16 THINGS YOU WISHYOU’D KNOWN When You Started Selling Online

16 Things You Wish You’d Known When You Started Selling Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

16 Things You Wish You’d Known When You Started Selling OnlineLooking back at when you first started trying to sell your products online, it may be hard not to cringe. If only someone had given you a heads up about the nuances and hurdles of e-commerce, many a mistake might have been avoided.

We asked a roundtable of ChannelAdvisor’s seasoned experts what advice they’d give online sellers right out of the gate. Whether you’ve recently launched an online store or have been in the e-commerce business for years, these lessons are ones you’ll want to remember.

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Lesson 1: Get Navigation Right, Before You Bring the Traffic1

Website traffic has doubled, but sales haven’t budged. What’s the deal?

Site navigation could be the hidden cause of the hiccup. Rather than focus on easily accessible site metrics like visits, bounce rate and time on page, adopt a holistic view of visitor behavior. Your website is a map that should lead visitors to their final destinations.

Designing a clear map requires knowing who will use it and understanding their final destination. Are they first-time visitors? Legacy customers? Deal seekers? Are they browsing, or do they want a specific brand? Brainstorm visitor personas and determine how you’ll guide them intuitively along their journey.

Use free tools like heat maps, which visually represent what users mouse over, click on and scroll to on a page. You’ll get insight into hot spots, dead areas and bottlenecks. Another idea is to implement A/B tests to determine what site architecture, page layouts and text performs best.

Once your site’s visitors start converting, you can focus on widening the funnel of traffic.

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Lesson 2: SEO Picks Up Where Paid Search Leaves Off

2When it comes to your search strategy, diversification is key. We see many retailers so caught up in their 30-day PPC cycles that they miss out on longer-term strategies for boosting organic search results.

Both SEO and PPC have their benefits, but focusing too much on one without the other can lead you to overlook other key components of your business. Think of SEO and PPC as two foundational pillars of a larger digital marketing strategy.

The larger lesson here is that your strategy requires ongoing adaptation, because what works is largely affected by how consumers use engines to research and buy products (which changes frequently), as well as algorithmic updates from the engines.

Be a strategic adopter as the changes roll out, carefully follow the engines’ leads (they usually reward advertisers that do) and keep up to date with industry trends through blogs, news articles and ongoing training. It’s also smart to allocate budget and resources for unexpected algorithm changes. You don’t want to be in a situation where you’re suddenly penalized and aren’t able to fix the problem.

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Lesson 3: List on Multiple (and Cutting-Edge) Marketplaces3

What was once a duopoly of eBay and Amazon is now a smattering of sites like Jet, Newegg, Sears and international marketplaces like MercadoLivre and Tmall Global.

With all the options, how do you choose where to list your products?We’ve got great news – you don’t have to!

Advanced technologies, like ChannelAdvisor’s Inventory Juggler feature, allow sellers to list the same inventory in more than one place without fear of overselling. That’s right: The same 10 shirts can be listed and sold through eBay, Amazon and Newegg all at the same time, meaning product visibility is multiplied while your work is kept to a minimum.

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Lesson 4: Don’t Ignore the “Other” Engines4

Advertisers scramble to get on Google, but did you know that Bing occupies about 20% of the search-engine market?1

Advertise on Google, but don’t ignore Bing.

Begin to sprinkle your search budget there and adjust based on performance. The high volume of traffic to Google makes it the perfect strategic testing ground to find out what works best. Test on Google, syndicate your findings and replicate to Bing.

As an additional insider tip, we’ve noticed that where Google goes with its algorithm, policies and adjustments, other engines follow. Take advantage of the foresight and duplicate your Google search engine strategy to other search engines.

1: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Releases-April-2015-US-Desktop-Search-Engine-Rankings

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Lesson 5: Promotions Don’t Go Out of Style5

Since the first print newspapers, promotions have been driving interest, sales and customer acquisition.

When selling online, promotions help sellers burst through competitive clutter, especially on crowded marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Whether your goal is to get new products off the ground, rid warehouses of excess inventory or capitalize on seasonal traffic, there’s likely to be a promotional opportunity to amplify your efforts.

Initiate discovery conversations with channel representatives to learn what’s available. Marketplaces like Newegg, Rakuten.com Shopping, Shop.com and others occasionally dangle unique promotional opportunities as carrots to attract new sellers and grow product categories.

And don’t forget about digital marketing channels. Google Merchant Promotions are free additions to Product Listing Ads (PLAs) that let you advertise offers like a percent or dollar amount off your item price, helping your ad stand out from the competition.

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Lesson 6: Customer ServiceCould Make or Break You6

Service options often trump brand loyalty in purchase decisions, and the bar is higher today than ever before. Shoppers want to track shipments on any device, communicate flexibly with service representatives, return items free of charge and opt in to next-day shipment — and that’s just the top of their wish lists.

Allow these modern customer expectations to shape your service policies, and your policies will, in turn, drive sales and become a key differentiator for your business.

Consider aggressive offerings like same-day shipping, free and fast returns, and guaranteed delivery timelines. Test these policies to see what affects the bottom line. For example, if you started out promising next-day delivery for all orders placed by 3 p.m., test 4 p.m. and see if the extended window affects order volume.

Stretch your service business! Determine how much you can offer while maintaining revenue goals.

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Lesson 7: The Price Is (Not) Right for Every Channel7

Online consumer demographics, interests and shopping habits vary widely. Shoppers on Newegg buy differently than those visiting eBay or Amazon, or looking on Google Shopping.

Your formula for pricing will need to weigh demographics, interests, shopping habits and the competitive landscape.

For example, on channels like Amazon, where thousands of sellers compete, you’ll have less flexibility. (Tip: Using a repricer tool can be especially helpful on a channel like Amazon.) Emerging marketplaces with fewer sellers in each category may grant you more freedom to price as you’d like.

$19.99

$29.99

$9.99

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Lesson 8: You’ll Need Grit to Go International8

Untapped demand is present, and the economy of tools, technologies and partnerships that help knit a safe, profitable international selling strategy is coming together.

This accessibility can be a springboard for entering new markets, but don’t jump the gun on cross-border trade without evaluating all the pieces of the puzzle. Tax, fulfillment, demand, cultural preferences, currency and language differences are a few considerations to keep in mind.

Take a “crawl, walk, run” approach to international expansion.

One method is to start selling internationally through marketplace fulfillment programs like eBay’s Global Shipping Program or Fulfillment by Amazon. These programs allow sellers to test the appetite of international markets by making products available for purchase and deliverable to international buyers. If the demand is there, a next step may be to sell directly through international marketplaces like Amazon.co.uk, for example.

The journey overseas is unique for everyone. Invest in planning and research, and then execute carefully with a step-by-step approach.

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Lesson 9: Trend Analysis Is Noisy9

Google Analytics is an incredible tool for site analysis, but it’s easy to get lost in the abundance of measurements, making note of the numbers but not understanding the impact on business.

There aren’t metrics in Google Analytics specifically dedicated to e-commerce, but the insights can still apply. Create a custom analytics dashboard for your site that includes metrics for sales and traffic, such as revenue, orders, average order value and trends, top sources and top campaigns, respectively.

Don’t get lost in the noise. Focus on the metrics that matter most for your business!

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Lesson 10: Search Queries Are Your Best Friend10

In our dream world, there’d be a tool that could magically reveal the exact ROI of a keyword before you spent your advertising money.

There’s no crystal ball for search engine marketing, but search term analysis is about as close as it gets.

In AdWords, Google gives marketers a search terms report that highlights what people search for on Google before they click on your ads. Chances are you’re underusing this data, passively scanning through and pinpointing obvious blunders, but a strategic, deep-dive approach into search term analysis is where the most powerful keywords are born. Use the data to identify which search terms perform better than others, and adjust keyword bids to reflect performance. You can indicate negative keywords to search engines, too, which means your ads will not show when that query is entered. This is a great way to minimize low-converting and irrelevant traffic.

Put your query data to work and you’ll be in the spotlight for the right audience, at the right time, ensuring ad dollars are well spent!

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Lesson 11: Say Hello to Europe from a Single Amazon Account 11

Did you know you can sell into five European countries with relative ease?

With its European Unified Accounts, Amazon has empowered sellers to reach Amazon marketplace audiences in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, all from a single Seller Central account.

What’s more? The listing information, inventory and order management is centralized, so the process is easier to manage and track. The primary benefit to you is the ability to keep your product quantity in sync across all these Amazon marketplaces — and broaden your reach.

Consider Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) for these European marketplaces; FBA picks, packs and ships products, and covers all customer service issues from your local inventory pool at an Amazon European fulfillment center.

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Lesson 12: Be Mobile Whenever and Wherever You Can12

Mobile is the top priority for retailers in 2015, according to Forrester and Shop.org.1 And for good reason: Mobile is expected to account for 27% of all online spending by 2018.2

Day by day, the number of devices, platforms and browsers that need to work with your site grows.

Though you might be tempted to build an app to find and retain mobile shoppers, there are lots of other (less-expensive!) options out there.

For instance, if you sell on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, you can easily tap into their already-successful mobile presences. Also consider channels like social (which have large bases of mobile users), as well as mobile ad platforms like Yahoo Gemini.

To double check how mobile-friendly Google considers your website (and how high it will rank with Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update), test it out here.

1: https://www.forrester.com/Mobile+Still+Tops+Retailers+Priority+Lists+According+To+Shoporg+Forrester+State+Of+Retailing+Online+Report/-/E-PRE7604

2: http://www.internetretailer.com/2014/04/21/mobile-commerce-critical-internet-retailings-future

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Lesson 13: Get Back to Basics with Marketplaces13

EBay and Amazon once owned the marketplaces stage, but in recent years others have nudged their way onto the scene.

The landscape has changed, but one basic principle remains: Healthy data has and always will be the foundation of selling on marketplaces. While each marketplace requires unique fields and attributes for listing, don’t get sidetracked with these details.

Always return to the basics of your data.

The core elements – titles, images and descriptions – are the heartbeat of your listings.

Once that foundation is solid, invest in building out the unique requirements for each marketplace (or use an e-commerce solution provider like ChannelAdvisor to automate the process for you).

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Lesson 14: Fine-Tuning Your Website Won’t Be a One-Off Project14

Ever been stood up on a second date? We’ll bet you don’t remember how lovely the first date was, do you? Humans have short memories for the good and long memories for the bad.

The same rules apply to your site. A flawless user journey requires about a hundred things to go right, but if at any step there’s a 404 or a misdirected link, the shopper may be left with a negative impression.

There’s no such thing as a perfect website; even large retailers experience site bloopers. The difference, though, is in the site messaging at large. Amplify the brand value proposition and communicate customer service options, trustworthiness and product quality up front, and minor glitches shouldn’t turn shoppers away.

Shout out a message of trustworthiness and customer care wherever you can by developing consistent branding on every page of your website, and extend the reassurance to other channels of communication, such as email promotions and purchase follow-ups, and through social media platforms.

Clearly communicate your value and trustworthiness, and buyers will keep the good things about you top of mind.

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Lesson 15: Be a Human, Selling to Humans15

We’re well beyond the days when cute brand mascots were central to brand communications.

Today, with the increased transparency of the internet and the emergence of the two-way brand-to-consumer conversation, people want to buy from people.

Adopt a humanizing branding strategy. The ways to do this are endless. Integrate your CEO’s blog into your website or add a page about employee life. Develop a familiar brand voice and nurture relationships through social media; drop the sterile, corporate speak in emails and opt for friendly, conversational tones that resonate with your audience.

Do whatever it takes to give buyers the sense they’re purchasing from real, trustworthy people who care about them and create quality products. After all, real people run your business, so your marketing strategy should reflect that.

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Lesson 16: Seek Opportunities Like Gold16

In the same vein of the proverb “the early bird gets the worm,” the aware marketplace seller gets the best opportunity.

Marketplaces often test new programs like advertising, email blasts, daily deals and sponsored product areas. They’re the perfect chance to get in front of more buyers and garner more attention than your competition.

Keep your ear to the ground about the options available by checking seller forums and websites, and reading through merchant email updates from the marketplaces. Let channel reps know you’re interested, and ask them to give you a heads up about new options.

Even one-off opportunities can have big results!

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Finally, Never Stop Learning!The hallmark of successful entrepreneurs is a continuous drive to learn something new.

Our most successful retailers follow popular industry blogs, network with other e-commerce pros, attend conferences and meet-ups, test, optimize and test again — and most important, remain eager to learn.

Use these e-commerce lessons to power you forward as you think strategically about next steps for your retail business. Even if you wished you’d learned these lessons one, five or ten years ago when you started in this industry, there’s no looking back! Plan ahead and put these lessons into practice and you’ll be thanking yourself years down the road.

To find out how ChannelAdvisor’s e-commerce software and services can help you execute on what you’ve learned and move on to even more advanced selling across marketplaces, digital marketing channels, your webstore and more, contact info@channeladvisor.com.

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