Unless you’ve been asleep all year long in a cave somewhere in the Himalayas, you should know that online retail sales are lording over brick-and-mortar stores these days. That should be expected. When the virus is keeping everyone indoors, orders via the internet should be a logical choice.
To put that into context, we can use two of the biggest retailers in each sales funnel. Today, Amazon is the biggest retailer on the planet, beating out Walmart in sales volume. The feat is certainly mind-blowing, knowing Walmart has over 10,500 stores worldwide with 2.2 million workers.
Certainly, that can be a cue for your community. You can organize and pool your resources to that end. Indeed, it can spark the entrepreneurial spirit of local business people (if it hasn’t already). To boot, there are many ways to earn from Amazon without even selling a single product. Mechanical Turk (MTurk), for one, allows an individual to be paid for doing simple things online such as data validation or transcription. But the cream of the crop is, of course, selling items online.
While there are many ways to make e-commerce sales, your community would benefit a lot from having products sold online. The question is: Which products should be worth the try? Luckily, you need not sweat. Here’s an expert take on the matter.
Zero in on Products that Solve a Problem
A good metric for you to know if a particular product is worth your time is to ask if it solves a problem. And you can better do that if you reflect on problems that you may be facing in real life.
Take, for instance, Kyle Kirkpatrick, a noted Olympic gymnastics coach. He wanted to have earphones that stay in place even while he’s doing his routine training, whether it’s trampolining or sprinting. He was annoyed by the lack of equipment. His solution would be his claim to fame in business: Decibullz headphones. And the rest is history.
Right off the bat, know the competition is fierce in online sales. Think about it. A prospect who comes in a brick-and-mortar store may not buy, but you can talk him to it if you give it time. Online, people come and go at a flick of the wrist; you need to catch attention quickly, or it’s bye-bye. Moreover, women and men also behave differently when buying products online.
Certainly, a better customer experience is why many e-commerce products are being presented in online catalogs in 3 dimensional or 3D instead of the usual 2D. In this regard, knowing the cost of a 3D product e-commerce configuration would be wise to move forward.
Locate Products that People Are Passionate About
Focusing your community on selling online can be a big plus to move the needle in an overall financial capacity. But it’s not a walk in the park. That’s for sure. This is the reason why finding a product that people can be passionate about can help you zero in on a great offering.
Now, you can take a lot of consumer study to arrive at such a product. But there’s one way you can measure the potential of a product. How? Your very own passion towards it. If you’re not too passionate about a product you’re about to offer to the market, your target market is highly likely not going to gravitate towards it.
So ask yourself? Have you invested yourself in the product? How passionate are you about it? If your community is not too passionate about a potential product, then marketing it would be lackluster.
Identify a Niche
If you can identify a niche for your product, then its success can be closer than if you’re haphazard about it. In e-commerce, a niche market can make or break your business.
The good thing about niches is when you identify and market to one, you inch closer to a highly engaged market, not to mention a highly converting segment of the market. In short, they’re the cream of the crop.
It’s easier for you to convert other prospects if you are serving a niche. It speaks volumes about your brand.
A glorious example here is LARQ. Your jaw is bound to drop if you know what this company is all about. It’s actually nothing like you’ve ever heard before. And that’s because it’s the world’s first-ever self-cleaning water bottle.
It sounds out-of-this-world, right? But it’s true. Thanks to UVC-LED tech known to eradicate as much as 99.9% of pathogens (bacteria, germs), the company has sold 75,000 water bottles. The more surprising part? These bottles are priced at $95 apiece, definitely not cheap. Even better, LARQ has attracted investors.
That’s telling you your community has a great chance to rein the profits in with e-commerce, assuming you’ll find the right products to sell online. And work diligently towards your goals.
