From Car Boot Sale To Your Ecommerce Store

Lessons From a Car Boot Sale That You Can Apply to Your Ecommerce Store

Recently, I was at a car boot sale and was selling old items out of the trunk. The aim was just to make a little bit of money from things I had around the house that weren’t getting much use. What I hadn’t anticipated was just what a great learning opportunity this would be or how many lessons I would pick up that could be directly related back to ecommerce. Here are some of the top things I learned that you can try applying to your own online business.

Sometimes Professional Doesn’t Work Best

I had been selling for a while and had been quite successful, despite the fact that my items were arranged pretty much randomly and without much thought. At this point, the guy at the stall next to me told me to try tidying my items up and presenting them in a more professional manner.

Guess what? Sales slowed the minute I took his advice! So what was going on? Why would a less professional stall sell better?

The answer is simple: people thought that if I wasn’t a ‘pro’ at this, then they would stand a better chance of finding a good deal. In this case, looking like the underdog was actually a helpful thing.

This will apply only in some cases when it comes to ecommerce. You want to look professional to build trust but if you’re selling on eBay for example, then you may find you have more luck if you appear a little less slick and polished!

People Like to Rummage

Something else I found was very popular was when I would put my items into bins or otherwise make it so that people had to route through to find what they wanted.

This had a number of advantages. For starters, it meant that people would have to come and spend time looking in order to see everything I had (meaning they had invested time and would want to get something back in return) and secondly, it meant that they might find things they weren’t expecting.

If you present everything out front, then people can pass by and simply see that there’s nothing they want and decide to keep moving on. This is something you can use directly in your own ecommerce store – make sure that people know there are more exciting offers inside that they will have to hunt for!

People Like Convenience

You know what people absolutely did not like though? Me talking to them. And they hated having to ask for the price.

That’s why I found it helpful to make sure everything in my store had the price on it. On the one hand this meant I got into fewer conversations which was a bad thing as it meant I couldn’t try and sell. But on the positive side, it meant that people could make the decision to buy without any input from me. This reduced the number of steps involved in buying and thereby helped me to make more sales.

How to Use POS to Sell More Products

Using A Chip & Swipe Reader to Sell More Products

When you visit an ecommerce store such as Amazon, you probably don’t give all that much thought to the layout. Instead, you’ll probably just look for the product you want and then click buy.

But while you might not give it much though, the designers that work at Amazon will have given it hours and hours of extensive thought. That’s because the layout of a store can make a huge difference to how likely you are to buy and it can influence you in ways you might not expect.

One example of a tricky layout technique that store owners use is something called ‘POS’. Let’s take a look at what this is and how it works…

What is POS?

POS stands for ‘Point Of Sale’. Specifically, this refers to the physical point at which the sale is completed. If you’re in a real shop, then that point is going to be the checkouts and this will include the queue leading up the checkouts.

Now, if you think back to the last time you found yourself in that position (queuing to buy), then you may recall that there were probably items for sale on display there and that these were advertised quite prominently.

The places where these are promoted are referred to as ‘point of sale displays’ and they will most often include cheaper items like chocolate bars, small gifts or cheap jewelry.

You can mimic this same exact thing in an ecommerce store. The only difference is that instead of being a display in a queue, your point of sale offer is going to be any item that is promoted on the page where the visitors would normally enter their card details and click buy.

Why POS Items Work So Well

So what is the idea behind this? Why is this such a popular strategy that it is found both in real stores and on the web?

The answer is that POS items are ideal for upselling and encouraging buyers to slightly increase the amount of money they’re spending.

The reason for this is that POS points help you sell after you’ve overcome the main barriers to sale. A barrier to sale is anything that puts people off of getting their wallet out when they actually want to buy the product. And the most common barriers here are trust, guilt and hassle.

It’s a hassle to get out your wallet and enter your details, it’s worrying handing over your card details to any website and you probably feel guilty about spending the money.

But when you get to the checkout, this means that you’ve already input those details, you’ve already opted to spend the money and you’ve decided to trust the company. So then what is an extra $2 in order to get a nice extra bonus?

For this reason, it becomes much easier to convince someone to buy something at the POS – as long as it is a cheap item and as long as it still offers real value!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bjmbE7SkYE

Finding Products to Sell in Your Ecommerce Store

How to Find Products to Sell in Your Ecommerce Store

If you want to create an ecommerce store, then the first thing you’re going to need to do is decide precisely what you’re going to sell. You can’t have a shop without products and thus many people will mistakenly assume that this business model is not available to them.

So the question then becomes: how do you find products you can sell in your ecommerce store? Do you need to own a highstreet store?

Read on and we’ll look at numerous options available to you and the business models that go with them.

Sell Things You Already Have

One option is to sell products you already have. This is the best option if you own a high-street store as it means that you can expand your potential market and not have to invest any more money. Better yet is the fact that many EPOS systems (electronic point of sale) can integrate ecommerce tracking so that you can track all your products through one single system.

Buying and Selling

If you don’t already have inventory though, then you might decide to buy some products that you can sell instead. This is a strategy that can work well but only as long as you are able to get the products more cheaply than you’re selling them. Often this will mean buying in wholesale, though there are other strategies you can use as well.

Buying and selling in this way (called ‘reselling’) is actually an easier business to get into than you might originally think. That’s because you don’t have to buy all your inventory at once and that way risk making a loss. Instead, order a small number of items initially, then reinvest the profit you make from those into new products. Keep doing this and you can gradually increase your stock until eventually you have a full store and massive inventory.

Drop Shipping

Drop shipping is perhaps the ideal business model if you can find sellers that are happy to do this. Essentially, drop shipping means that you are selling products that you didn’t make but you still don’t have to handle any of the shipment and you still get to have your brand on it.

This is a ‘white label’ service, meaning that your customers don’t need to know that you’re not the one who makes the product. In some cases, the product can even have your branding on it! However, you simply pass the orders on to the drop shipper as they come in and that way fulfill the orders.

Digital Products

Another option is to sell digital products. This is a great option because you don’t need to invest any money and because you will make 100% profit on every sale. Digital products tend to include ebooks, apps, software and courses. But just note that it is a specific type of customer who is normally interested in buying digital items.

Crafts

Finally, why not turn a hobby into a career by selling products that you’ve made yourself? This could be art, jewelry or a range of other things!

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