Online Shoppingamazon, ebay, etsy, Kitpak Fulfillment, Multi-channel sales, shopify, walmart, wayfair

Benefits of Multi-Channel Sales

Traditional multi-channel sales used to mean that a retailer would sell their goods in several places including in their bricks and mortar store, through their website, through mail-order catalogues and perhaps through telephone sales. The advantage of multi-channel sales is that it can make it easier for your customers to purchase your products. For example, some elderly customers may not be online or comfortable purchasing online so other sales channels are necessary in order to reach them. Likewise, specific disabled customers may find it impossible to visit a physical store so an online presence is necessary to make your products available to them.

In today’s evolving business to consumer retail environment, many businesses have never even had a physical location and sell their products online only. So, what does multi-channel sales look like for these businesses? Like traditional multi-channel sales, it means making your products widely available to customers in your market, wherever they tend to do their shopping.

Sell on Your Website

A website is a great place to start. If you have a business and now want to start marketing and selling products online, your existing website is a good place to start. Today it is relatively easy and inexpensive to add an online catalogue and shopping cart to your website. Add a payment processor to receive online payments from your customer and you are in business.

Search Results – Get Found

An e-commerce enabled website alone does not guarantee sales. You also need to ensure that your business and products are found when a potential customer searches for something you sell. If you do not rank well in search results, sales will not happen. To generate traffic to your store, you may need to expend a significant amount of time and money (SEO, paid ads, etc.).

Conversions – Turn Visitors into Buyers

When a potential customer finds your online store, the next function of your store is to convert that visitor into a customer. With so many online options today, what can you do to make the customer want to buy from you? Here are a few items to consider:

Easy to navigate.
Great pricing
Free shipping
Fast order processing
Easy checkout process
Free returns
Guarantees
Customer support line.

Online Marketplaces Enable Multi-Channel Sales

To complement online sales through your own website, many online businesses have greatly extended their reach by making their products available through a variety of online marketplaces. A key advantage of selling through online marketplaces is that shoppers can search for and purchase products from multiple unrelated vendors without ever leaving the one site. This is the modern-day online equivalent of the regional mega shopping centers. There are some very strong marketplace options available for merchants to consider.

Amazon

Amazon is the world’s largest online marketplace generating an estimated $465+ billion in sales in 2021 ($1.25+ billion every day). One key advantage of selling through Amazon is the sheer volume of traffic that they generate. It is estimated that 90% of online shoppers price check products on Amazon. Many of your potential customers could be searching through Amazon right now for your products and if you are not there, your Amazon competitors will get the sales.

eBay

eBay is a well-established online marketplace that could provide a valuable outlet for your products. With an estimated 187 million global users, eBay offers a broad reach. Many people believe that eBay is for sales of used products, but approximately 80% of products sold on eBay are new products and 16% fall into the electronics/accessories market.

Shopify

Shopify, with an estimated average of 2.1 million daily users, has continued to follow its mission to make it easier for merchants to reach more buyers while building strong customer relationships. They have simplified commerce for merchants allowing them to concentrate on what is key to their business and not worry about the e-commerce infrastructure.

Etsy

Etsy is a growing online marketplace with 80+ million active buyers. Etsy does a good job of uniting buyers and sellers with their top categories including: homewares and furnishings; jewelry and accessories; craft supplies; apparel; paper and party supplies; personal care products.

Wayfair

Wayfair, with revenue of $13.5+ billion, has more than 27 million active users. The top product category is Furniture and Appliance where they rank 4^th in the US behind Amazon, Home Depot and Walmart. Wayfair could be a great option if your products fall into Wayfair’s market sweet spot.

Walmart

Walmart has grown their 3^rd party sellers to more than 130,000 with a wide range of products in 30+ product categories. With an estimated 32+ million users, Walmart offers broad exposure for your product. One cautionary note is that your pricing must fall within Walmart’s Low Price Guarantee or risk delisting.

Kitpak Fulfillment’s robust system software will seamlessly integrate with all the above-mentioned online marketplaces, allowing Kitpak to be your single-source fulfillment partner no matter where you choose to sell your products.

To learn more about Kitpak Fulfillment and how we can streamline your e-commerce fulfillment services and reduce your costs, please CONTACT US today or REQUEST A QUOTE.

Online ShoppingBundle Pricing, Loss Leader Pricing, Pricing Strategies, Version Pricing, Volume Discounts

Pricing Strategies to Get More Sales

When you launch your online store, how to price your products is an important consideration. You will want to research your competition to understand their market positioning and pricing and then decide how to position your products relative to your competition. Pricing must be set high enough to cover your costs and provide an acceptable profit margin, however it cannot exceed what the market will bear.

Is there anything an online merchant can do with pricing to help increase sales? Of course! There are numerous effective pricing strategies that savvy merchants employ to increase sales. Here are a few worth considering.

Loss Leader

This strategy seeks to attract shoppers to an online store where the merchant is offering deeply discounted pricing on a popular item (the Loss Leader). Once the shopper is in the store and engaged with the content, the merchant has numerous opportunities to promote other, higher-priced products to the shopper.

For example, if the Loss Leader is a flashlight, perhaps high margin batteries would be a good related offer. If the Loss Leader is a popular camera model, present the buyer with higher margin items related to the camera such as a memory card, spare batteries, a camera case, a tripod and the list goes on.

Bundle Pricing

Bundle pricing is where a merchant will offer reduced pricing for a predetermined bundle of products that would otherwise cost much more if purchased separately. This tactic stimulates the buyer to purchase more than originally intended in order to take advantage of the Bundle Pricing cost savings.

For example, if the merchant is selling cameras, the Bundle Pricing deal could also include a camera lens, a case and a memory card. Another example could target a desktop printer and the Bundle Pricing could include related products such as an extended warranty, spare toner and/or a case of paper. Of course, the cost savings of the offer must generate enough value for the buyer. It is unlikely that a buyer will increase their order by $100 in order to achieve a $2 savings.

Bundle pricing can be effective for selling off slow moving stock.

Version Pricing

Version Pricing is where a merchant will create multiple versions of a product in order to appeal to a broader segment of the market. This strategy is common practice in the photography market where merchants make available various camera models, each appealing to a different market segment. This may include an entry level model with less features and lower resolution, a more feature laden model targeted at the photography enthusiast and a high resolution, feature laden camera targeted at the semi-pro or professional market segment. Many products can be adapted to Version Pricing… can yours?

Volume Discounts

The Volume Discount pricing strategy is used to motivate buyers to increase the amount they purchase. Buy more and get a larger discount. Things are cheaper by the dozen! Using Volume Discount pricing allows consumers to save money by spending more. It’s a win for both the buyer and the merchant.

Volume Discount pricing is an effective strategy for selling off excess inventory.

Kitpak Fulfillment is a leading Winnipeg fulfillment company offering a broad range of e-commerce fulfillment services to offline and online merchants.

To learn more about how Kitpak can help streamline your fulfillment process and save you money, REQUEST a QUOTE or CONTACT US today!

Online Shopping

Get Even More Customers to Your Online Store

The ultimate objective of any online merchant is to meet or exceed customer expectations while selling as much of their product or service as possible. There are countless ways to attract visitors to your online store and convert those visitors into customers. There are also many ways to increase the amount sold to an online shopper. Here are some potential initiatives to help you accomplish more.

Post Product Reviews / Recommendations

A great product review from a loyal customer (or brand advocate) posted on your website can help influence a purchase decision. This is the online equivalent of “word-of-mouth” and is trusted by more than 70% of consumers polled. Word-of-mouth referrals from friends and family are trusted by more than 80% of consumers polled.

Offer a Money Back Guarantee

Customers come in all shapes and sizes and successful online merchants strive to satisfy the needs of all of them. A shopper that is indecisive, cautious or risk averse by nature, may read online referrals but still have worries about making a purchase. One way to help alleviate the worry is to offer a “Money Back Guarantee”. If the product does not live up to expectations, you could offer a refund. If your products are well received in the marketplace this may be a low risk offer with good upside potential.

Abandoned Cart Recovery

A growing problem for all online merchants is the abandoned shopping cart. This is where a consumer has added items to their cart and have abandoned it before completing the purchase. There are many factors that lead to an abandoned cart and it is important for merchants to know what they are and eliminate them as much as possible. One reason for an abandoned cart is where the shopper was interrupted during the checkout process for one reason or another. An automated email can be sent to the shopper within hours to remind them to return and complete the almost finished purchase.

Have a Blog

You want more visitors to your website, but how is it they get there? In short: blogging; social media; and search engines. Every time you write a blog post, it’s one more indexed page on your website. It’s also one more indicator for Google and other search engines that your website is active and they should be checking in frequently to see what content you’ve published that they should index. Every new indexed page is one more opportunity for you to show up in search engines and drive traffic to your website through organic search.

When you write a blog post, make it easy for viewers to share on social networks, which helps expose your business to a larger audience. A blog helps maintain your social media presence by extending your social reach with content and driving new website visitors through your social channels.

Kitpak Fulfillment is a leading Winnipeg fulfillment company offering a broad range of e-commerce fulfillment services to offline and online merchants.

To find out how Kitpak Fulfillment can streamline your fulfillment processes, while saving you money, REQUEST a QUOTE or CONTACT US today!

Online Shopping

Get More Customers to Your Online Store

Creating an online store is quite an undertaking. Getting the right design, writing content, selecting product images, website hosting and more, takes time and effort. Finally, you launch the store and wait for the orders to start rolling in. After a few days, you start to see some orders arrive and you hope that sales will continue to ramp up. You begin to wonder if the hordes of potential customers you expected are ever going to come to your store and purchase your products.

The question you ask yourself is “How can I get more customers to my online store and make a purchase”. Here are a few ideas to help answer that question.

Have a Sale

Everyone likes a sale. Consider offering a popular product for a deeply discounted sale price (Loss Leader) to attract visitors to your online store. Once they are in your store, you have multiple opportunities to increase the sale by offering other related products at higher margins. Other types of sales work well too, such as a BOGO sale (buy one, get one) or a volume discount where the discount increases with the amount purchased. Your sale will run for a limited time to instill a sense of urgency and stimulate action in the minds of your customers (fear of missing out).

Give Free Products or Samples

Giving free products or product samples is another effective method of attracting visitors to your online store. For example, to stimulate sales of a new fishing rod and reel, you could offer a free spool of quality fishing line with every purchase. You could limit the expense by making the offer available to the first 100 purchasers only.

Ask for Referrals

Referrals are another great way to get visitors to your online store. Rewarding your existing customers for making referrals leads to more visitors. Referral visitors from brand advocates are four times more likely to make a purchase and spend more on average. They also remain loyal with a higher lifetime customer value than an unreferred customer. Referrals (word-of-mouth) work well as they are trusted by more than 80% of consumers polled.

Start a Loyalty Program

The success rate of selling to a new customer can range up to 20%, while the success rate for selling to an existing customer often exceeds 50%. It can also cost five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer. A great way to retain existing customers is to offer a loyalty program. You could offer discounts to existing customers only or offer something free based on volume of purchases made. Creating a loyalty program is not complicated or expensive and the rewards can far exceed the program cost.

Use Multiple Sales Channels

Having an online store on your own website is a great way to start selling your products. However, to scale up and meet higher sales expectations, consider utilizing multiple sales channels for your products. There are numerous, well established online marketplaces you can utilize to achieve greater market penetration. Not all customers shop in one place so being in multiple places increases the chance of your product being found. Consider selling through Amazon, eBay, Shopify or Walmart for almost any product. Specialty marketplaces such as Wayfair and Etsy may also be great for your products.

Build an Email List

Staying in touch with your customers is a key component of sales success. Build your list and use it to remind existing customers how much you value them. Email is the standard for communicating sales or promotions to your customer base and can provide a great deal of valuable data, on which to base future promo emails. Your email database is likely the most important tool in your marketing toolbox.