You can consider yourself part of a pioneer group (if not Elite!) because you are selling goods or services online in a country where it is relatively a new idea. We are used to buy from people who have little or absolutely no idea on the products they sell. Want to check this? Simply walk in to a store where they sell t-shirts, half of the staff wont be able to tell you the material composition (proportion of cotton/nylon) of their products. I don’t blame them, you are there yourself, so you can check & feel the material to be sure if you like it or not. This is the conventional way of buying & selling which works just fine & knowing less does not come in the way of their business because you show up at their doorstep to know the rest!

Now, when you want to buy the same t-shirt online, you want to know what material it is made of, how would it feel to wear, right? Well, at first the seller has to know them and then make sure they give you these informations so that you know what you are looking at!

How do i know about the products?

I have one quick answer for you; research. Yes, you have to do the essential research to know the key facts which someone would ask when buying something from you. If you are the manufacturer of the product, you probably know the best. Then again, as reading loads of book doesn’t make you a good storyteller, knowing all necessary information doesn’t guarantee anything. You still have to take the effort to provide all product informations. If you are not making the items you have to learn it all. Ask the manufacturers, read their documentations, read their reviews, see it for yourself, take the product photographs and so on. The idea is, you want to know everything someone might ask you before buying the product from you.

Be informative:

Now that you know everything about the product, its time to pass these informations to your customers. I would recommend using a structured way of providing these informations. For example if you are selling books, make a structure like Name>Author>Publisher>Edition Number>Year of Publication>Number of Pages. Follow the same structure for all the books you are selling. You might have to come up with some of the structures because you could be selling something unique. But if you are selling something which sells in hundreds on Amazon, simply follow structures used by other sellers. Following trends wont harm you, just keep an eye for copyright protected contents to avoid any hustles.

What do i tell customers?

You tell them everything! Your listing should have defined fields for informations. Have a title, short description, features in brief (bullets points if possible), technical specifications, measurements, composition, weight etc. Learn this technique, make a listing of an imaginary item with these fields, read it out to a blindfolded person, trust me they will buy it! Be precise, clear and straight to the point. For example if you are selling a desk fan, the title should be “Desk Fan” not “Very good fan for your desk”.

Do not repeat information:

A lot of sellers out there make this mistake. They keep repeating the same things all over. Please do not do that. You know how much you hate people who repeat the same thing?  That same rule works on the web too. Customers hate it when they find same informations repeated. Sellers repeat informations because most of the times they can not think of anything else, which is normal in some cases. For example, if you are selling a pencil and can not think of anything apart from “Top quality pencil made of best available materials, delivered to you in 2 days”. But you can break this up & make few points out of them. How about if you say Features> 1.Top quality 2. Made of best materials 3. Delivery within 2 days? Much better indeed!

Product images:

Images of your products are very important. But not any more than their descriptions! Yes, one picture tells a lot, but you wont always sell things which look very photogenic. Take a look around the web, you will find many products on sale but even after seeing 10 images, you still wont find some key facts. Think of a digital camera which is most latest, made by one of the leading manufacturers but the camera body doesn’t say anywhere how many megapixel the sensor is! If you are depending on those images to guarantee a sale, you are out of luck here! Word of advise on product photography (am not a photographer at all!) please take photographs of the original product. Do not use photographs you found on google or the manufactures website unless you want to hear from an angry customer who received a blue case for his new iPhone after ordering a purple one!

Benefits:

How does your book shelf look like? Neat, right? Because you stack up similar sized books in one place. In the same way, when you follow structured way of providing product information your store will look nice, well organized. When someone visits the store (your website, facebook page, marketplace account) they will find a similarity in everything they see. This reflects a sense of professionalism which in turn translates to buyer confidence. They start to think you are a pro (and you really are!) and buy confidently from you! This also makes your life easier. You can easily add new products as you know how to make the listing, what informations to provide. If you hire someone they will be able to do it easily too. Another benefit is if your store grows and one day you start selling 100s of items, you will do bulk listing, editing. You will be working on CSV files (comma separated value – a very dull format of already ridiculous spreadsheets) and it wont be that terrible!

Author:

Hasan Khan, currently manager of a hardware store in north London where we sell a wide variety of products ranging from small nails to big power tools. I transformed the business by selling products online. I love to read, follow Manchester United & trends in technology. My favorite time of the day is when i put my daughter to sleep!
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