Important Things To Consider In An eCommerce Venue

We have watched with great amusement, the various online venue forums as members celebrate and all of the rah-rah each time their member count goes up by 1000, as their listing count pushes them up the ladder at PSU and as they bet on what the listing or member count will be by a certain date. We keep wondering why these sites find these numbers so fabulous. Are these things really important for an online selling venue? Should we be impressed? What do these numbers really mean? Which eCommerce venue is better? Are these numbers important when choosing or continuing on an online venue? What is the truth behind these numbers?

Choices

Some people may decide they are further ahead to have their own stand alone site while others prefer to join an online marketplace of multiple sellers. What works for one merchant may not work for another. When it comes to choosing an online venue or deciding whether or not to continue with one, there are many things to consider.

Having your own stand alone eCommerce site is nice but you will have to know HTML coding and sometimes more advanced coding. You will need to know how to fix it when the site crashes or is hacked. Selling on your own site is rewarding because you decide what you are doing, rules and guidelines are not created by a marketplace owner.

You can become familiar with a multi-seller marketplace by reading their online forums and the help files the site offers. Take your time and snoop around. When we are shopping around for a venue to add, if a site looks like it could be viable and the terms of service are acceptable, we lurk in the forums for months before committing. You can learn a lot about a site and it's members just by reading. And remember, online, all you have is your reputation to help create buyer trust in you. If a site appears that it could seriously tarnish your reputation, you may want to continue your site search.

If you have decided to sell on one of the many marketplaces, you need to decide what your goal is. Are you going to sell as a hobby or are you going to sell to make a living? If selling online is going to be a hobby, or you have a niche item, you should locate a niche site that suits your items and selling style needs.
If you plan to make a living with your online selling, the best advice we can offer is to diversify.
Do not put all of your eggs in one basket.

In choosing a multi-seller platform, the following factors are important to consider:

What types of items are represented on the site you are considering and what are you planning to sell? Are they compatible? If not, you need to continue investigating.

Computer skills are a must and are required at various levels on multi-seller platforms. Do you have the skills to navigate the site?

What level of support is offered? Support can mean the success or the failure of an online seller. If the site is not attentive of it's members, then you may want to move on.

If there is a forum attached, what goes on there? Is the activity there acceptable and will it help generate sales or will it push potential buyers away?

What does it cost to sell on the site you are considering? There a many online venues that are free while there are just as many that have fees. Are the fees going to cause selling on the site to be unprofitable? Will the site generate enough buyer traffic to make it worth paying fees?

It takes time to take pictures (crop and manipulate them), to create listings and to promote the venues you are selling on. Do you have the time to invest in your new venue or venues? Does the site self promote or is that left up to the invidual sellers? What about Google Base feeds, who is responsible for creating and maintaining them?

What payment options are offered? Most online shoppers know how to use PayPal and Google Checkout but do not forget those shoppers who do not wish to give their personal details out - a site that allows checks and money orders will offer those shoppers the option they need to make a purchase. The more payment options available, the better chance you will have of making sales.

After checking out various sites, you need to determine if one site will be enough to meet your sales goals. If not, you may want to sell on several sites - most serious and successful merchants sell at many venues.

Does the site offer a means to help merchants with inventory control? If not, what programs or type of bookkeeping will you need to do it yourself and what is the cost of it?
You Found A Site, Now What?

When you have found a site, you should read all of the rules in the help section. Take time to know as much as you can about the site. If you still have questions, most sites have some kind of forum to ask questions and if all else fails, contact their customer service or support department.

There is no need to think that you have to list all of your products at one time or rush through creating your listings. Make your listings at your own pace, keeping them professional and offer plenty of details about your items. Make sure that you use good quality pictures like there is no description and write a description like there are no pictures. Multiple views are also helpful with 3-D products. Be sure to include your TOS and policies so a potential buyer knows what to expect from you.

Be sure to be attentive to your customers needs. Answer emails promptly and courteously. Package your items as if they are going to be used in a game of football. Ship the product purchased in the manner and timeframe as stated in your listing. Always use a form of online viewable tracking - what it is called depends on the carrier you use.

So What Is All Of The Hoopla About Member And Item Counts?

Well, the best we can figure out - that is all it is, just hoopla. While it does take a large membership and millions of items to be listed to create a sustainable multi-seller platform, those numbers really mean very little or nothing at all.
None of those numbers will ensure sales or a merchant's success.

Some of the largest venues according to membership and / or item counts have the least buyer traffic. There are sites with high counts, including great traffic, but they fail to convert that traffic into sales. Other venues have artificially inflated counts and even the visitor traffic and page views can be - and sometimes are manipulated so it shows on analytical sites as though more people are going to the site than what actually are, among other falsely inflated statistics.

** The most important numbers in online sales are the number of sales made and total dollar amount generated from those sales within a certain timeframe (usually quarterly).
Finding those two numbers on most sites is either very difficult or impossible to find. It's too bad that more sites do not openly share these numbers as they are really the only numbers for merchants to gauge the viability of a site and they are the only numbers that are truly worthy of celebration (they are the only true measure of online selling success). That is why it is important to thoroughly investigate a site and listen to what other merchants say about a site (several merchants, not just a few). Remember to lurk any prospective site's forums, there is a wealth of information waiting there for you.