When you have made the decision
to get your products online via eBay and/or your own eCommerce website, what is
the next step?
First Question: Build it
in-house or hire a professional?
Yes, you can build your
companies eBay store and website with talent already existing within your
organization.
Website design is taught at
most high schools or community colleges these days so, chances are good that
your employee pool may have budding web designer talent. Are you ready to trust
your company marketing and image to that in house talent is the real question?
eBay provides numerous tools
and a great deal of information for anyone to accomplish the task of getting a
store up and running. The question is... does eBay provide these tips and
tricks to help you as a business or to help their business? Obviously, if you
are a seasoned business professional you will soon realize that a company such
as eBay does nothing without a reason.
eBay Stores
Most of eBay's teaching tools
and to a certain extent, eBay's entire growth strategy is based upon making the
process of setting up an eBay selling account and consequently an eBay store
easy for home based businesses. eBay wants mom & pop to go garage sale
shopping with an eye towards making a few extra bucks for the cookie jar. To
that end they want to get mom & pop up and running with an eBay store as soon
as possible (and funneling fees into eBay).
Just because eBay has based a
majority of their marketing focus on home based businesses does not mean that
an eBay store is not a valuable asset for any established brick and mortar
retailer or other "real" business concern. eBay is simply going after
the largest number of potential users of their products. Unfortunately this
also leads to numerous eBay store failures...
These home based eBay store
owners do not have the prior background, sources or resources to take advantage
of the world wide marketing giant and revenue producer now known as eBay.
Therefore, while getting your company eBay store up and running may seem to be
an easy in-house task for any intern, or kid just out of college with a great
computer science degree... the real nuts & bolts set up and operation of an
eBay store or e-commerce solution or both in tandem (the best option) is better
left to professionals who work with eBay and e-commerce each and every day.
If
you are reading this because you are interested in moving your business more
into an Internet sales based program you should consider the wisdom of hiring
eBay and Internet marketing professionals to help you and your company get a
head start toward those goals.
Still Thinking About Doing it
yourself?
Building an online business
requires ability in several completely different arenas: graphic design,
programming, database development, Web design, copywriting, photography, and
online marketing. This is just a short list of what is required to start from
scratch or to add Internet marketing to your sales operation. If you have these
skills in-house or if you plan on learning them yourself, please take this
advice to heart.
Make a list of your employees'
available skills as well as which skills they can learn. When you have a choice
between learning a skill that will directly translate into making more money
for your company or learning a skill that will let you do cool stuff on the
Web, make a careful choice. Decide how much time you really want to devote to
learning and doing things that really don't help you sell more products.
Do you
want to be an online retailer, or do you want to be a Web developer? The
highest and best use of your available time & resources probably isn't
learning the ins and outs of XHTML, but taking care of customers, finding new
products, and promoting your business.
Making it Happen
Anything you can do yourself on
a website design or to a eBay Store can be delegated or outsourced. You can
hire eBay Stores Certified design professionals to design your eBay store from
the ground up, create a custom logo, develop a corporate identity with unique
colors and fonts, build your store product database, take product photos, write
sales copy, perform search engine optimization on your site, custom-build XHTML
templates that do almost anything you want them to do, and even manage your
orders and perform customer service. It all depends on your budget.
After you've decided that you
need help, you have lots of choices to make. The first decision is the size of
your budget, which determines who you can hire. You can find prices for
"building a eBay Store" that range anywhere from $300 to $5,000 and
up. You can get a bargain using offshore designers (working anywhere from
eastern Europe to India), college kids, or even professional designers
moonlighting out of their basement.
If you want a more "professional"
experience, expect to pay up to $15,000 for a complete branding, marketing, and
design package from top-drawer eBay store and Internet marketing firm. Both
your web e-commerce site and your eBay store should present your branding and
image as you expect them to. Getting the eBay image and your website image to
mesh almost seamlessly is your goal, this can be quite difficult for even
experienced web designers.
Using a CMS or Content
Management System type of website design can significantly reduce your web
design costs. There are a huge amount of new and exciting options available for
web development, do not think you must use a "hand coded" html site
to get your branding and image in front of the public. Some companies are even
using simple blogging platforms like Wordpress or Typepad as the basis for
corporate websites.
These blogging platforms are very inexpensive to set up and
the software is free. These CMS or Blogging platforms may also be used in
conjunction with an eBay store or a with an eCommerce plug in (or both) to
craft a unique Internet marketing funnel for your company.
You get what you pay for...
eBay store designs can run
between $2,000 to $5,000 from a qualified eBay Stores designer. eCommerce
website designs sometimes run in the tens of thousands of dollars with
continual maintenance costs and webmaster fees. If your budget makes you choose
between the two options, an eBay store is the more economical and faster route
to success when managed correctly.
Subsequently an off eBay eCommerce site can
be developed for your best selling items. This allows you to use the power of
eBay for marketing and SEO purposes while saving eBay fees on sales made
through your own eCommerce website.
The best part of an eBay stores
set up is that once it is installed as you want it, you have very few outside
maintenance costs. Your company will have complete control of the products presentation
(with the use of a template) and the inventory management is a simple to learn
affair on eBay. Advanced tools are available to help with the management of
large inventories and to help you create a listing just as you would within a
word processing program or text editor.
When you get a quality eBay
Stores design, sometimes the results are more than just superficial. Qualified
designers improve the shopping experience, which can dramatically increase
sales from your existing traffic by increasing your conversion rate. Also, many
designs, when set up correctly improve the way your site looks to search-engine
spiders, too! (This is the power of an eBay stores "me" page and
other exclusive features and benefits of eBay stores packages).
After you determine what parts
of the store building process you can do and what you can't do or would rather
not do, you're ready to look for some help with the heavy lifting. First, you
have to decide what type of vendor you want to work with because there's a big
difference between working with a freelancer or independent consultant and
working with a large design company or eBay Stores certified design specialists
StoresDesigner.
eBay Stores certified design
specialists - eBay Stores Designer
eBay Stores certified design
specialists (certified eBay stores designers) provide the best overall
experience. Your company will get the personalized attention it deserves and
you will know that the design is based upon eBay marketing principles. Look at
the portfolios of these certified eBay stores designers and decide which firm
best represents your companies' image. Stay away from home based eBay stores
designers with frilly eBay templates and flashy bouncing mouse pointers. You
should be looking more for a corporate image that sells product and more
importantly, cross sells more products for your company.
Look at the online stores you
frequent in your daily life, think about the type of image and features you
would like to emulate for your eBay store. Look at the designer's portfolios
and or ask them if the features you think are most valuable are available in
their design packages? Some eBay stores designers can deliver very advanced
packages designed to promote more than one primary product at a time.
If you
are looking for growth in your Internet sales segment, these are the designers
to contract with. Talk with several designers to find the one you are most
comfortable with and the one who you think will represent the image of your
company best with an online design. If the same designer can also develop your
off eBay website e-commerce design, you should place that designer high on your
list of candidates.
Having a web presence for your
company which flows from eBay to your own website with the same "look and
feel" is very important. Your goal should be to make your customers feel
confident in your products and your company. If you (and your design company)
have made an effort to create a nearly seamless shopping experience between
eBay and your own e-commerce website, the confidence of the buyer will increase
and your conversion rate will as well. Drawing eBay shoppers to your website
from within eBay is not only possible, but very probable with a eBay store
design done correctly.
Ask your prospective design
firm the right questions and you will know immediately if you have made the
best choice. Example Questions:
- Are you a certified eBay Stores Designer?
- Do you have examples of cross marketing designs?
- Can you create an eBay stores design which matches my existing website or can you create an e-commerce design to match your eBay stores design?
- Is SEO important for eBay?
- How important is a eBay about me page?
- Do your templates appear correct on all of the major browsers?
What kind of
changes can be made to the design after your job is complete? (Can I offer a
special sale item in my listing template?)
If your chosen designer is not
informed in these questions you should look further. Not every eBay or Internet
design firm has the necessary skills or background to help your company
effectively cross-market your products.
Find the right design firm which will
give your firm a solid foundation from which to grow and prosper in the new
world of Internet retailing.
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