Tuesday, April 5, 2011
E-commerce Ebay Integration
eBay is the grand daddy of online shopping and even though many changes have occurred throughout the years, it still continues to be one of the most influential sites on the internet. If you already own an ecommerce website or plan on starting one, you can't overlook the effectiveness of eBay. It is considered one of the biggest search engines in terms of online products and reaches millions of people across the world. Intelligent business owners have been integrating eBay with their own ecommerce store and are very successful at it.
If you currently have an eBay store, but have not made the move to build your own ecommerce website separate of eBay, you are missing out on enormous growth potential. There are a few disadvantages of exclusively having an eBay store. The biggest disadvantage is that your business is at the mercy of eBay. Even a minor change in their policy or regulation may have a big effect on the success of your business. You are subject to both insertion fees and final value fees, and a lot of sellers have complained about the constant increase in rates. Last but not least, eBay is a marketplace with a lot of competition. The typical eBay buyer is usually very price oriented and is on the hunt for a bargain. In order to remain competitive and turn that person into a paying customer, you need to keep the prices of your products low. Obtaining customers with low prices is a good method, but it's not viable for your business in the long run.
If you already have an e-commerce store, but do not have an eBay presence, you are missing out on a vast amount of potential customers. It is very difficult to make a splash on the web when there is so much competition everywhere, especially in the very beginning. You have to work on your store's SEO, marketing to a targeted audience and spend big bucks on advertising all over the web. Ebay enables you to get your products in front of people who are ready and willing to spend money. They are in a mindset of making a purchase and are simply browsing to find the products they want. If you are able to capture the sale, you can use it as an opportunity to establish a relationship with this person so that he or she can buy from your again later on. The great thing about eBay is that they are very well established and their consumers feel protected. If you establish yourself as a trusted seller, they will have no problem purchasing from you again through your own online store.
There are several ways you can encourage eBay users to shop directly through your own online store. This will help you build a bigger following and reduce costs by not having to pay for all the eBay fees. Another method is to create links to redirect people off the eBay website. You are restricted from directly doing this on your product listing pages in eBay, but you are free to add any kind of outbound links on your 'About Me' page. You can even use HTML to build an amazing looking 'About Me' page with links to get people to go to your online store. If you want to get people who have found your products on eBay to check out your 'About Me' page, you need to entice them with discounts or free shipping. You are allowed to link to other pages within eBay on your product listing pages so be sure to create noticeable links to your 'About Me' page at the beginning of your listing. Pictures can serve the same purpose. Create watermarks of your store URL and add them to all of your product pictures. Make sure it is very easy to read and more people will be taken to your own site.
There are a number of other creative ways to let eBay customers know about your e-commerce site. Email is another area of great importance. You will need to contact eBay users via email so make sure to use an email that includes the domain of your online store. Don't forget to also include a signature on the footer of your emails with information about your ecommerce website and a link to it. After someone makes a purchase, be sure to include thank you cards or sticker logos with your e-commerce URL printed on it. Provide coupons for future purchases through your e-commerce website or give them free shipping. That's how you get a life-long customer out of a one time eBay purchase.
Now that you know the imporatnce of using both an e-commerce website and eBay for your business, isn't it about time you learn how to seamlessly integrate the two? If you do all of this manually, it will take you double the amount of time and effort which is something that no business owner wants. If you have the right ecommerce solution, you get to save time by streamlining your operations and listing automatically to eBay while you add them to your own store. Use ecommerce eBay integration to combine tasks such as inventory management and customer services, and most importantly sell more.
What you need is a full service all-in-one hosting, design, and marketing software made specifically for e-commerce businesses. One that lets you set up your store in minutes, and provides powerful tools to help with not only selling on Ebay, but also SEO, product marketing and mobile commerce. Check out the best possible e-commerce solutions available at http://www.makeanonlinestore.com and try them out yourself absolutely free, no credit card required!
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