The world is going online. Today if you want to sell products online, you can reach an international audience very efficiently. Even the customers are now preferring to stay home and order the products from around the world.
In all this buy and sell, it is bringing opportunities for many traders like you who wish to sell products online. But how, you may be asking yourselves.
Well, when you are determined, you find your way through the chaos around you.
And to help you sell products online, we have made this step-by-step guide for you. This online selling guide will help you from the beginning of your journey of choosing the product until the point to expand your business.
But before that, you must understand this. If you are considering it as a lucrative business, but waiting for the perfect time, then you must know, it is a perfect time.
Many established business people, job individuals, and also much fresher
are benefiting from online stores.
To start e-commerce, firstly, you need to set a goal with your eCommerce. And secondly, take steps toward your goals. Moreover, to help you achieve your goals, we present you with the ultimate guide on, How To start selling your product online.
Without any further ado, let’s begin:
Steps To Sell Products Online:
1. Choosing the products
To sell products online, the first obvious thing that you should do is Choose your product. Any website that may look appealing generates traffic but has less to no sale is useless.
Online stores consume your time, and you surely should make sure you get the best return out of it. For choosing the product, ask yourself the following questions:
Will you be producing my own product?
If the answer is yes, then make sure you are good at it compared to most of the competitors. Also, note down the strength of your product such, as being cost-effective, high-quality, easy to use, or anything that you believe in with your product.
But in case the answer to the above question is no, ask yourself the next question.
Will you be retailing a product
Now, in the case where the product is of someone else, you may likely have some trading experience in it. It is not compulsory, but if you are familiar with the product by yourself, it really helps you in the future. It helps you know where to get them, how they are helpful/different, and how they are better than others.
As we said, it’s not always necessary that you produce your own product or have experience with the product. If you are new to trading and want to sell products online, you may choose a product that you like.
2. Research and viability
Research plays a vital role if you are going to sell products online. Before you take any other step, you need to do thorough research, everything related to how to sell products online.
This will give you a game plan, and help you create strategies for your store. To help you begin with, here are some points that you may have done good research to sell products online:
Availability of your product
Before you sell products online, you must check if the product is easily available to you or not. When you begin to start selling your product online, you should make sure the product you are offering is available to you at any given moment.
Surely you don’t have to stoke up hundreds of pieces, but whenever an order arrives you must not face difficulty in finding the product by yourself.
The best way is to contact the dealer/wholesaler instead of resellers. This way, you can always make sure that the product is mostly available. Also, purchasing it from a wholesaler will increase your profit even if you give a discount to the customer.
Even if you are not interested in contacting a wholesaler personally, further in this article, we will discuss some methods.
Demand
Another crucial feature that plays an important role when you sell products online is the demand for your product. Check if a similar product is available in the market.
If yes, see how it performs. Are people interested in the product and how frequently do they ask?
If a similar product is not available, see if your product is capable of solving the problem of the vast. Also, check whether it is among the best solution for the problem
Size and Type of Product
In case you are required to store the product, you must check the size and amount of space the product will cover. Also, you must make note if the product has a short life, expiry date, or the requirement of special conditions for storage.
3. Identify Your Target Audience
After knowing everything about your product, it’s time to know about your potential customer. This is important when you start to sell products online. For simple understanding, customers are divided into three categories for your product.
Regular Buyer
You shall see if your product is for regular buyers. These are those buyers that are active and buy on a weekly basis or on a monthly basis. You may check if the majority of the customers will buy this on a regular basis or not.
Occasional Buyer
Is your product focused on an occasion? You may make a note if people are buying a product of your kind around a special occasion of the year or any yearly occasion of their life. this is an important note to consider when you want to sell products online successfully on occasion.
One time buyer
If your product falls in this category, where people will buy it only once in a lifetime or in a gap of above 4-years, then your target audience will be very specific. The competition might be below, the sale will be low but the profit is usually high.
In addition, you could make the buyer persona of your customer. This will help you understand your customer better and help you with further steps.
You may also read – Turn One-Time Shoppers Into Lifetime Buyers
4. Budget
In the next step, to sell products online – unless you are selling for charity – you should prepare a budget. This will guide you across every stage and make sure that you don’t overspend the profit.
While making a budget, you may consider the following key points for your online sale:
Cost of the product
As the point implies, the first thing to consider is the cost of your product. In addition, you may also calculate the estimated profit and the number of sales in the beginning.
Transportation and storage
The second most important thing to consider while budgeting is the transportation cost and storage cost. Again it will totally depend on the type of product that we discussed above and of what category you want to sell products online.
Shipping cost
For this, you need to visit the nearest Courier company, add on to the actual cost, calculate your margins and negotiate if required. Crucially examine it state-wise or place-wise, wisely. If you use a platform, check its shipment and return policy very carefully.
Packaging cost
Equally vital to consider as this goes with every piece of item you sell. It depends upon the size and type of the product. Be sure that you choose the best packaging material that fits your product’s nature. This is to prevent damages from stack weight, water, heat, etc.
Marketing Cost
Another important point to consider is the marketing cost. This lets you reach your customers and allow them to purchase them from you. We will further discuss this in this blog post as well.
Cost of your online store
After considering all the physical costs, it is time for digital costs. In the beginning, you will have to pay for domain and hosting. In other cases, if you go with the eCommerce platform you will have to consider their respective charges.
A proper budget will help you understand your resources better and tell you precisely where you could save.
5. Building your Online Store
Now finally, you have reached the stage where you may start to sell products online. You will have to create a store that attracts the customer. The one which looks and feels better as a customer experience.
To help you with this, there are many tools for you. But first, you may have to choose whether you have to build a website or choose an existing eCommerce store to sell products online.
6. Optimize your Store and website
It is important for both, your website as well as your online store. To sell products online, you will have to get a higher ranking. Both in the search result, as well as the listing of the eCommerce platform.
For that, you will have to optimize the website with correct SEO and image optimizing. Your site and store should look attractive and user-friendly. Along with this, the product you are selling should look appealing and clear.
And usually, these business owners outsource this task to experts. For your website and eCommerce store, you can contact PixelPhant for services such as background removal, Product image retouching, Background Cleanup, and clipping path.
As you know, what people see, that people buy. To make sure the product images look best you must optimize the images as well as the SEO of your website and store.
7. Advertise and Expand
After following all the important steps mentioned above, you are all set to sell products online. But have you thought about how the customers will know about you?
To expand your business you need to grow your sales and reach out to the people. For this, you will need to market your website and store. Specifically for your eCommerce store, you don’t need to invest much more than a quality product image but for your website, you may have to run ads.
You will also have to make sure customers like the store experience. To know more on how you can do this, you can read 10 Customer Retention Strategies for eCommerce to Grow Online
How to Sell Products Online Through Your Own Website?
If you wish you could start your own online store on your own website. For this, you will first have to purchase a domain and hosting. Make sure the domain name reflects the product you are selling. Also, purchase a hosting that allows your website fast, even with a good amount of traffic.
Next, you will have to build the store for customers to reach out to you and purchase from you.
This is a time-consuming method and might take some time for your first sale. But you will be getting a complete profit from your sale. In addition, it also promotes your brand name.
According to us, you should start by using the existing e-commerce market and also if possible your website. In this way, the marketing will be very cost-effective. Moreover, it will generate traffic for both your store and website.
How to Start Selling Your Products Online With the existing eCommerce Market?
You need to complete the registration process as asked by a platform company such as Shopify. It requires you to submit your documents, which can also be scanned and sent.
Documents such as your identity proof, address proof, and some other business-related document. The verification process may take a couple of days and you are then updated about it.
It requires no marketing cost and time. No promotional activities, you do not need to build the clients directly from any part of the globe you want to target. It Saves your website maintenance cost and initial investment to launch the website too.
One of the drawbacks is, it takes away the share of 15-20% from your sale but in the less and simple process, you can start your e-commerce business
Conclusion
To sell products online, you will have to always have to consider this a real deal for you. Just the absence of a physical store doesn’t allow you to hold back your effort.
Through the above Step-by-step Guide to Sell Products Online, you can fast-forward the journey of growing your business online. This guide is to make sure you don’t miss out on your preparation. And with this, you start selling your product online easily and effortlessly.
If you want to learn more about eCommerce product image editing, Product Photography, Increase eCommerce sales, and how to grow online, subscribe to the PixelPhant email newsletter below.
Try PixelPhant for free
Use PixelPhant to get more conversions for your online store with better product images.
Background Removal | Clipping Path | Color Correction | Cropping & Resize | Retouching | Shadows