Setting up the website is the easy part, generating customers and sales is the hard part. You must look at your online store or auction site as a real store front in the market place.
Look at it from the shopper’s point of view. Is it an exciting place to shop and will shoppers want to come back? Or is it boring with the same items on display week after week. Does your store front look unprofessional and badly laid out? Imagine a shop window; the products should be laid out to attract the customer’s attention.
You ought to have special deals or sales and discount to entice your potential customers to buy. Maybe create a forum so your customers can meet up. A great place for you to advertise your new product ranges and receive feedback from your customers.
Once you sites are set up and you are happy with them, its time to open the doors to the public.
You will need traffic; a good tip is to list your products on the big auction sites. List your products but carefully filter and steer customers from the big sites to your own auction site or eCommerce site.
IMPORTANT! Save the details of customers who have bought from you! These customers are ‘GOLD DUST’; they have bought from you before, showing a willingness and confidence in buying online.
Also they are interested in your products and may be repeat buyers. They may also spread the word of your great products and service. So whatever you do, save their contact details! I can not stress this enough.
Creating an email list is also very important. Send out mail shots often.
Just as you receive flyers posted through your letter box offering home delivery or takeaway food etc, Emailing your customers with new products and lines will keep the buyers aware of your online presence and help to advertise your websites. It will keep them aware that you are still out there and still trading.
Another tip is to create an Excel or similar document with your customer’s postal addresses, and then maybe a few times a year and especially early Christmas time send out postal mail.
Christmas cards are not so expensive these days. Send them out early to your customers and add a small flyer with a list of your new Christmas range and gift ideas. But do make sure you send them out early enough to fulfill your customers Christmas orders.
Another excellent way to drive customers to your website is to advertise in local newspapers. They don’t have to be national papers but just small regional papers where advertising rates are small or if your lucky free.
Just place small few direct worded ads in the papers. For example, You have a website store selling refurbished laptops, You could advertise in the local press in any area and add something like ”Cheap student laptops for sale visit www.CoolBidz.com”. All roads lead to Rome or in your case your store front.
One last tip to remember is ‘Customer is King’ and always will be. Without them you have nothing. Keep them informed always. If there are delays in postage tell them, don’t let them have to email or call you. It looks bad and is bad. Don’t loose you customers that you worked so hard to get, keep them. One of the best ways to advertise your business is word of mouth, the easiest way to kill it would be bad word of mouth.
Don’t Give Away Your Online Auction Profits To The Big Boys
Listing your goods on large online auctions sites can be an expensive way to sell your products. Also there is a lot of behind the scenes work for example: sourcing your products, emailing customers, packing, trips to the post office etc. You may find that a good percentage of your profits are being eaten up by the auction site fees alone.
Using Smaller Online Auction Sites to Make Profit on Larger Auction sites.
A lot of auction sellers seem to be missing out on untapped merchandise to sell for profit. They seem to be forgetting the smaller online auction sites out there. There are literally 100’s if not 1,000’s of smaller online auction sites out there.
