The world of selling online has come a long way over the past decade. Many businesses and individuals have learned how to sell online and make money with the help of various tools and techniques that did not exist, or were at least not popular, just a few years ago. Now we are faced with more competition in the digital world than ever before. Anybody who knows about trending products can come up with innovative ways to make online sales.
As you think about products to sell online, you could choose from many different categories. Most consumer goods can be sold over the internet. It is all about having a setup to do so and an online presence for your brand.
Since the digital marketplace is a competitive playground, even the most innovative entrepreneurs are faced with challenges in this area. However, many aspiring entrepreneurs would agree that if you start learning how to sell online and look into some selling online tips, you can build a stream of income that becomes sustainable enough to support your household over the long run.
It is not only more accessible than ever before but also kind of exciting to sell online. One significant advantage is that you are not restricted to getting customers from one specific location or region. You can access the global audience by targeting your ads and marketing efforts to all parts of the world. You can sell beyond the borders of your city, state, country, or even the continent. You can do this without even leaving your desk. In other words, literally, anyone from the whole world can convert and become your customer.
But the question is, where to start? As we think about how big this opportunity is to sell online, we might feel a bit overwhelmed. The good news is there are simple ways to figure this out. There are ways to sell online that won’t cost you much money and can be followed by taking small steps.
This post is a guide for you to get some great selling online tips. After reading this, you will know the basics of how to sell online and make profits from your sales. If you remain persistent in your initiative, you might be able to turn it into a full-fledged business over some time.
7 Tips to Sell Online
Here are 7 selling online tips that will help you along your journey of starting an online business.
1. Establish an eCommerce Strategy
eCommerce refers to selling online. When you think of products to sell online, the first thing you need to do is develop a strategy. This will be the starting point of your journey. Think about what you will use as your online platform from where you will make the sales. Think about how you will pursue customers to choose you over other players in the same industry.
To sell online well, you need to stick to the strategy that you build in the beginning. Decide on the product range that you will gather stock for. Would you like to be a specialist in a single category of products, or would you like to offer a range of products? These kinds of questions are essential for you to answer before you invest any money in your initiative.
Another important thing is that you need to think about being able to sell online through multiple types of devices. Consumers these days usually browse the internet from their mobile phones more than they do from their desktop or laptop. That’s why you need to provide the right customer experience on any device or platform that they use for online shopping.
2. Build Your eCommerce Website
The next step to successfully sell online is to develop your own website. This might sound a bit surprising to you. You might wonder why you need a website of your own if you can simply choose to sell through one of the largest eCommerce platforms in the world, such as Amazon, eBay, or others. The reason is that your own website would give you complete control over your marketing strategies, sales transactions, and your customer base.
On top of that, building your own website has come down to being a straightforward task these days. For instance, if you select Strikingly to be your website building platform, all you need to do is register for a free account and choose one of the ready-to-use templates that will serve as your ready-made web design. After selecting a suitable template, you can start entering your website content straight away without having to write any code in the process.
Image taken from Strikingly
On Strikingly, we offer the Simple Store section to add to your site and upload your products there to sell online directly from the website.
Image taken from Strikingly
You can also choose from the multiple payment gateways that we offer to accept payments from your customers.
Image taken from Strikingly
3. Create Awesome Product Pages
In the store section of your site, add products to create your product pages. Set the price for each item competitively, and write a clear product description. The more descriptive you are about your products, and the better your product photos quality is, the easier it would be for you to sell online.
Image taken from Strikingly
It is best to add multiple product shots for each item that you want to sell. If your site visitors are able to see the products from different angles, they will be more likely to make the purchase.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
4. Offer a Smooth Checkout Process
The checkout process must be smooth and hassle-free for you to continuously sell online. Do not ask your customers to fill out lengthy forms or enter too much sensitive information when they are almost checking out. Make your checkout page as mobile-friendly as possible so that customers can easily shop at your store from the convenience of their phones.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
You may ask your customers to give you feedback about their shopping experience or write a testimonial once they complete their purchase. But do not bother them until they make the transaction, or they might get annoyed and back off. You wouldn’t want to get too many shopping cart abandonments or a high bounce rate on your site.
5. Provide Fantastic Customer Service
The key to keeping your customers satisfied and getting them to make repeat purchases is to provide excellent customer service. This is critical for pre-purchase, during the purchase, and post-purchase stages. When you sell online, customers might need your service and support at all stages of their buying process.
There are several ways to ensure good customer service in your online store. The best way is to have a live chat feature installed on your site, which customers can access from all your web pages to make an inquiry and get an instant response. Strikingly offers a live chat feature in our Pro package that allows you to send and receive messages to up to 100 customers.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
6. Use Social Media Marketing
To sell online successfully, you need to integrate your eCommerce website with your social media pages. Regularly post updates about your products and sales on your social media as well. Drive traffic from your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts to your website and vice versa. Add social media icons to the footer of your website.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
For a more thorough integration among these platforms, use the social feed section feature of Strikingly. This feature allows you to insert part of your Instagram or Facebook feed into your web page.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Businesses that have a well-integrated presence on the internet have a better chance of growing rapidly in terms of their brand image and sales.
7. Promote Your Online Store
There are many ways to organically promote your online store to continue to sell online and make money. Work on your website’s SEO to enhance its search rankings. You can do this by using the right keywords in the content on your web pages. Write a precise site description, and use the relevant keywords in all your product descriptions.
If you are into writing, you might want to consider guest posting on other people’s blogs to drive more traffic to your site. When you make guest posts, you can insert links to direct readers to your online store. This helps to establish you as an expert in your field and increases the chances that more people will find out about your site.
Now that you know how to sell online, you can start with visiting our landing page and signing up for a free Strikingly account. It won’t take you long to familiarize yourself with our tools and features. As long as you have decided on the products to sell online, you can get your online store up and running in just a couple of hours.
We wish you the best of luck in your journey of making online sales!
