The industry of selling auto parts online has been growing exponentially for the past five years. Retailers that sell auto parts through brick and mortar outlets are also starting their business online. According to a survey conducted by McKinsey, this industry is expected to continue growing at a pace of 3% per annum until 2030.
This growth is ideally in line with the changing consumer trends. Online shopping is getting more and more common. Many people like to buy their clothing online. This goes for both men’s and women’s wear. That’s why many boutique brands are opening up online stores to sell their products directly through their websites.
Customers these days also prefer to purchase auto parts over the internet. Since they can see and read all the features and specifications of auto parts on websites selling them, they find it more convenient to just purchase auto parts online instead of visiting the retail shops to choose and buy.
If you also want to sell your car parts online, you can find many eCommerce platforms to put them up for sale. However, if you want to sell auto parts as a full-fledged business, you would need to build a website to make it look more professional.
The question is, are you ready to start a business selling auto parts online? If yes, this post is just the one for you. We will be discussing how to sell auto parts through a website. The website will serve as the online platform to sell auto parts and grow your business.
How to Sell Auto Parts Over the Internet
Here are the steps you need to take to successfully sell auto parts online.
1. Decide Exactly What to Sell
You might be thinking this is not necessary since you already know you will be selling auto parts. But there are actually many different types of auto parts that you can sell. There is always a complex connection that needs to be built between what you sell and why you sell it. The types or categories of auto parts you choose to sell will depend on the primary objective or direction of your business.
Do you want to sell auto parts to compete in the larger automotive sphere, or do you want to specialize in a few specific products? Knowing which items you wish to sell will help you select the right features for your ecommerce site, and provide your online customers with a seamless shopping experience.
Below is a list of a few auto parts that customers these days are looking to buy online.
- Bumpers, hubcaps, grills, and other externals
- Cylinders, transmissions, spark plugs, and other interiors
- Jacks, wrenches, and other tools
2. Know Your Market Niche
One thing is to know what exactly you are selling. The next most important thing to know is who exactly is your ideal customer. You need to identify your niche to offer the right products. Many businesses build a buyer persona to specify the exact niche that they are targeting. Your buyer persona is the description, and in some cases, a physical model, of the kind of customers you want to bring in for your business.
There are many different customer segments that you can sell auto parts. Look into various segments’ demographics and see which segment is the most suitable to buy the kind of items you plan to sell. For example, you may choose to sell auto parts online to a wholesale customer, that is, someone who has a local garage or runs a retail shop. These kinds of customers are usually looking to make a one-off big purchase. They buy auto parts in bulk and sell them to smaller vendors, who sell to their customers.
A benefit of selling to such wholesalers is that you get stable sales and more significant transactions per sale. A disadvantage is that you have to sell to these vendors at a relatively low-profit margin to markup the price and sell further to their customers.
You can also choose to sell auto parts directly to the end customers. For example, you might end up selling auto parts to a kid who wants to install a loud exhaust on his Honda Civic car. This is the B2C segment and can get you a higher profit margin per sale. B2C sales will also offer shorter delivery times as you will be selling auto parts in smaller quantities.
3. Build an Ecommerce Website
This is the most important step in beginning to sell auto parts online. You need to have a professionally developed and smooth running website. The best way to go about this is to build a site on a website-building platform. This will not only save you a lot of money, but also a lot of time. Your website will cost you the bare minimum and will be up and running in just a couple of hours.
Many Strikingly users write positive reviews and testimonials about their website creation experience on our platform. This is because they find the process very simple and the end results very appealing. They develop complete websites on Strikingly that help them increase their sales and run them with the ease of updating them anytime on their own.
Image taken from Strikingly
You can also quickly build a website on Strikingly to sell auto parts. All you need to do is signup for a free account with us. Select one of the website templates that will be shown to you right after you sign in. Key in your web content using our user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.
There are two ways to sell auto parts through your Strikingly website.
- Select a website template that’s designed especially for an eCommerce store.
Image taken from Strikingly
- Select any other template, build your landing page, and add a simple store section to it.
Image taken from Strikingly
Our tools allow you to create beautiful product pages to sell auto parts. Here you can upload pictures of all the new or used auto parts you are selling.
Image taken from Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
The next step is to select the payment methods for your checkout section. Strikingly offers multiple payment gateways that you can use to receive payments from customers.
Image taken from Strikingly
Managing orders is also simplified through our order management page. Here you can see the status of each of your orders for selling auto parts.
Image taken from Strikingly
It is important to deliver all your orders on time. In case of any delays, it is best to inform the customer pre-hand. If you run out of stock or have other issues, make sure the customer is well updated on the situation. Businesses that provide good customer service can get ahead of the competition faster.
4. Use Social Media Integration
To boost your online sales as you sell auto parts, integrate your website with social media pages. Many people prefer finding information about brands on social media first, before visiting their website. If your social media accounts are linked with your eCommerce website, you will be able to drive traffic back and forth among all the platforms.
Add social media icons on your web pages. You can also add social media handles on each of your product pages. This will allow your site visitors to share the product page’s content on their social media profile, which will make your product details viewable to all of that customer’s friends on the respective social media site.
Social media marketing is a very effective means of marketing that helps you reduce the costs of your marketing efforts and drive more sales by building extensive brand awareness. If you sell auto parts on your website, and your customers like the quality, they will be excited to share your website and brand name with their friends and peers. Many businesses go viral like this on different social media platforms in no time. The key is to keep your customers satisfied with your product quality and support service.
These are the steps you can take to sell auto parts online. Remember, the quality of your website creates a great impact on your prospects and customers. Therefore, you must choose a good website builder, which allows you to build and maintain an attractive, responsive, user-friendly, and feature-rich site.
We at Strikingly have hundreds of users who are happy and satisfied with what we offer. By making the website building process more straightforward for business owners, we help them take out more time to focus on the actual operations of their business.
If you want to develop a website of your own to sell auto parts, why not start today? After signing up with us, you can take some time to familiarize yourself with our tools for creating web pages. If there is anything you need help with, you can either look it up in our online community called the Knowledge Base, or ask us directly by posing a question in the live chat. We will be happy to help you with any query regarding the development or maintenance of your website on our platform.
