How to Sell Products Online [Complete Guide]
Internet adoption in India is rising, and by 2025 India will have more than 900 million internet users. This is the reason every brand is willing to go online and grow their business by displaying in front of this massive audience. Now, How to sell products online? That’s a question we’ve been asked many times. And the answer is not so difficult to find.
In this guide, we talk about every method (marketplaces, ecommerce platforms) for selling products online. Keep reading to find out.
People want to know “how to sell online”, but they don’t want some complicated method. They want something easy and fun. Not sure about using a marketplace or going with your own branded eCommerce store or website? Don’t worry, we are here to help!
Getting Started with Selling Products Online
Selling online involves more than just making a website and uploading products; it also requires passion, expertise, and sales and marketing skills. Also, how much of your time do you spend online looking for ways to promote your business? It’s significant.
The fact is, getting your product noticed by customers requires that they know about it in the first place. There are many ways to sell products online, but only some of them will work best for each product.
Choosing the right solution for your online business as per your requirements is very time consuming. And the market is crowded with so many platforms that nobody has complete control over it. Platforms like Shopify, Amazon, QPe, Flipkart, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, etc. have their own advantages and disadvantages and were developed with the intent of solving specific problems for customers.
Then there are also platforms like Wix, Sellfy, Volusion, Weebly, etc. that serve thousands of businesses selling online. So, don’t just stick to one platform; check all the pros and cons of it before deciding to go with any one.
How to Sell Online
Setting up your own eCommerce website or online store doesn’t come in handy when you’re just getting started. In this article, we will talk about how you can launch your e-commerce business and how to sell online easily with your own online store.
Set up an Online Store
You can create an online store using a number of different e-commerce platforms or marketplaces. These include:
QPe: Easiest Ecommerce Platform to build Online Store
E-commerce platform QPe provides the easiest way for business owners to create an eCommerce store and start selling online in a matter of minutes. QPe helps businesses scale, from starting an online store to setting up analytics, payment integrations, shipping solutions, and custom domain integration.
So this platform offers everything that a business needs to run a successful online store.
Setting up an online store at QPe is very easy. You just need to choose a plan as per your needs, create an account, add your business name, logo, category, and upload products, and your store is ready to accept orders.
You can also try QPe’s free trial plan before breaking the bank.
Shopify:
This is one of the most popular platforms for creating e-commerce stores. It’s easy to use and has loads of plugins that will help you sell your products faster. Shopify is best for selling physical products and comes with multiple themes to choose from.
It is used by 1 million+ businesses worldwide. The basic plan starts at $29 per month, and the advance plan costs $299 per month. Merchants can create an e-commerce store, sell products via social media, manage inventory and shipping, etc.
The platform is easy to use and has a number of templates for different kinds of businesses. You can even create your own template from scratch if you want to personalize it further. It’s easy to use and includes features like shipping and payments.
You may also want to Read : Best Shopify Alternatives
BigCommerce:
This is another popular e-commerce platform that’s ideal for small businesses looking to get started quickly. It also offers some great features, like built-in analytics tools and inventory management tools.
The pricing of BigCommerce and Shopify is almost identical, and both are widely used by enterprise-level businesses around the world.
E-Commerce Marketplaces:-
There are so many e-commerce marketplaces where investment is almost zero and you can setup your business and sell online instantly. Here are the most popular options:
Amazon:
Millions of sellers are using Amazon to sell their products, growing their businesses multifold. In turn, Amazon charges a fee for shipping and also charges a subscription fee of $39.99 per month to the merchants.
The biggest advantage is that the customer base is already there, and marketing tools are available and easy to set up as well. But there is a disadvantage as well, i.e., heavy competition and so many guidelines to follow.
Sometimes you need to pay extra to display listings at the top of your category. Other than that, the platform never shares customer data or analytics with you and launches its own private label brands from time to time. If you want to try this out, you may check out the complete guide to selling on Amazon.
Flipkart:
With an estimated revenue of 433 billion Indian Rupees in FY 2021, Flipkart is India’s topmost e-commerce marketplace, where millions of Indians shop on a day-to-day basis.
This is similar to Amazon in India, where merchants sell their products and grow their businesses. Though similar to Amazon, Flipkart also charges a fee as a commission from the merchants.
Flipkart works on a marketplace model where it makes it easy for merchants to start their online journey with a minimum investment.
Etsy:
Etsy is best for selling crafts, jewelry, and homemade items and has become a massive marketplace that provides access to 40 million consumers for the sellers.
Online marketplace Etsy takes a 20-cent fee per item on a listing, and it will be live for four months. There is also a transaction fee of 6.5% and a payment gateway fee (depending on each country).
How to Sell Products Online (Simple Guide)
If you have brainstormed about choosing an ideal e-commerce platform to get started with your online business, now comes the part to design your storefront, which your customers will love. Head down below to learn more regarding designing an online store, choosing the right products to sell, adding payment integration, and how you can promote and sell your products.
1. Design Your Online Store
Are you a creative person? Can you think of an interesting way for people to shop online? The first step in designing your online store is to determine how you want it to look.
You have tons of options when it comes to design, but the best way to get started is by simply taking an existing product and seeing how it looks on the front page of your site.
The next step is finding a layout that works for you. There are many tools available for this purpose, including Adobe InDesign or Photoshop, but nothing beats a pen or paper. Sketching out your ideas can save you time down the road as well as make sure everything looks right on screen.
Once you’ve determined the layout and visuals for your store, it’s time to think about functionality. Are there any features you’d like to include? What features do customers need? How will they interact with your website? These are all questions you should consider before building out your website’s functionality.
To cut the clutter, you may also go through with any of the above platforms and use the prebuilt eCommerce themes and templates and customize it the way you want.
And if you don’t want to spend time doing that too or don’t have any knowledge on how to do it, you may go with QPe, where you can create your online store by choosing from various eCommerce themes or templates.
2. Choose the right products to Sell Online
Choosing products to sell online can be difficult. You will have to consider the niche and market, the competition, and how you plan to promote your products.
The best way to make an informed decision is by doing some research on the subject of your choice. There are many websites that help people choose a good product to sell online.
You can choose from a variety of products like pet care supplies, plants, gardening products, informational products like courses, beauty products, etc. to sell online, which could give you massive profits. After deciding about the product, ensure the supply of products and whether that can match the demand whenever needed in the future.
3. Add a Payment Processor
The payment processor is the middleman between your website or online store and the customers. It’s one of the most important parts of a successful online store. Payment integrations not only take care of the transactions from customers to merchants but also provide fraud prevention services, including identity verification and cardholder verification, which are critical in today’s e-commerce environment.
A good payment processor can make or break your business, so it’s worth doing your research on all the options out there. Paypal, Stripe, Paytm, Razorpay, CashFree are some common payment processors merchants integrate into their websites.
Check out QPe’s Payment Plugin Integrations for payments, delivery, and marketing options.
4. Choose a Delivery Partner
Now, in order to deliver your products to the customer’s doorstep, you need to tie up with a shipping partner. This feature in your online store can save you a lot of time and money, as well as strategies to deal with shipping and tracking.
Joining hands with a third-party delivery partner can only offer you more time, so you can focus more on your business or products.
Try QPe Express for Your Products delivery
5. Optimize Your Online Store with SEO for Discoverability
Optimizing for SEO and discoverability is about ensuring that people who are searching for a specific term or phrase will find your page and click through to it. Optimizing your website or online store for SEO will help you rank higher in Google results when someone searches for “your business name” or “your industry.”
However, you need to optimize for both of these factors if you want to increase your search engine traffic and sales. If you do not optimize your site for both factors, then it won’t rank as high in the search engines and it won’t bring in new customers.
To get the job done, there’s a secret to finding the best keywords for your business. And, you can do that by knowing your audience. By understanding what your customers are looking for, you can design a marketing strategy that will allow you to connect with the people who will be most likely to buy from you.
For example, if you sell products that help people lose weight, then you need to target search terms like “weight loss products” and “diet plan”. If you’re selling books about health and fitness, then you should aim for phrases like “health and fitness” and “fitness tips”.
If you want to appeal to people looking for luxury goods, then your keyword list will look different than if you’re selling home décor or jewelry.
Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs or Google’s keyword planner to find out the targeted keywords as per your niche and use them in your on-page SEO and off-page SEO activities.
You should use meta keywords and descriptions on your store's home page as well. Without an SEO-optimized online store, your business can not grow online.
6. Start Promoting Your Products on Social Media
Social media is a great way to reach new customers and build your brand. But it’s not easy. You need to find the right platform and make sure you’re posting the right things.
Here’s how to get started:
Pick a social network. There are many different social networks, each with varying strengths and weaknesses. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the three most popular, but there are others like Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.
Sell Online via Facebook and Instagram
Make sure you’re using the right hashtag on each network. Hashtags help people find content across the web by allowing them to search for hashtags on sites like Instagram or Facebook without having to go through individual posts on those sites.
A good hashtag is one that’s easy for people to remember (like “#solar”) while being unique enough that it doesn’t get used by someone else (like “#sun”).
Make sure your images are of high quality. Your photos will be uploaded directly into a user’s feed, so they’re important! Make sure you’re using good lighting and keeping in mind what kind of images look best on each platform.
Recommended : How to Use Youtube for Business: The Ultimate Guide
Select the best Online Store builder to Sell Products
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you start an online store. It’s important that you pick the right eCommerce platform or Online Store builder for your business, and we have made it easy for you to do so.
Website builders are software applications that help you create your own integration-equipped e-commerce website and allow you to sell online with modern business solutions under the hood.
You can use them for ecommerce website development or a shopping cart (or both).
The best e-commerce web store builders provide you with the tools and features you need to sell products online, whether they’re physical goods or digital downloads. They also offer you the flexibility to customize your store as needed, so it looks and functions exactly as you want.
We’ve shared the list of the best online store builders above, along with their pricing plans, links, and advantages and disadvantages. You may choose e-commerce platforms or e-commerce marketplaces as per your needs.
CONCLUSION
In the end, the most important thing to take away from this article is that selling online can indeed be lucrative. Being entrenched in the online world and successfully running an e-commerce store requires a devotion to business.
There will be setbacks and failures, but with effort and dedication, you too can succeed. Choose a platform that can cater to all the above, and you won’t need to manage multiple dashboards and apps for your business. In our recommendation, one that fits all e-commerce platforms is QPe—from Selling Online to social media marketing, payments , shipping and what not!
Happy Selling!
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