Setting up on the marketplace is sometimes thought of as an easy process. Set up an account and start selling. We get a good number of calls from businesses who have set up, listed products and have not had any sales or the account is bringing up verification alerts all the time. As the saying goes ‘ if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it ‘
If we start at the beginning before registering for a new account on any marketplace. So you have 10 products which you want to sell. What we see with many businesses is the lack of thought and details offered. A few lines of descriptions offered to the customer is not providing your customer with enough information to convert into a sale. Amazon and Ebay have many options when creating a description, these options are not a chore but there to convert your product into a sale. So have as much detail and specification of the product so your product has the best possible chance of selling. In regards to specifications we are talking about product dimensions, colours, materials and so on.
Another factor that gets dismissed is product images. With any marketplace it provides many options to add a good number of images. Utilise this to show off your product. Provide as much angles and close up detailed shots. Something to consider for Amazon is to use a white background for the main image. You can have lifestyle images as well but that should be an image left for the image roll. Ensure you have high quality images. Images are very important as this is the customers first interaction with you and as simple as it sounds the customer maybe buying the item without seeing it or touching it, so showing off all the product features in the images is the customers interaction with the product. This leads to another debatable question, Amazon and Ebay customers can not physically touch or see the product however they only have images and descriptions to go by. So why is Amazon and Ebay so successful? one answer would be is a massive reputation with security which would go against a brand selling on their own website without a history of feedback.
Is your product ready to ship? as an example products are on, sales are coming in and items are being shipped out. A month in, you start noticing customer complaints, returns, defects. This in turn ultimately eats into your margins. Time wasted dealing with customer complaints. Having items collected from the customer for an exchange or a return which is money coming out from your pocket ( if we look into this further, the item is collected from the customer at your expense. The customer is then refunded in FULL. The collection money has then come out from your pocket and the customer has been refunded in full ) defects allow for more full refunds or even a discount of some sort. The list goes on, considering this it will always eat into your margins. What does this have to do with products being ready to ship? it comes down to packaging. Things like better quality outer packaging, inner packaging, can the product be packed better as opposed to just thrown into a box. A little thought into this has a positive domino effect. Less faults and damages, better feedback’s, less complaints. Ensure instructions of the product is included in the packaging if needed.
On the subject of packaging, having a courier company set up is key. One that will collect daily and provide a trackable service for your customer.
If you are a manufacturer it is highly recommended to get the correct set up as the transition to a retail set up would be different. From selling bulk products to one customer, to individually sending one product to one customer. Ensuring a member of staff is picking the correct item for the customer. Meeting the times the courier will collect. Little things like allocating space for stock and returns. With retailers who import products in, ensure a system is in place to replenish stock before it hits zero. This action keeps the momentum going for the product and keeps sales regular.
Other little bits to take into consideration is keeping spare parts, especially as an importer as sometimes parts are faulty or missing. Having supplier documents ready, company details and documents in case it is needed for verification and security reasons.