If you’re interested in selling your crafts online, you may well be asking yourself – how exactly do you do it? Of course, as a business owner, your end goal is for your online sales to be a success! However, setting up your own online store can seem daunting, and it can be hard to know where to start. But, never fear! Just keep reading for our handy guide on how to sell your crafts online. Your wares will be flying off virtual shelves in no time!
Step 1: Create an Online eCommerce Store
The first step to selling your crafts online is to create an eCommerce store. If you need help with this, it is advisable to engage the services of a digital agency that specialises in eCommerce web design in Melbourne. Admittedly, it can be tempting to try to build a website yourself. This is especially true given the rise of preformatted site builders such as Shopify and Squarespace. These site builders offer a default design that you can fill with your own content. However, they are somewhat lacking in functionality, not to mention, originality! As such, it is much better to have your eCommerce store professionally designed and built by expert web designers and developers.
Often, professional web designers and developers will use purpose-built web platforms such as Magento or WordPress. These web platforms are formatted in such as way that they can be customised, personalised, and tailored to reflect your business’s individuality. This is essential to standing out in an oversaturated eCommerce space. And of course, as a business, your goal is to stand out from the competition! Using a better web platform will also enhance the credibility of your website, as it will appear more professional and trustworthy than more basic and default website designs. This is important when earning your customers’ trust and encouraging them to purchase from your online store.
Step 2: Establish Your Target Customer Audience
A central component of selling your goods online is understanding your target audience. Who are you aiming to sell your wares to? And, perhaps most importantly, who do you think will be interested in your product? By working out your customer audience, you will also be establishing your target market. But how exactly do you find your target market?
Essentially, this involves doing some serious soul-searching about your business, your business’s mission, and what your business stands for. You’ll need to ask yourself some important questions about your business, and your brand. For example – who is your product best suited to? Also, how will it serve your customers in terms of meeting their needs? And, just as importantly, does your product fill a gap in the market that your customers have been searching for? By answering these and other questions, you can identify who your target customer audience is, and how your business offering fits in the eCommerce marketplace.
Next, you’ll also need to do some market research into your competition. Likely, your competitors are also targeting the same customer audiences. By doing market research into other similar products and service offerings on the market, you will understand your own business’s place within the same space or niche. It will also show you how your competitors are succeeding in the space, as well as any improvements they could make to be more successful. You can then apply these learnings to your own business.
Step 3: Dabble in Some Digital Marketing
Lastly, you’ll need to be able to drive traffic, drum up interest, and engage customers with your brand. To do this, you should dabble in some digital marketing! But, what is digital marketing? Essentially, digital marketing can involve applying traditional marketing methods in the digital space. But, it is more than this! Online or digital marketing also utilises new, more advanced and novel marketing techniques to promote business online.
One of these techniques is known as Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. The ever-evolving and growing practice of SEO involves influencing the results displayed in search engine results pages when online users look up specific search queries. For SEO experts, the goal is to have their clients’ businesses appear within the first search results that are displayed. To do this, SEO experts utilise several techniques. These include on-page SEO methods such as producing keyword-optimised content that targets relevant search terms. It also involves off-page SEO techniques such as backlinking and link building – where external pages are engaged to link back to the client’s website.
Setting up an online store is no easy feat! In an oversaturated eCommerce marketplace, it is important to make sure that your business’s website is both appealing and attractive to customers, and also that you are doing the right type of digital marketing to attract customers to your online store. But, if you engage the services of both web design and SEO professionals, you can ensure that your online store is a success!
All images: Pixabay
This is a sponsored article produced in partnership with Web Oracle.
