Every business sells online, but small businesses need an edge to compete in the marketplace against the big companies. Luckily, there are a variety of tools available to you so you can sell online. Heck, you could even build an online store from scratch, by using WordPress.
These tools not only help you to post your merchandise for sale, but they also help you to get more attention to your business and ultimately convert sales. These are just a few of the tools available to you.
More tools are becoming available all the time, so keep your eyes open and seek out the latest innovations in the marketplace.
Social Media Marketplace Solutions
Social media offers many solutions when it comes to selling online. Among the amazing solutions you can use is to social media e-commerce. These allow you to sell directly through social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. This allows your buyers to have access to all of your products right from their smartphone and other portable devices.
As long as you’ve taken the time to find the best shopping cart, your customers can find the products, check them out and purchase them all within the span of just a few minutes. It beats having to travel to a website every single time your customers are looking to buy something from you. Just make sure you’re posting all of your new products to social media as soon as they’re available for sale. You may have to set up a special account on the different social media pages, so keep this in mind as you are determining what kinds of accounts you’re going to use.
Set Up a Good Shopping Cart
There are plenty of tools available to you to help with selling your products, but none are as important as a shopping cart, according to Forbes. After all, no one will buy from you if you don’t provide them with a way to do so. When you are searching for the best shopping cart, there are a few things to pay attention to. Make sure the shopping cart is secure. This is something you’re going to want to show off to all of your potential clients when they get on the site. Many buyers will make a decision not to purchase something if they do not feel they can trust the shopping cart.
Another thing to pay attention to is what payment types the shopping cart accepts. Any good shopping cart will accept all forms of payments. This includes all credit card payments, including American Express. There is generally going to be a fee involved with any credit card processing service. Make sure you discover what these fees are so you can budget it into the price of your products.
Use Social Media to Market Your Products
Social media can help you to do more than just sell your products, it can also help you to create buzz about your brand. You should set up multiple social media accounts and make sure they are maintained with daily posts. You should post at least four times a day across every social media platform. This can be done with tools like Hootsuite without having to go into every single platform. Regardless of how you post to your social media, make sure you are posting things that will interest you target buyer. Don’t make everything about your products or your followers and friends will lose interest. Make sure you are mixing it up with posts that are fun and are of interest to the age group and socioeconomic background of the people you’re selling to.
You also need to make sure your social media pages are set up with a good cover photo. This about more than just the profile pic you have on the page. You also need to make sure you have a good cover photo to use as your banner. This applies especially to Twitter and Facebook. Your cover photo should include a direct link to your product page and it should be representative of your business and what you offer.
Use Product Reselling Tools
eBay opened the doors to a wide range of tools for people to try to sell their old stuff. According to PC Mag this has been used by people to clear out their clutter and make some extra cash. These are also perfect places to sell your products. Even though these were not originally intended to market new products, buyers search for and buy new products all the time. You can post all of your products as an online store within the platform and even create a link to your real online marketplace to sell even more products. Make sure you offer detailed listings of all your products that are slightly different from what you have listed on the site. Many sellers will offer a short description and to see the long description they can go to the regular site.
