Look at your products
Before you create your Web site, you must have something to offer your customers. Unfortunately, selling online is not as simple as merely offering your existing products and services on your Web site. As many dotbomb businesses discovered, not all products and services are attractive to the online consumer.
Additionally, your products have to be presented in a way that appeals to the customer, as well as providing a profit for you, of course. As a result, you have to consider:
What doesn’t sell well online
What does sell successfully
How does this relate to your existing business?
What doesn’t sell online
Products that don’t sell well over the Internet are frequently those requiring some interaction by the buyer before a purchase is made. Additionally, buyers are reluctant to purchase online if they think this will inconvenience them in anyway.
Consequently, products which don’t sell are generally those that:
Need to be touched, smelt, held, handled, tasted, etc in order to assess their worth
Are not accompanied by sufficient information to reassure the customer about quality
Are not as convenient to purchase online as they are offline
Are not accompanied by a convenient way to return the product if it proves unsatisfactory.
Dress fabrics are a good example. A fabric purchaser usually goes through a process of touching, weighing, comparing colours, and assessing how the fabric hangs before making a final decision. They are unlikely to consider online fabric shopping. However, this does not mean that all fabrics can’t be sold online. Bulk quantities of fabric may well sell successfully if the buyer has used or previously had samples of the fabric.
What does sell online
On the other hand, the most successful products and services are those offering the consumer a benefit. Frequently, they are:
Unique or usually difficult to locate products
A known brand or product
Are accompanied by considerable additional information to aid decision-making. This is particularly true for more expensive items, such as electronic and other types of technology
Convenient to buy online.
Make buying convenient
Because today’s pace of life is so hectic, people value anything which makes their lives easier. Most people will often take the easiest course of action when making a purchasing decision, even if this means the product ends up costing them slightly more than they would have paid elsewhere. Convenience, therefore, is often the key as to why and where people choose to shop.
It is unlikely consumers will change their existing shopping patterns unless they feel they will gain considerable benefit from doing so.
You should be able to analyse what will only sell if your customer can see, feel, touch, smell or taste, etc. On the other hand, some products, such as fruit and vegetables, are so common that the item can be chosen without any physical interaction.
For instance, there has recently been an increase in grocery “stores” online because most shoppers are used to the different products available. They don’t need to feel an orange to know what it is or check the labels on the back of health foods, and feel confident purchasing these items online.
Now that you have a better idea of what does or doesn’t sell online, you should consider your own products and services.
Analyse the products or services you want to offer online. See if there is any way in which you can add value to them so they’ll be more attractive to your online customers.
Strategies for online sales success
Once you have an idea of how the online shopping experience works, there are steps you can take to help improve your chances for Web success.
Try and put yourself in the position of an online customer and see if you can work out what they will need to know in order to buy from you.
Remember that convenience is an overriding factor. Online fruit and vegetable stores, for example, are successful if they make it convenient for their customers to shop through their Web site.
Identify any product that is likely to appeal to an online customer. You can then assess whether you need to go one step further such as offering your products cheaper than your competitors or guaranteeing next day delivery, etc. Put yourself in the position of the customer and analyse how you, as this customer, would justify making a purchase. Perhaps you could offer free delivery to customers within a 20 km radius as an added incentive to buy.
A report presented by Cyber Dialogue shows that free freight and delivery is the third major reason why some online businesses attracted repeat customers. The first two factors were security of information and price.
Make a list of your current products and see if they could fill a “niche market”. Try and work out if:
They would usually require on-the-spot assessment
They are a known quantity
They are hard to find elsewhere
Any of them would appeal to a select market who will go out of their way to purchase these products
They can be “value added” to make them more attractive online.
This is still a preliminary process as a number of additional factors have to be taken into consideration. The aim is for you to consider what products are worthwhile offering to your Internet customers.
