While most people fancy writing about sales and marketing ideas, what actually impacts your business the most is your competency sourcing the products you are selling. Not only your business begins with sourcing, it also determines how much money you can spend on sales & marketing, and other operation expenditure. It impacts your business in every possible way right until you make profits.

Most successful businesses are extremely good at sourcing.

So, how to make sure you are paying right price for the products you are sourcing. I have gathered a few simple guidelines that can help you take right sourcing decision.

Determine Market Price

Research well before you go out for shopping spree. Make sure you know how much money your target customer is willing to pay. Ask as many people you can to find how much they are happily willing to spend for the product. This will give you an idea about a price range that market thinks is fair.

Determine the Gross profit margin

Let’s say you want to sell a jewelry for which your target customer is willing to pay USD $100. The gross margin for such product could be 40% to 60% depending on the value you want wish to add through service and experience. If you are into wholesaling, your margin could fall at the bottom end because your sales expenses are low, in the end, you will still end up making 20% to 35% net profits considering your overheads. Whilst a retailer with high marketing and operational costs the gross profit margin can be at higher end.

The reason online stores are able to sell products at lower price is their ability to run their operations like wholesalers and sell products to retail customers with aggressive pricing.

Make sure you do your math correctly before starting your new business.

All the best!

This year’s online holiday shopping season was predicted to be the biggest in history. Comscore reported that US online holiday sale rise an amazing 16% last week. The Ecommerce economy is showing no signs of recession. Surprisingly, even with such a thriving Ecommerce marketplace, very few Ecomerce sites are able to capitalize on the high number of visitors that they get. 

Mashable, one of the premier online magazines wrote an interesting article on how to design Ecommerce website that can maximize sales. Very short, useful and interesting article, a must read for every e-commerce site owner:

How to Design an Ecommerce Site to Maximize Sales

Hope this article becomes useful to you!

Recently, I got a few opportunities to interact with traditinal brick/mortar businesses who wanted to start an online store. This shows a remarkable shift in thinking in these small and medium businesses who are transitioning from simple brochureware sites to online stores where they want to sell products online. Finally they are breaking away from traditional boundaries of geography and reach...which is a good news. And with this good news, there is not so good news - most of them did not know where to start and how to really go about it...

While interacting with these business owners, I shared with them some fundamental aspects which needs to be considered carefully before begining to sell online. I have summaraize them all here for the benefit of everyone. So here they are:

1. Is there a real market our there for your product?

Are your products really saleable online? This part needs some investigation and fact finding to ensure that the products in your industry segment has really got online buyers. Otherwise, your online store will turn into just another sophisticated brochureware site with a nice product cataloge!

2. Do you have the necessary back-end (planned or established) to support e-commerce operations?

Simply setting up an online store is not going to be enough. You need to figure out how products will be shipped, how payments will be received, how you will process refunds and returns etc. Though most of the small called e-commerce start-ups need not to invest in addtional resources in the begning, it is very essential to be prepared for these things from the start. 

3. How are you going to reach out to your audiance?

Reaching out to your customers online is tricky and not easy in the begining. You need to figure out, where is your target audiance on ther internet, what kind of keywords do they search and what kind of places do they visit on internet and what kind of things they do. Then you can plan to go after them through advertising, search engines, social media or pr with clarity and precision.

4. Cost of ownership?

After you have figured out all of the above, you need to find out what's the best way to operate an online store while not compromising on quality. There is a whole lot of creative and technology investment you are going to make. A lot more time and energy are going to be invested in maintining it. In this respect, hosted e-commerce platform such as 39shops can bring a lot of value with very high reliability and extremely low cost of ownership.

5. Keeping your audiance engaged

This is the last mile of success and comes later, but it's crtically important to understand it from the very beginning. As 37signals pointed out, your customers are your audiance. You have to treat customers as your audiance, make customers your fans rather than just buyers. Those who have entered the e-commerce game and succeeded in it, know it better than anyone else. To maintain customer loyality and make them keep coming back to you, requires a deep level of engagement in more than one ways. For example, keeping the engagement useful blogs and articles, special loyalty discount bonuses, sharing useful information with them and keeping them engaged with the latest happenings in your compnay and in your industry. 

It is not easy to reach #5 unless you put in consistent hard work and intellectual efforts. However, the basics #1 to #4 plays a key role in making or breaking your e-commerce presence. What are your thoughts....How has been your experience selling online?

Social Media is a naked communication medium. There is no ad agency making your adverts, no journalist writing an article about you. It’s just you and your customer, staring straight into each other’s eyes.

If you are growing your own e-commerce website then everything you do will be focused on increasing conversion rates, basket sizes and margins. There are lots of practical things that you can do to improve these metrics. Many of which are ordinarily covered on this blog. But what I want to discuss today is how people are attracted to your site in the first place.

Commercial social media

My background is in business strategy and finance so I take a very commercial approach to social media. Over the years, I’ve found that social media provides a solid return on investment because it allows you to communicate more directly with your target audience.  This builds the volume in your sales pipeline, increases repeat purchases and allows you to build margins by commanding a price premium.

There are two things that you can do to increase traffic to your e-commerce site from social media sources. The first is building compelling content that positions you as a respected expert and the
second is to engage with the community in a way that builds trust.

Content creation for e-commerce start-ups Content is a cornerstone of a good social media programme for a start-up. The goal of your content is to add real value for your audience. You can create content across four areas:

1. Text (Blog post, articles, press releases and whitepapers)
2. Images (Photography, info-graphics and diagrams)
3. Video (Creative content like ‘how to’ guides or editorial content such as interviews and web-shows)
4. Audio (Podcasts, instructional CDs and audiobooks)

You need to choose the type of content that suits your creative process and your audience. In the end you’ll want to mix the mediums but it’s best to start with a strong focus on one that you know you can do well.

Community building for e-commerce start-ups Direct participation in social networks like Twitter and Facebook can bring significant traffic to your e-commerce site. But if you don’t have robust and helpful content to act as the subject of conversation then you’ll be left just talking about yourself. To build community for your site, imagine that you are going to a party:

1. First you decide which party you want to attend and how to get there.
2. Then you arrive at the party and listen to what’s going on, you get a feel for the crowd.
3. You gradually start to join a couple of conversations by building on what others are already saying.
4. Once you are part of the discussion you might add a story of your own.
5. Eventually, if you like the crowd and they like you, then you might invite them to come to another party at your house on another day.

These steps collate directly to building your community in social media. You need to choose an audience, listen to the buzz, comment on existing blogs, create your own content and eventually bring visitors into your new site.

Authentic voice for a start-up

To bring content creation and community building together you need to have an authentic voice. This requires a single editorial voice, whether it is your CEO, a spokesperson, or you. Practical ways that I use to tell when an e-commerce site has a real and authentic voice:

1. Your generic corporate twitter account is paired with a public profile of an actual person.
2. You have a mix of your own content and links to other people’s content. This shows that you are not operating in your own little vacuum.
3. You host or attend real-life events, then post about them.

Summary

Social media is a naked and direct way of bringing traffic to your e-commerce site. You need to add real value to your community with ‘how to’ guides, tips, tricks and articles that they can learn from. You also need to let them get to know the real you. In the end, we all want to buy from people who we respect and trust. Social media allows you to build that respect and trust directly with your customer.

About the author:

Peter Thomson is a London based digital strategist. He’s worked across industries as broad as boutique wine, menswear, telecommunications, technology and industrial products. He specialises in helping companies solve complex brand problems. His blog The Economics of Innovation (http://www.economicsofinnovation.org) explores the importance of design and creativity in business.

Fast is 39Shops
Everyday we work hard to keep our service fast. Right from setting-up store to shopping experience, we promise to keep our service as fast as we can. We do this by taking number of steps every day. For instance constantly improving usability, optimizing software for faster page loads, and much more goes behind the scene to provide you faster service experience all the time.

Easy is 39Shops
No matter how big 39Shops grows in size and features, we promise to keep it simple and easy. Always less complicated and friendly.

Reliable is 39Shops
We believe that 'our success comes from your success', we work hard to keep our services in order so that your business can rely on. We make sure that there are no service outages, No unwanted crashes, and your data is reliably stored.

Send in your feedback, suggestions that can help us keep our promise.

Happy selling

ReferralCandy - Customer Referral Programs for Online Stores

Click here to download:

aramex_Special rates 39Shops.pdf (27 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

aramex_Special rates 39Shops.pdf (27 KB)

There is yet another reason to rejoice for 39Shops subscribers from India. We asked aramax to provide special rates for our customers and they have agreed! Attached Rate chart provides further details about the special rates.

About aramex
Aramex is a leading global provider of comprehensive logistics and transportation solutions. Visit http://www.aramex.com to learn more

How to configure shipping rates?
To configure aramex shipping rates with your storefront, simply follow standard weight based shipping guide. need any help? contact 39shops support staff with your question

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