5 Tips for Selling Your Products Online

Key Podcast Highlights

What Are Five Tips for Selling Online?

1. Sell on multiple channels. You want to make sure that you are selling to as wide an audience as possible. This is why e-commerce is great. Selling online allows you to reach an international audience as well.

2. Sell off your website. You should have an online e-commerce site. You can use Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, QuickBooks, Sage and more. They all offer online modules to make it easier. You want customers to be able to buy your products when they visit your site.

3. Sell on other merchant platforms. For instance, you should have an Amazon site. Or maybe you use eBay or Etsy or Alibaba.

4. Use AI to help with your website. AI can help design your website, write better product descriptions and even help with search engine optimization. AI is also helpful for monitoring your site.

5. Invest in someone to manage your online presence. You can hire someone full-time or part-time. You can also contract someone from sites like Dice, LinkedIn, Fiverr or Upwork.

Transcript

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Gene (00:02):

Hey everybody, it’s Gene Marks and welcome to another episode of the Hartford Small Biz Ahead podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. This week, I wanna talk about e-commerce and give you some thoughts on it because it is a growing thing. And let me explain to you why. Two surveys came out within the past week. One from Amazon, which reported that small firms are investing heavily in digital commerce. And another one from Alibaba, the other online reselling platform that said that growing ecommerce among their respondents in their surveys, a top priority, this year. The survey found that 53% of respondents, sell online compared to 44% that don’t. There’s a lot of room to grow by selling your business online or selling items online. And I just wanna make sure that, we’re all aware of what you need to know when it comes to selling stuff online.

Gene (00:58):

And I’ve really got five big things I need you to know. Okay? So number one is, first of all, it is important to have multiple channels. Super important to make sure that you are selling to as wide an audience as possible. That is why people go and sell online. Some people like… they think that they’re only like a retail store or they’re a business to business website or business. And they only sell that way. That’s just not the case anymore. When you sell your products online, obviously you can reach a much wider audience, international audience as well. Customers that never really thought of you before. It’s super important, number one, to have multiple channels for your sales. E-commerce and online is a significant consideration that you should be making regardless of what you’re selling.

Gene (01:46):

That’s number one. Number two, you should be selling off of your website. It’s not just about Amazon and Alibaba and all the other ones, but you should have an online e-commerce site. And guess what? It is not as hard as you think it might be. There are some leading online e-commerce merchants. You’ve heard of Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, QuickBooks, Sage, they all have online modules. My recommendation is that you should be looking into it and getting these things set up. It is not that difficult to do, but when people visit your website, they should have the ability to buy your products directly on your websites. That’s number two. Number three, in addition to selling on your website, yeah, you should be setting up on other merchant platforms. You should have an Amazon site. Maybe you should have a presence on eBay or Etsy or Alibaba.

Gene (02:39):

Those are some of the major online commerce sites that you can consider. Even big retailers like Walmart and Macy’s are inviting outside merchants to set up on their platforms as well. And they get a lot of traffic. So it’s not just selling on your own website, which is super important, but it’s also important to set yourself up to sell on multiple different online platforms because it’s all about reaching a much wider audience. And you’re only gonna do that by partnering with as many platforms as you can. Number four, AI or artificial intelligence will certainly be helping you in the future. AI will be helping you design sites quicker, doing better product descriptions, helping you with search engine optimization, helping you with monitoring your site. It will absolutely be a great productivity tool. And there are many of the larger merchants, like Amazon, for example, that are investing heavily in AI for their merchants.

Gene (03:33):

However, in 2024, it’s still not really reality yet. There are some tools that have been introduced, but we’re just scratching the surface of what’s gonna come. So if you’re waiting for AI, I wouldn’t wait. I would be getting myself going and set yourself up now and then you can incorporate AI features and functions in the future. So a quick recap of the top four so far before I get into my biggest one, which is the fifth. Number one, yeah, you have to be selling online and you need to have multiple channels. You can’t just be selling to one type of customer. You need to have an online presence. You need to be selling to different customers in different countries, different markets, different industries. Online selling is really important. It’s number one. Number two, you need to be selling off of your website. So you should be setting up an integrated system on your website.

Gene (04:20):

Consider Shopify or Magento or BigCommerce. Number three, in addition to your website, you should be selling on merchant platforms like an Amazon or an eBay or an Etsy or an Alibaba because you wanna get as many customers interested in your products as possible. And number four, AI will be a factor, but it’s not gonna be a factor right away. It is still gonna be coming. You should be getting yourself set up and going now, and you will be able to leverage AI tools as you move forward. If you’re waiting around for it, don’t wait around for it. Which brings me to number five. All of this stuff takes time and effort, and I don’t really care how much AI or technology or automation tools you’re using, you’re still gonna need somebody to own your online business. Bottom line, you’re not gonna be able to do this yourself.

Gene (05:07):

You don’t have time to do this yourself. My clients that have succeeded online, invest in someone or a team of people that manage their online presence. You can find these people all over the place. I mean, you can hire somebody full-time, which a lot of my clients do. Or you can find somebody contracted. You can go to sites like Dice or LinkedIn or Fiverr or Upwork. But I’m telling you right now for the typical business, my clients that are developed online platforms, it is almost a full-time job of a person to manage these platforms. Why? Well, lemme tell you what, some of the stuff that they have to do, first of all, they have to design and maintain multiple sites. If you’re using Shopify on your website internally, somebody’s really gotta be expert at Shopify and get to know it.

Gene (05:52):

And then if they move to Amazon or Etsy or Alibaba, they’ve gotta know those. Every site has got their own peculiarities that they have to learn. Somebody has gotta get your shop front, your store set up, and who’s gonna do that. But somebody else that you hire, that same person has gotta be managing your orders, setting up and managing payments, connecting to your bank and payment services, and of course, managing customer service because a lot of these sites will elevate your presence or they will deescalate your presence if you are not providing good enough customer service, responding to customer reviews, issuing returns, sending products back, responding to customer questions. This is all something that AI can’t do all of this alone yet. This is something that you’re gonna have to have a person do. In addition, that same person needs to look at SEO or search engine optimization, the descriptions of your products, maximizing the marketing tools that your online merchants are providing for you so that you can make sure that when people are searching for a product and you qualify, that your product shows up top of the list.

Gene (06:59):

Somebody’s gotta be doing that, and it takes constant change and tweaking. In addition, you have to be setting prices which change all the time based on what the market is going and also integrating with your inventory systems as well. The last thing you want is somebody ordering product that you don’t even have because your online site is not talking to your backend inventory. If you are gonna be selling online, there’s a bunch of compliance and policies that you need to be following to make sure your site is available for disabled people to make sure that it’s ethical, to make sure that it’s cooperating with different website rules and cookie management rules depending on the countries that you’re selling into. Somebody’s gotta do that too. And somebody’s gotta provide the metrics and reporting to you to tell you which products are selling, which products are getting you the most margin, what’s successful and what’s not successful.

Gene (07:47):

And these are just some of the responsibilities of that person. So I told you the top four things. Having multiple channels, integrating, having an e-commerce site on your website, having an e-commerce site with a few e-commerce platforms, leveraging AI more as it becomes available. But honestly, the biggest takeaway is that you’re gonna have to make a significant investment in a person, somebody who’s going to be managing all of this. It might be part-time, but depending on how you grow, it could be a full-time job. And that person will be doing everything from designing and managing your site to SEO, to compliance, to reporting to managing your orders and responding to customers. All of these are the things that you have to keep in mind if you want to go online and sell and make a presence and expand your channels.

Gene (08:39):

And I strongly suggest that you do. So, listen to the Amazon survey. It is telling that a great number of small firms are continuing to invest in digital commerce and listen to the new Alibaba survey. You can look it up and read it yourself that 53% of the respondents are selling online, 44% don’t, and they expect that number of people selling online to grow going forward. So these are people, a lot of businesses, small businesses are getting the message, expanding their channels, selling online. That’s where the action is at, and these are the considerations that you need to make before making that investment. My name is Gene Marks. You have been listening to this week’s Small Biz Ahead podcast from The Hartford. If you need any advice or tips or help in running your business, visit us at SmallBizAhead.com or SBA.TheHartford.com. Thanks a lot for joining me. I’ll be back next week with some tips on helping you run your business. Until then, you take care.

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