5 Things You’ll Need To Begin Selling Your Products Online
For a wide variety of modern companies, selling online is by far the smartest way to reach the most customers possible in the shortest amount of time. Even businesses that have brick-and-mortar stores are selling their goods online to quickly boost sales and expand their reach. If you want to be successful when selling your products online, you’ll want to make sure you have everything you need and list your products in the right places.
No matter how old your business is, it can benefit from online sales. However, it’s not quite as simple as just putting your products on your own website. Setting yourself up for selling online involves a few preliminary steps that will give you more options.
To make this process easier, we’ll go through some of the most important things you’ll need to begin selling products online. Once you’re familiar with these aspects of online selling, you should have no trouble listing your products and satisfying a much larger customer base.
A Registered Company and Website
Businesses that are still in their infancy will likely need to incorporate before they can start selling things online. This important step does more than set your business up as one that customers can actually trust—it will also make it easier on you when tax season rolls around.
Registering your business as a sole proprietorship or an LLC does not take very much time or money. It also comes with benefits related to taxes and other legal issues. A registered company will be able to more easily set itself up on online marketplaces. Having a professional website that customers can find when they search for you will also give your products more legitimacy in their eyes. This sense of trust can be a deciding factor as customers compare your products to those of competitors.
UPC Barcodes for Each Product
Each individual product will need its own barcode registered in GS1 so that the marketplaces you use can quickly pull up that product’s relevant information from their database. If your business sells clothing, for example, you will need a unique UPC barcode for each different article of clothing. However, you will also need individual barcodes for each variation in size, color, or other major defining traits. If you offer two different shirts, but each of those shirts comes in three different colors, you’ll need six individual UPC barcodes.
When you buy UPC codes, you need to make sure that they will be compatible with the marketplace that you plan on using. Buyabarcode.com is proud to be the only source of barcodes that are compatible with Amazon’s marketplace. Before investing in UPC barcodes, make sure they will work for the platform you want to sell on.
Seller Accounts for Your Chosen Markets
If you plan to sell items directly from your website, you’ll need to choose an e-commerce platform to use that allows you to do that. However, if you plan on taking advantage of existing marketplaces, such as Amazon or Walmart, you will need to set up individual seller accounts for each one. The requirements for each marketplace may differ slightly, but there are a few common things you’ll need to start selling products online with them.
You will need a business account that they can use to contact you as well as a company credit card that will allow them to bill you. They will also likely ask for information about the company itself and documents identifying you as the owner. Finally, they will need a company bank account to send your earnings to and information that will assist the marketplace in delivering the right tax documents to you.
Detailed Product Pages, Descriptions, and Tags
While we have focused on the things you must have to begin legally selling products online, you should also know what your products will need to look attractive to customers. Building a product page for your products is an art form. Keep in mind that customers want to be able to find the product’s information and specifications easily so that they can make comparisons.
An excellent product page will show off the product as much as possible. It’s important to make sure that the images you use are high-quality and show off every crucial detail of the product. The description of the item should be clear and concise—no shopper wants to scroll through extraneous text that doesn’t tell them anything about the product itself. Tags are also crucial for helping customers find your products on various search engines. Don’t overload the page with tags, but always include the ones most closely related to your specific product.
Reliable Shipping Options
If everything lines up, you should be ready to start selling your products online. However, having the site set up doesn’t mean that you are necessarily ready to fulfill orders. Selling online means shipping your products to places that could be quite far from your home base or warehouse. Many businesses may want to expand their range to international customers, but this choice can have a significant impact on your shipping needs. While the larger market and customer base are huge boons, it means that you need to have reliable packaging and shipping options to accommodate any incoming orders.
Many large online marketplaces have their own fulfillment options, but you may still need to work with them to ensure they have enough of your products to fulfill orders. If you are taking care of shipping yourself, keep in mind how important it is to accurately disclose shipping times and fees to your customers before they buy. This aspect can be especially crucial during the holiday and gift-giving seasons.
Getting your company ready for online sales is certainly a long road, but the payoffs outweigh the downsides by quite a lot. When you are ready to step into the world of digital sales, trust in Buyabarcode.com to get the UPC barcodes you need quickly and at the best price possible. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions regarding how UPC barcodes can benefit your business.
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