Online marketplaces are thriving, and they’re perfect for small businesses. You can run an eBay shop from your spare room, or sell jewellery through Not On The High Street from your kitchen table. E-commerce has enabled businesses to exist from anywhere and to operate at any time. But which platform is right for you, and what’s the best way to market your business online? Here we will run through the basics of setting up shop, and look at two online marketplaces in detail:
Optimise your website
A great website is the starting point for any online business. If you’ve got a collection of beautiful jewellery but an ugly website, nobody is going to click. Consider hiring a freelance web designer using Elance, where there are plenty of talented people after a one-off commission.
Glass designer and artist Zena West, who uses Etsy, says: “Get good photos from the start. I do the standard procrastinator thing of thinking “I’ll just list it with these rubbish iPhone photos for now, and I’ll get better ones later”. Then I don’t, because I am lazy. Try to use all five [pictures available]: shoot the item from different angles, in different lighting, use close ups and distance shots, highlight any imperfections, against different backgrounds, and add an action shot of your item in use.”
Which online marketplace is best for you?
Whether you sell crafts or cakes, choosing the right online marketplace will help your business to evolve. eBay and Etsy are best for craft producers and those who produce niche products that might have collectors or buyers from all over the world. Even with an account on eBay, Not On The High Street or Etsy, driving traffic to your site is still a challenge. You can do this through an effective social media strategy, and by learning how to photograph and present your items professionally.
Etsy
West is a fan of Etsy – if you have enough time. “The main challenge for me is not having the time to put in on the behind the scenes work. I think you definitely get more out of Etsy if you’re active in the Etsy community – joining teams, contributing to the forums, going to local meet ups.”
West advises startups to avoid saturated areas. “I’m lucky that glass is not as popular a craft to take up as knitting,” she says. “Go to Etsy and search for “knitting” and see how many results there are. People rarely look past the first one or two pages, so if we’re generous and say three pages, that’s 144 items that will get seen. So (at the time of typing) that’s over 324,854 items that aren’t getting looked at.”
The best thing about Etsy is its reach, she says. “I’ve sold things to people on nearly every continent. Though I know this applies to all of the internet, it’s still great to see such a global artistic platform. Other crafty sites seem to have a lot more of a country or continent focus to them.”
To improve your odds of making a sale, West suggests going into Etsy with a vast range of products. “If you have one or two items [on the platform] you’re going to get lost. If you go live with 30 or 40 listings at once then it massively increases your odds of being found.”
eBay
The best thing about eBay is its market size, says Jonathan Clark, founder of 97 Black. “ If you’re an internet-only business, or you’ve got a single store location, you can reach customers from all over the UK and indeed the whole world.”
Advertising can help drive traffic to your own website too, if your listings have enough branding and visual appeal. “You can also send out marketing emails through eBay, and when you sell items you can enclose promotional material/flyers when you send the item out to your buyer,” says Clark.
The platform can also be a great way to shift old stock, Clark adds. However he also points out that if you want your stock to actually sell, you have to sign up for the eBay shop, which costs around £20 a month.
He advises new sellers to be aware of eBay selling limits. “I found this out immediately after signing up for an eBay Shop. So we’re paying £20 for the eBay Shop which entitles us to 200 “free” listings, but I’m then immediately restricted to only being able to list 10 products per month.”
Clark thinks eBay is perceived as being quite a cheap online marketplace – so don’t expect repeat business. He says: “Ultimately the buyer has gone to eBay in the first place to make their purchase. They’ll generally go back to eBay again when looking to purchase a similar product, and if someone else is cheaper than you that time, there’s a chance they’ll buy from that seller instead.”
Social media
Maria Juelisch, who runs craft business Maria’s Emporium, recommends not using every social media platform available to market your business. Instead, work out which will benefit your business the most. She says: “I found out that Twitter didn’t work for me but Instagram,
Facebook, and Pinterest worked really well.” She also advises being consistent when using social media: “Make sure everything is tagged with the same tags so they are picked up online make sure that they’re all linked together so the search engines will find them.”
Elena Pintus, founder of Sew it with Love, advises not using social media purely as a self promotion tool, but as a way of engaging your audience: “Share and give, and that way you will attract followers and traffic to your website. If you don’t have one already, I highly recommend starting a blog where you can write interesting content and share the posts on your social media channels. That will not only help to drive traffic to your website, but it will also improve your search engines ranking as long as you do some good SEO.”
Weigh up whether you want to get covered
Despite being small, Deborah Holland, commercial director at Simply Business, thinks more micro-businesses – including online retailers –ought to equip themselves with the right insurance. She explains: “Insurance is pretty far down their list of priorities, but it’s definitely more than just another piece of admin.” She adds: “I see thousands of claims a year – ranging from a few hundred pounds to those in the millions – and having the right cover can often mean the difference between shrugging off a mistake and struggling to keep your business afloat.”
With this in mind Simply Business recently launched an online retail insurance product, designed to protect these businesses during their day-to-day trade. Although not always essential, insurance can be asset, should something go badly wrong.
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Simply Business, the UK’s biggest business and landlord insurance provider, and sponsor of the supporting business growth hub.
