In an earlier article, I described how a web site can help you start your online presence. Having an online presence can open the door to plenty of opportunities and you should try your best to take advantage of all of them. If you have the attention and trust of a visitor you are provided with a perfect opportunity to offer your products and services. In this article I will talk about how this can be accomplished.
When selling your products online you need a solution that can handle all of the following aspects.
- Maintaining your branding and existing designs, convince the visitor they want that product
- A simple way for visitors to select products and services wanted
- Provide shipping costs prior to the order being completed
- A simple and trusted method for visitors to provide payment
- A reliable form of order fulfillment
- Tracking your inventory and sales
There is a software solution that is fairly common on websites. They are known as shopping carts and give the visitor the familiar feeling of placing selected items into their basket. When doing your research for a shopping cart package it is important to know that you can either have your web master install a software package into your current website, or you can link your website to a third party who provides shopping cart services to you. Third party shopping cart services reduce the complexity and maintenance of having your own shopping cart, however some third party solutions limit the customization of the look and feel.
When you are filling out your product details you may choose to use some of the space allocated to product description as a way to sell the product to the customer. Depending on the type of product you are trying to sell, a simple product description may not be enough and you may need a sales letter. The sales letter is a dedicated page that persuades a customer and helps convert from just browsing into purchasing. The Lotto Black Book has a radical approach to an online sales letter, try it out!
Almost all shopping cart solutions give a visitor the ability to add and remove items from a cart, with quantities. Some even have the ability to remember a visitor from one day to the next, storing what they had in their cart from a previous visit.
Once your customer has decided upon what they plan on purchasing they will complete their order and checkout. Part of the checkout process is to collect payment. Customers are becoming more educated and are cautious when providing payment information. You need to ensure that your payment page is secure (using an SSL Certificate) and that the information collected is stored in a secure manner. There are third party solutions for accepting payment as well, they are known as Payment Gateways. Shopping cart solutions will often provide the ability of plugging into a payment gateway, essentially pre-wiring everything for you. You will need to do some research into your Shopping Cart and find out which Payment Gateways they support before making your final selection. Choosing a payment gateway will depend on your anticipated sales volumes and the comfort level you want to provide your customer. For companies starting off, PayPal is a fantastic starting point as it is one of the most famous ways of providing payment online.
Once you have sold your product you need to be able to fulfill the order. When selling a digial product (such as a download) a customer expects to be able to download the product immediately after the payment is received. When selling a service, a customer expects that the service will start immediately, or they will be able to choose an appointment date if the service is delivered physically (such as configuring a home entertainment system). If you are selling a physical product (such as a book or a cd) a customer expects the item to be shipped within a day or two at the most and be provided with a tracking number. Also, depending on the anticipated sales volumes you may want to engage an order fulfillment company to handle completed orders for you. They will handle your inventory, packaging, shipping and some reporting.
The last point that your solution will need to track inventory and sales. You don’t want to sell 10,000 knick knacks in a single day if you only have 50 available to sell. Although this is a problem that many businesses would love to have (demand far greater than supply), promising on something you can’t deliver will greatly damage your online reputation. Your online store should indicate when you are sold out of a particular item and recommend the visitor check back again soon. Your solution should also track your sales, providing a wide range of reports that you can use for information gathering. Here is a list of a few reports you will want to review.
- Units sold for a date range
- Revenue for a date range
- Sales tax collected for a date range
- Current inventory for all items
If done right, having your website sell products and services for you can bring in a good amount of revenue. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, especially in order fulfillment for physical products if you have a high anticipated sales volume.