Buying the right products

Market research is one of the most important aspects of any retail business, whether it buy high street, mail-order, TV shopping or online. Buying the wrong products at the wrong time for the wrong customers can be disastrous, when all it takes is a little time, effort and common sense to identify truly sellable products.

For the UK market a good place start looking for new products is the US, view eBay.com look at Amazon.com and find some good quality US retail web sites. Its also a good idea to watch TV or keep a tab on your local news agents magazine shelves. Market trends tend to come and go, and in some cases its possible to see the public interest growing in one sector by the frequency of TV programs or the number of theme specific magazines around. For instance, at the time of writing this article the poker scene is exiting and the home fitness market is really active, This can be attributed to the natural seasonal variation and an increased awareness of sport and fitness, which has been brought about by the World Cup and Olympics games venue announcement this year. unfortunately its easier to see the decline of a theme than it is to see the build.

Marketing piggy back. If your a small to medium sized company its likely that TV, Radio and National news paper advertising is beyond your means. This does not mean that you can't take advantage of this sort of media coverage. Watch TV shopping channels to see what is new or what is getting a lot of air time. When a products is advertised on TV or in other media formats the amount of online search activity for that item increases dramatically.

Getting the right price for an item can be a delicate process and is crucial to your profitability. When you have found a product, check with as many suppliers as possible to find the best price, don't be afraid to barter and always be willing to walk away. It may be a good idea to find out a manufactures price so that you can see whether your getting good deal or if paying over the odds, remember a good price today may not be good in a months time so don't buy too much stock that you have to run at a loss in order to be competitive in a few weeks time. Be weary of items which seem really cheap as poor quality items will cost you more in returns and damage your reputation if you have one.

Gaining maximum exposure

To get maximum exposure you must be able to utilize the online resources available by listing items on auction sites, your own web site, directing traffic from comparison sites and by capturing search engine traffic.

Although it is possible to run Pay Per Click campaigns for your eBay, Amazon, Marketworks or other third party shop fronts the primary focus for a paid campaign should be your own web site. Paid campaigns from Google, Overture or any of the other search engine/directories are best utilized when directed to a product specific pages and are most cost effective when the paid links don't incur further charges.

In general a paid link from a search engine will cost around 10-50 pence, so it is essential that you get the target keywords right, if you choose general keywords you may get lots of terrific but little conversions and although general exposure is good, you don't want to pay for it.

Google adwords and overture are the two major players in the PPC market but there are many others and although you may think that more coverage is good you may not realize the full benefit from many of the other search engines. With Google you will get sponsored listings on the Google search engine plus the adsense listing on thousands of related web sites. Overture offer sponsored listings on Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Lycos and Wanado. Both Google and overture offer conversion tracking and anti fraud detection.

Search engine optimisation is the techniques and methods employed to gain maximum impression from search engine natural listings. A link from a natural listing on a search engine doesn't cost anything but inorder to get a high enough position to attract traffic takes considerable effort and insight into the way in which search engines rank web sites. For example our partner site internetshopUK sells a product called 6 second abs; at present they are #1 on Yahoo, #5 on MSN and #4 on Google.

The options for search engine optimisation are SEO DIY; employ a professional company or employ an experience SEO person to work in-house. Employing a reputable professional company will cost a fair amount of money but will get results without you having to worry about the penalties and pitfalls of SEO techniques; beware of unethical SEO companies which use outdated techniques they will cost you financial and incur you penalties from the search engines. If your going to do DIY SEO then be sure to allocate enough time to be able to research techniques keep upto date with new algorithm changes, apply enough effort into link building/page optimisation and monitor results.

Comparison sites are a great source of highly qualified traffic for your web site. Sites such as Kelkoo, PriceGabber, Shopping.com list products from multiple venders and allow shoppers to search and find the best deals. Traffic from these site is guaranteed to be highly related as they have already seen a short description of your product and are aware of the price.

Comparison sites tend to work on an inventory feed basis which means that you have to put a considerable amount of time into compiling your product feed and mapping product categories but its well worth it for the more prominent sites, smaller sites may not warrant the effort required to configure and maintain feeds.

Although Amazon is a comparison style site it is different to the majority of other sites as it has its own order processing and payment system, so even if you haven't got a web site to promote you can still sell your products on Amazon.

There are a number of auction sites around, however the biggest and most popular is eBay with only a hand full getting close. Our advice would be to consider QXL or one other or the prominent sites but forget about the rest and spend time optimising your eBay listings rather than invest time and money into smaller auction sites that have very little content or traffic.

Payment systems

If your an eBay seller looking to expand your business into the global online retail market one of the biggest mistakes you can make, is to say 'I can accept payment via PayPal so that's all I need'. Many of your new customers may not have PayPal accounts, may not want a new Paypal account or may even object to paying Via Paypal. This is why it is essential to offer as many methods as possible without causing confusion i.e. PayPal, Credit/debit card, telephone and postal.

Creating a WorldPay account will give you access to regular payments through most major credit/debit cards, allows you to log in and arrange a payment from customers whilst you are talking to them over the phone and will allow you to arrange subscriptions.

WorldPay validates each payment, giving you warnings if any of the details given by the customer don't match the details held by the credit card issuer, this allows you to identify potential fraudulent transactions and investigate or cancel orders. You can also integrate the payment validation into your web site payment system by receiving worldpay callback notifications ( PayPal also do call back ).

Although Cheques and postal orders seem to be a very old fashioned way of working, you should offer this option for the cautious buyers who are weary of online fraud.

Deliveries and returns

Building a business up from home or a small holding doesn't mean that you have to pay more for postage or that you have to spend time delivering you parcels to your local sorting office. If you send more than one parcel per week you could be eliggable for a courier account.

Having a courier account will give you the ability to send larger and heavier items at a smaller cost than sending all your items via Royal Mail. Parcel force will take parcels upto 30Kg for a flat rate fee of as little as £5.25 to UK destinations ( remote location surcharges may apply) and charge a country rate for international parcels upto 30Kg. If you are interested in getting a Parcel force flat rate contract, fill in the form and a representative will contact you to discus the details of an account.

Dealing with customer returns can be a drain, there is no financial gain and there can be more administration overheads with a return item than with the original sale. Add to this, the fact that most online platforms such as eBay, Amazon and many of the web site template providers don't adequately administer returns and you could be spending far more time dealing with the inevitable returned parcels than necessary. We provide a simple but effective solution for dealing with return administration which will help you to save time, look more professional and discourage unnecessary returns. The system employs automated customer emails and requires very little configuration, it keeps customers informed about return parcel progress and allows you to quickly identify all the relevant information for a returned parcel without reaching through emails or notes. Read more about return administration and customer service policy publication.