Ecommerce 101
WE now live in a digital generation, buying online gives the buyers the ease and convenience of shopping, while giving us, the sellers a bigger platform to showcase our goods.
Unbeknownst to many, entering the world of “Online Selling,” which is perceived as the easiest way to buy and sell items needs a lot of preparation. For someone who just started working as an online seller, I have encountered a lot of difficulties while setting up shop and selling online. Here are a few of the hurdles I have met when I started: To start with, before you can start posting online, you need to start by picking products to sell. You would need to canvass, research and assess the current trends, craze or demands of people for you to have an idea of what to buyers are willing to purchase.
Once you have decided on a product to sell, you need to check and recheck everything about the item, for knowing details about the product is a way for us to give customers the assurance that our products are of quality, and that we as retailers, know about what we are selling. Quality and product assurance is something that is needed since buyers can only see pictures of what we have to offer without actually holding the product for inspection before buying them.
After you have decided on what goods you would be peddling, you would then need to create an account in an online platform of your choice, you may also opt to use your personal Facebook, Instagram and other social media account for people to be able to trust you better.
Once your account is set and you’ve decided on what to sell, are you now ready to start selling? Hold your horses, frantic seller, now you have to decide on shipping methods, how would you move the product from your hands onto you buyers? Is packaging important? Is fast delivery an issue?
Upon dealing items one should decide on how to properly indicate the seller’s name or your company name, the buyer’s name, amount paid, amount due and the like. Decisions should also be made, whether or not you would want to “meet-up” with your buyers, or have a “pick-up” done in a dropping area/ dropoff point. Research should also be done on your part as the seller regarding delivery companies that would be convenient, cost-effective and accessible for deliveries to buyers who are not in your vicinity.
Seller beware: as an online seller, certain risks may also be encountered, like “bogus buyers” and “joy reservers,” these are customers who would make a reservation for items which would be picked-up, but items reserved would stay for days and/or months in your dropping area, causing a delay in many aspects, and forcing you as the seller to pull the item out, resell same or just-cut-your losses. These are only a few of the things that I have experienced as an online seller, and these are a few of the things that you should consider, if you want to start doing the same.
Another online trend that a new seller should consider would be auctioning off your items or starting bidding wars. As a seller you would post the items up for bid and indicate when your auction would start, when it would end, the starting bid per item and the increment/ next bid. If the auction already ends, the seller will notify you where to drop/meet the items and how much is the holding fee.
There are a lot of trends online and bigger platforms aside from social media, that an online seller may also consider, think eBay and Amazon, even local platforms like Lazada and Zalora are options one can avail of nowadays. The bottom line is to enter this community one needs preparation and planning, for it to succeed.
Having said such, another tidbit that I can share with you would be the current terms used by sellers and customers in communicating through social media: “Hm” which stands for “How much?”; and since most of your buyers in the local market are Pinoys, the term “Lp” for “last price/lesser price”, “Lf” which means “looking for”; “G” for Grab or “S” for steal, in a non-traditional sense of the word, meaning to steal from another buyer, while may be offering a higher price, or if the first buyer gives up on the item, “M” meaning “Mine,” as in to claim the item as yours, “Sb” for when placing a starting bid, “DA” would pertain to the dropping or pick-up area, “Hf” would mean the handling fee/holding fee, an amount which may or may not be shouldered by the buyer for keeping the items they’ve ordered in a non-party drop of point or holding area, and from the ever makulit buyer “LFA,” meaning, I am looking for answers.
Hopefully the few steps and tidbits I’ve mentioned would not only encourage you join the ever-growing community of online sellers, but would also give you pause as to how much preparation is needed to make your business a lucrative one.
Photo by: sellingonlinetoday.com