May 03, 2018

Selling your products online is a great idea, but it can be challenging. We have seen tremendous growth in the online ecommerce space, especially the past few years in South Africa. As more and more people get used to buying things online, more opportunities and potential customers emerge.

Ok, so you have a great product to sell, now what ?

You might have a great product, but might face challenges leading to questions such as, “Why am I not making any sales ?”. Well, it turns out that there are many different reasons why potential customers choose not to buy a product online. An online store means that you are potentially selling to the whole world. That means hundreds of thousands of customers. Customers are all different in many ways and have different preferences when deciding to buy a product online. That’s why it’s a good idea to cater for each type of customer, in as many ways as possible.

Let’s have a look at different ways you can achieve this, in order to make a success at selling products online.

Showcase your products

Make your products beautiful, take the best possible pictures and ensure that your products look attractive, like something you would want to buy.

Write articles on your website and share them with your customers on every platform that makes sense. Usually sending out newsletters, posting articles on your website and sharing this to different social platforms ensures that you reach many potential customers.

Platform independence

Sell on different platforms. Don’t force your customers to only find your products on your website. In South Africa, you should at least think about listing your products on Takealot, Bid or Buy and Pricecheck. Extend your store to social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Your target audience is probably already using many different platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, so go out and connect with them on these platforms. Don’t wait for them to come to you, go to them. Users want an ambiguous experience, meaning that they want to shop or access your products from any platform.

Give customers different payment options

You don’t want to be in a situation where a customer can’t pay you because you only provide one payment option. Give them all the payment options, PayFast, Paypal, EFT, Cash on Delivery, Bank Deposit, Credit or Debit Cards, Mobicred, Snapscan, Bitcoin and more ! Users should be able to pay you from any channel, platform or device.

Make it easy and convenient

Communicate with your customers in all ways that makes sense. Make use of the traditional communication methods such as telephone and email channels. You should also think about the user experience. Customers don’t want to wait for long periods of time before hearing back from you, especially when it comes to buying a product. When a customer has a question, answer them as quickly as possible, before they decide to buy from someone else.

Make use of instant messaging to quickly engage with your audience or potential customers. Certain platforms provide chat bots to answer common questions and help users on your online store. This could also help to get the conversation started, where you can take over from the chatbot if required.

Give your customers what they want

You should actively monitor your website traffic and see which products gets the most views. Then decide to perhaps promote your best sellers and make them easily accessible. Make sure that call to action links, such as the “Add to cart” button is clearly visible and not hidden away at the bottom of the page. Remember, you want the customers to see this and click on it.

Always monitor your website traffic so that you can decide where to improve or what content to change to fit your customer behaviour and needs.

At the end of the day, you want your potential customers to have a great experience on your website. Everything should work as expected and should be easy for your customers to understand. Buying products should be quick, easy and effortless.

So what are you waiting for ? Start selling today !

Contact us today to get started with your website !

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