How to increase sales on marketplaces

How to increase sales on marketplaces

It’s no longer news that the first step to success, in eCommerce, is having a good online strategy.

A natural step in scaling your business is a presence on popular and relevant marketplaces, which have now become one of the easiest ways to reach more customers without substantial marketing efforts.

Find out from this article which aspects are important to consider to increase sales on marketplaces.

Our partners at easySales – The relevant Romanian marketplace integration platform has put together some tips on how to increase sales on marketplaces. To start with, find out the general conditions to be accepted as a seller on the marketplace.

Contents How to increase sales on marketplaces

  1. Optimize your product listings
  2. Monitors competitor prices and uses automatic pricing algorithms
  3. Make sure you provide excellent support services and take positive reviews
  4. Participate in promotional campaigns to increase sales on marketplaces
  5. Test new marketplaces to increase sales

What are the general conditions to be accepted as a seller on marketplace

As an online merchant you need:

  • a company registered with the ONRC with a CAEN code suitable for online trade (4791)
  • a bank account and a contact address;
  • a contract with at least one courier company; (e.g. via GShipments or individually with Sameday, Fan Courier, DPD, Cargus etc.)
  • products accepted in the categories where you want to list yourself
  • Support service available to provide customers with quick solutions;
  • EAN codes on products in the categories supported by the marketplace where you want to sell (if the manufacturer does not provide EAN barcodes you can buy from GS1 – official eMag and Elefant partner – EAN codes are mandatory for approval of offers in some marketplaces)
  • the ability to deliver quickly, in Romania (and/or outside Romania if you sell on the eMag Hungary marketplace, for example);

What can you do to maximise your brand exposure on the marketplace? Here are some tips you can implement to achieve this goal.

Read also: How to sell online: Online Marketing and Selling Guide + Checklists

How do you choose which products to sell on marketplaces?

Google trends are a good first clue to look for when searching for profitable business ideas. Search volumes show you which products or product categories buyers are interested in. Search volume also provides relevant details about their passions, problems and needs.

Recommendations from major suppliers in the UK are another good source of inspiration.

The process of selling on the marketplace is not difficult in itself, but it can be challenging if you haven’t chosen your products well. Marketplace eMag has posted which are the most ordered product categories in December 2022. You can get some inspiration from here too.

top-produse-emag-marketplace

The advice of top retailers is to niche down and have accessories in addition to the main products, so that the consumer can choose from one retailer what they need.

example-product-marketplace

For starters, narrow it down to a product category. This will help you leave out what’s not relevant.

Example: sports and outdoor activities.

To see trends and the biggest sales on Walmart and Amazon you can use Helium10 – a software that enhances your deal listings to maximize sales and improve rankings in search results.

Step 2 is to think about what appeals to you most in the category you want to sell from, what you master best. Example: sports accessories.

Then consider the practicalities of this sub-category, to arrive at your identification ofi the right product. Analyses aspects related to:

  • Logistics – whether there are products that need special aspects to be delivered, whether you can easily order them from the supplier.
  • Competition – what is the competition offering and how saturated is the market.
  • Profit margin – does it cover the commission paid to the marketplace and related costs?

Test new products, e.g. up to 50 or 100 new products before a new season, with a small stock of 5-10 pieces, ordered from suppliers in Europe.

First analyse what the demand is and only then can you place larger orders, from suppliers in China, for example.

Read also: eMag Marketplace – unosoft Platform Integration Update

5 tips on how to increase sales on marketplaces

1. Optimise product listings

This is the number 1 tip that you should treat as the most important.

Once you have chosen the products you want to sell, the next step is to document the products. Make sure the product descriptions are complete, accompanied by good quality images, not from suppliers, and clear features.

The main thing to keep in mind is that each marketplace has its own rules and guidelines, so it’s important to know exactly how to optimize your product listing on the marketplace you’re on. Make sure your products have the information you need:

  • Product name:
  • Brand:
  • Product ID:
  • Product Code:
  • EAN Code:
  • Source language:

Product Title

Start by setting the product name. Just like the brand you sell under, you can give it a searchable name: Ladies’ velvet dress, Almafor example or Ladies sports shoes, Puma

Basic and secondary characteristics

Here you have to choose from what is already predefined in the platform and frame your product as well as possible (example: for Ladies’ velvet dress, Alma you can fill in “red, M, long” depending on the product, there are different variants). Or for “Women’s sports shoes” you have “Basket Heart Velvet Cabernet, Velvet, Red Bordo”.

Correct product name on marketplace

Provides valuable, unique, understandable information and uses keywords, relevant to marketplace searches.

Tips: If you manage products of different colours, sizes, etc., we recommend listing them on grouped marketplaces in product family. Specifically, all sizes, colours, to be displayed on one page so that the end customer can easily choose the product they need.

For best-selling products, add videos or tutorials, fill in features and attributes needed for accurate information.

On the marketplace, the product search algorithm also takes brand into account, so in the product documentation you must enter the brand name to appear in the quick search list.

A dress can be presented in different ways by 3 different retailers; some may highlight the material, others the versatile style, others the type of event where it can be worn.

Register your products with OSIM

To prevent your products from being associated with other sellers’ products and to be the sole owner of product documentation you can register your best-selling products under a single brand.

The value of a brand is not only in the quality of the products or services, or the recognition gained from customers, but also in protecting the identity of this brand by registering a trademark.

Trademark registration in Romania is done at OSIM (State Office for Inventions and Trademarks).

2. Monitors competitor prices and uses automatic pricing algorithms

Keeping the product in first position dictates the sale, and the product in second position fails to sell as well.

Periodically checking the prices of similar products on other marketplaces is hard work.

In eCommerce, your product is on sale 24/7, and because you can’t manually interact with all offers, there are automated solutions. There are several tools available that can do this automatically, an example of this is Auto-price from the easySales platform.

The Auto-Price function algorithm updates and adjusts the price of products on eMag in real time, in incremental increases or decreases, so that your product comes first.

The algorithm has developed a “stop loss” limit to protect your profit, a minimum and a maximum limit, so you can protect your margins.

3. Make sure you offer excellent support services and take positive reviews

Provide excellent customer service – answer questions quickly and resolve their problems efficiently. Quality support is relevant to your reputation and can attract more buyers. Be responsive, your customers will ask for quotes, ask questions and seek solutions.

eMag Marketplace has a dual review system:

  • customers can provide reviews for PRODUCTS
  • customers can provide reviews for SELLER

The general rule of thumb is: 9 out of 10 satisfied customers will not leave a positive or neutral review of the product purchased, while 10/10 dissatisfied customers will very quickly leave a negative review of the product purchased.

Through testimonials you can improve customer ratings and reviews so that you are recommended as a trusted seller. Encourage customers to leave positive reviews about your products and services.

You can send them a thank-you email after their purchase encouraging them to leave a review on your shop’s special section. You can also use your social media accounts to solicit customer reviews.

It’s important to be polite and respectful when soliciting customer reviews and provide an easy-to-follow process for doing so. Respond to negative reviews and try to resolve the issues mentioned.

4. Participate in promotional campaigns to increase sales on marketplaces

Searches on search engines or on various marketplaces are a key component of Top of the Funnel (TOFU) activities. Normally, complex planning of the chosen keywords is needed so that they match the users’ search intent. In this way, you can ensure that your products will appear at the top of search results.

Listing your products or services on multiple marketplaces also helps increase your brand exposure. With easySales there is an area for optimising product documentation, you can more easily list different offers, testing different titles and key features.

During the holiday season you can enter words that lead to the idea of last-minute gifts, or brands searched for more often. You can also have different documentation from your website to avoid SEO cannibalization of product pages.

Implementing automated marketing campaigns can help you increase your visibility on all channels (search engines, websites) without being an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert.

Depending on the type of campaign you choose, the Retargeting Biz platform can suggest optimal keywords or let you set them yourself, depending on your business goals.

5. Test new marketplaces to increase sales

How can you find out which marketplace performs best for your products?

Answer: Test and find out!

Automation is an effective tool to increase sales on a marketplace by facilitating repetitive processes and optimizing marketing activities.

The most important gain of automation is time, and the lack of automation is the riskiest decision.

Activities that can be automated on the marketplace :

  • Automatic resizing of images sent in product offer and transparent background pictures
  • Automatic translations of product descriptions
  • Generate price comparison feeds
  • Multichannel bulk order processing
  • Update stock and data across all channels
  • Generate invoices and AWBs, in bulk, automatically
  • Automatic bid price updates with inclusion of a stop loss limit

However, automation is not a magic bullet for increasing sales and must be combined with other marketing strategies and quality customer service to achieve optimal results.

When selling on a marketplace, it’s important to understand who you’re selling to. You also need to be aware that you have strong competition and your goal is a little harder to reach. The solution is to differentiate yourself from the rest of the competition, and the tips above are here to help you do that.

If you are already on a marketplace or still testing the market, we at easySales can help you with the best solutions: Quick integration with relevant marketplaces: eMag, Flanco, Altex, Doraly, eBay.

In the last year, retailers have managed to reduce the time it takes to publish products on relevant marketplaces by 50%. This performance has been made possible because easySales solutions have automated the processing workflow, resulting in a significant 85% decrease in the time it takes to manage orders.

Read also: GoBot – the secret of online stores that sell predictably

platform-easysales

We provide you with a team specialized in eCommerce and the easySales platform where you will upload your products to send them directly, centrally and automatically to marketplaces, without additional costs.

Technically, information is synchronised every hour and orders are uploaded directly to the unosoft platform for increased efficiency.

Here you find details on how to integrate with easySales, your store developed in unosoft https://support.easy-sales.com/hc/ro/articles/4407786994065-Configurare-unosoft

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