How to Be an Online Power Seller on Major Marketplaces

How to Be an Online Power Seller on Major Southeast Asian Marketplaces
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In order to enhance their services, marketplaces have been focusing on relatively successful sellers. All leading Southeast Asian marketplaces have the concept of ‘Power Sellers’, or top sellers that are able to sell maximum products on their platforms. Such sellers also get promoted by their marketplaces for free, and thus enjoy even more sales than anyone else. Additionally, these sellers are also charged with lesser fees and are preferred for cross-border selling. They even get to attend regular free seminars in which they are told about exclusive trends and tips that can help them sell even more.

[ Note: Want to sell across borders? Click Here to find out more]

So, how do you get there? Here are some of the most beneficial tips and tricks to stand out the eCommerce market and help you a become a ‘Power Seller’ on all the marketplaces you sell on.
1. Perform Competitor Research and Analysis:-

Whether it is online or offline, understanding your competitors market, strategy and functioning is important to learn from their mistakes and create new selling ideas. And the best way to do so is by buying your competitors product. When you purchase your competitor’s product you not only get to know the product quality through a direct means but also the steps they follow to sell and deliver the product. Check their product descriptions to understand their strategy of attracting the potential customers.

The best part of online eCommerce store is that most of them follow an easy return policy. Hence, you can also return the product back and learn about the after-sale customer service. Also, see if your competitor has a website of their own. If yes, try buying the same product from both the company website and online marketplace, and check the difference in their selling process.

2. Establish a Multi-Channel sales program:-

Selling your products on more than one online marketplace is known as multi-channel sales. It has been proven a right multi-channel selling strategy may increase your profitability by 30%. Hence, to maintain growth in your business and attract more customers, placing your product on multiple online marketplaces is quite a smart strategy.

As every online marketplace focuses on different communities & individuals, the response of customers for a particular product varies from site to site. Hence, placing your product on a single platform may not give you the desired results. On the other hand, experimenting with multiple eCommerce platforms can help you get the right fit for your business goals style and products.

3. Have Impeccable Product Descriptions in Place:-

All power sellers do have one thing invariably in common- all their products have up-to-date product descriptions.

[ Note: Click here to find out how you can manage product listings with ease]

No matter how many products you have listed online, your frequency to receive orders will not increase till all the products have perfect descriptions. As online shoppers so not have the luxury to touch and hold the products they buy, they are completely dependent upon the images and the written content. Thus, there should be no compromise on the quality of the uploaded images and the written content.

4. Always comply with the marketplace SLAs:-

All marketplaces have certain Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that require online sellers to fulfill certain conditions. Mostly, these SLAs revolve around the time in which the sellers must ship their received orders. If you wish to be a power seller, you cannot afford to violate marketplace SLAs at all.

Make sure you process and ship all the orders that you receive within few hours, or at least the same day so that you can delight your customers and also keep the marketplace satisfied. Keeping a high SLA compliance results in enhanced visibility of your products, and also makes you eligible for receiving incentives.

5. Personalize Your Online Store:-

Another benefit that you get by selling on an online marketplace is that they give you space to create your own homepage. Through this homepage, you can interact with your target audience by telling your success story and brand values. You can also add some good images and videos to help your customers connect emotionally with your brand.

If possible try to add a story to all your products. These stories can include the qualities of your product that makes it different from others or a customer’s experience what they felt after buying the product.

6. Focus on Customer Complaints and Returns:-

With the growing competition in the eCommerce market, it is highly challenging to keep your customers happy and build a long-term relationship. This is because your mistake not only makes the customer unhappy, but also invites a penalty from the marketplace you sell on. Also, when it comes to digital sale terms and conditions, most of the online marketplaces tend to favor the buyer. So, the quicker you are in resolving customer queries, you are on the top seller list of the site.

The best way to do so is by focusing on after sale customer service. Keep a track of your customer complaints and returns, so that no negative review can harm the reputation of your brand. Also, keep the return policies and procedure simple, for your customers to easily understand. This helps build a trust among your customers for your brand.

7. Plan Your Online Store Pricing Strategy Carefully:-

eCommerce platforms like eBay and Amazon sometimes have to go through the problems of hike in commission rates. Due to which they mostly execute some changes to their strategy to drive in more traffic to the site and make more sales. Therefore, the site will experience heavy footfall, which may eventually become quite counterproductive and expensive for you.

To save your online store’s reputation and keep on earning profits, it is recommended adapt a strategy that focuses on per channel online sale. To do this, you can also select online marketplaces that follow a particular niche and attract a particular group of audience.

8. Align Your Promotions with the Marketplace Trends:-

Promotions, discounts and offers have the maximum potential to boost sales on any channel. Although running extensive promotions may reduce your overall earnings for a short duration, but it is a great option to get noticed by both buyers and your marketplace. Once your order frequency increases, you may optimize the promotions and focus on earnings.

[ Note: Here’s how you can run dynamic promotions across channels]

Another important thing is to align your promotions with the marketplace trends. Marketplaces carefully strategize about upcoming season sales and discounts and come up with relevant themes. The more your promotional offers resonate with that theme, more the conversions you will get.

9. Keep Your Store Updated at All Times:-

Remember that unlike an offline store, your online store in open 24*7. This means a customer can visit and choose to buy your product even when you are not active on the marketplaces. This requires you to keep all the products updated at all times, including all the promotions, stock and other information that is visible to buyers.

Apart from this, introducing new products for sale also helps in increases your visibility and reach to customers.

10. Partner with the Best Logistics Partners:-

Fulfillment is yet another important aspect of online selling and directly affects customer happiness. While a prompt delivery may get you appreciation from the customer, a delay may result into a penalty. Thus, it is very important to partner with the best fulfillment partners/last mile carriers so that you are able to get your products delivered at the earliest.

But you must also factor the logistics and shipping costs before partnering with any company, so that you do not incur a loss in your business.

Things to remember while selling on multiple marketplaces

Track your inventory:

Once your product is available on multiple online marketplaces, you will start receiving more than one order from different platforms at the same time. Which means you will now have to split your inventory or stock to multiple channels with a balanced calculation so that you never go out of stock on any of the sales channels. If you are not into products and depend on a supplier for your products, it is better to get some stock in advance or contact multiple sellers to receive products on time. Remember, too many delays in delivery and order cancellation can add a bad reputation to your brand.

Track your shipments::

When you are on a multi-channel sales model, be very careful about the cost of shipping and timely deliveries. Multiple online marketplaces also give you a window to sell your products in multiple states and countries. In case you select that option, you will need to collaborate with multiple shipping partners, so that you are able to fulfill all orders in time.

Improve sales with order management

Going for a multi-channel sale process can be quite tiresome and time-consuming as you may have to bounce back and forth between different eCommerce platforms you register yourself with. As this requires a lot of manual work, daily updates, and calculation, this process can be quite confusing at times.

This is why managing your multi-channel online business from one eCommerce marketplace management software can positively impact your overall sales and productivity. These software applications can smartly automate all your selling processes and eliminate any possibilities of errors.

Conclusion

Remember, your customers love it when you make them feel special. A little extra effort to give good customer service, on-time delivery, and high-quality product, can gift you with lifetime loyal customers. Your honesty, diligence and hard work can not only help you earn profits, but also get you recognized by marketplaces and be a Power Seller.

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