work to prevent them.

And last but not the least, there are many conscientious sellers out there, so be ready to get sloppy or cut corners.

Conclusion:

Although the above-mentioned benefits would motivate you to set up a dropshipping business in this competitive industry, the most important factor for an online business is good sales and traffic on the website. Whether you are going for normal business or a dropshipping business, it’s important to convert your website traffic into profitable leads. Customer experience plays a major role in impacting your website sales. Try to keep a check on the genuinity of the products shipped by your supplier to the customers.

It’s important to sell yourself and your online business to the users with your marketing knowledge and strategies and customer service. But it’s also advisable to follow up regularly after the first conversation.

Integrate your eCommerce store with the Marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, Walmart and others in just a few simple steps. KnowBand offers Marketplace Integrators for various CMS platforms like PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento and Shopify which allows you to present your products among larger audience and encourage the brand awareness as well.

Find out our more articles here:

 

eCommerce Website or Marketplace? Where to sell on?

If you are a newbie in the eCommerce industry, making the choice where to list your products isn’t an easy task. You have to look for all the available possibilities and benefits offered by them before making any move. Online trading basically helps a vendor to reach out among chunk of customers easily and take their business to new heights.E-commerce websites and the marketplaces are the two prime  options  when it comes to online trading. Both of them are followed with their own pros and cons.

Marketplace Vs eCommerce Websites

First of all, lets narrow down how these two exactly differ from each other. Marketplace is a third party website which provides a
platform to many third party retailers to sell their products online. Example: Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, Etsy etc. The vendors can join the marketplace and start selling their products online. On the other hand eCommerce website is an independently owned  store of a seller
where customers can buy products of a particular brand directly from its native website. These websites are self owned by the merchants and can be easily built using various eCommerce platforms like Shopify, PrestaShop, Magento, WooCommerce etc.

Both of these options comes with advantages and disadvantages and this is what makes difficult for a seller to make the right choice. Here are some of the factors which will surely help you to understand the difference between both the platforms in detail and help them in deciding the best choice for their business:

1. Building Brand Image:

There’s no doubt in saying that creating your own website gives you full control on your brand’s image. You can easily present your product according to your own choice without any hassle. But, anyone who is a seller on marketplace would have the limited options therefore, he/she will be unable to affect the brand in any way possible. The presentation factors like layout, font, colour etc are standardised by the marketplace due to which often it happens that the product pages are not appealing and attractive for the users. Marketplaces also forbid sellers for mentioning their company name in any way. That is a loss too.

Creating a great brand image is immensely important when it comes to sell online. No matter on which platform you are using for the same. Having your own website provides you the authority to create a product page on your own choice. It lets you create the experience you want for your customers. You can also encourage your brand personality by reflecting your professionalism in your website design.

2. Traffic and Leads:

Building your brand image is not just enough in an online business. Making good sales is crucially important as well.
If you are an eCommerce store owner, you can implement various strategies and tactics to promote your brand name. Right from optimising your website rank till creating a social networking campaign, you can go for anything which suits you. However, there is a possibility that all these strategies can take a lot of time and efforts with no assurity of successful results.

On the other hand Marketplaces are well-established and highly trusted website than self-owned web-stores. Selling on a Marketplace could be an advantage for this factor as it’s easy for customers to reach out your products. According to statista.com, 197 million users visited Amazon’s websites per month. The huge popularity of Marketplace for online shopping automatically provides you the accessibility to million of customers  without spending any money on marketing.

3. Effortless start:

Seller need not to worry about the features like domain name, hosting name etc. All these features and mechanism are already well established in the Marketplace. Moreover sellers need not to look for the marketing platforms in order to promote their products.

4. Customer Experience:

If your product has been purchased on a Marketplace, the customer experience is totally associated with Marketplace and not with the seller. Although the product belongs to the seller but, still the user-experience belongs to the Marketplace.

If you are an eCommerce site owner then the customer experience with the product directly belongs to your website. Seller has the full authority to control and customise all the factors associated with the product review and enhance the user shopping experience. But, they need to do it on their own.

5. Expand your Reach:

It’s really important to attract visitors towards your product and convert them into potential buyers. Selling through your website provides you the freedom to display products as per your choice but the your product reach is confined to limited customers only. Sellers would be missing out millions of leads across border which clearly results in limited sales.

Whereas, Marketplace helps you to expand your business worldwide with minimal efforts. Seller is able to access millions of customers globally without making any advanced investments. You can even make a good cross border sales and boost up their overall business growth too.

6. Wide payment options:

Wide payment methods offered by the Marketplace offers an hassle free checkout experience to the customers. Payment options often influences the shopping decision of the customers. Availability of Multiple payment methods tempts the sellers to get enrolled in the Marketplace.

Conclusion:

Well, it’s good for a seller to own an eComemrce website but selling through marketplace won’t hurt your sales either. Many online merchants sell on both marketplaces and their own website to expand customer reach and brand recognition. However, the best place to sell online totally depends on the product type and category of your store. So, regardless of the platform you choose to sell on, it’s important to be aware about the latest trend going on in the eCommerce industry and implement it for massive sales and growth of your business.

Now you can easily list down your products on marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, Walmart and others in just a few simple steps. KnowBand offers Marketplace Integrators for various CMS platforms like PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento and Shopify which allows you to present your products among larger audience and encourage the brand recognition as well.

As today’s generation rely on their handheld devices for any online purpose. It’s really important for a vendor to reach the customer’s devices to ensure higher sales and growth. Knowband offers Advanced Magento Marketplace mobile Extension to build a fully-functional marketplace and a mobile app at same time for your store.

Find out our more articles here:

Why you should start selling on a Marketplace?
Why you should integrate your eCommerce store with a Marketplace?

How to improve sale for your ecommerce store in 2019?

2019 is here and we all are loaded with fun and excitement. But, do all the eCommerce store owners are really prepared enough to welcome the coming year and all the opportunities with it? In this challenging eCommerce industry, the only way to stand out from the rest is by providing a top-notch customer experience. Well, the major reason behind raising this question is the upcoming technical advancements and trends which would directly impact your eCommerce sale and revenue. With the rising competition in the eCommerce industry, looking out for new trends and their benefits is the best way to expand your business. You all would agree with me that customer experience is the top priority for the growth of any eCommerce store.

It plays a vital role in differentiating your business and keeping you stand out from the rest. So, in this article, I would share some best eCommerce practices which would surely help you in keeping your customers happy and improve your sales consistently.

10 best practices to improve the sale of  your eCommerce industry in 2019:

1. Make your website trustworthy:

Most customers won’t know what your brand is all about. Brand recognition is one of the effective approaches to lure the users to your store. There are many websites out there with the same features as of yours. So, you have to be professional in making your website more respectful and trustworthy for the customers. The trust level can also be elevated by making positive press coverage and adding suggestions like reviews/testimonials etc.

2. Attractive and detailed images!

Images of any product are also important with customer reviews or product descriptions. That’s why it’s essential to choose the most attractive images to grab the customer’s attention. And for that, you can create your own content instead of relying on third party images. It improves your conversion rate drastically.

3. Cover FAQs for every possible query!

Since it is not possible to answer each and every query of all the customers physically. So, the better approach is to keep some FAQs on your website and let the users get every possible support from your end. With FAQ’s the customers could solve minor issues by themselves and it even makes your website shopping friendly as well.

4. Live chat support for direct assistance!

FAQs are important to solve the users’ minor queries, but, there are cases when the store owner have to solve the issue by yourself. So, our next practice is to create customer valued personalized interactions in the form of chats and calls. Customers are more satisfied with the store providing instant support and always prefers them. By providing chat option on your eCommerce website, you allow your visitors to ask queries related with products directly from you. Instant user support paints you as a professional among the users.

5. Improve your website loading speed!

If your website takes time to load, this could affect you in loss of sales. The slow loading website frustrates the customers and he/she ultimately ends up in leaving the website. Your website loading time is the deciding factor for your professionalism and reliability. As per Statista, 73 percent of mobile users in China expect websites to load in 3 seconds or less. A single second delay could lead to decreasing the conversion rate of the website. It can potentially cost a $100,000 per day eCommerce site to lose $2.5 million in sales every year. So, you should work on the loading speed of your website, if required.

6. Scarcity has its own perks!

Customers hop on the things that are hard to find and are exclusive. The scarcity of things makes them more valuable. This is why creating scarcity or urgency of the product or service, tends to be one of the most effective conversion optimization strategies. The sense of scarcity encourages your customers to buy that product at that instant of time. Often “Selling Out!”  is highlighted to get the users to buy faster.

7.  Provide Free Shipping!

Free shipping is a blessing. If we believe Statista,  73 percent of respondents stated that free delivery greatly impacts their decision to purchase an item online. Shipping charges are the top reason behind cart abandonment as customers don’t want to pay delivery charges. So try to provide free shipping and grab the maximum leads.

8. Make the products search more seamless!

There are customers who visit your online store because they already know what they want to buy. But many of them have no idea and for them, product filters are important as the users might need to see what’s new in trend and what could be more suitable for them. Filter option helps visitors focus on the items that they really wish to buy. So keeping everything clutter-free could help you in increasing your online sales.

9. Detailed product descriptions!

Product descriptions are also important as complete detail can lead to the sky-high conversion rate of your website. So it’s better to explain your product in detail to avoid exchange and returns after purchase. Giving a description of your product will increase its value to your customers, thus encouraging higher conversion rates.

10. Keep the checkout page simple!

According to Statista, 69.23 percent of digital shopping carts and baskets were abandoned in the year 2017 and the purchase was not completed. Many a time it is because of a complicated checkout process. You can reduce your cart abandonment rate by making the check out process easier for the customer. You can apply PrestaShop one page checkout addon on your eCommerce store.

Conclusion:

Although there are various other eCommerce practices that should also be considered by entrepreneurs, However, if you incorporate these above-mentioned practices, your web store will begin to experience profitable results.