Selling direct online increases your reach. With an online store, your profits are no longer limited by the number of customers that can physically visit you business. You can sell across towns removing all geographical limitations.
Your online store also allows you to cater to shoppers who find it more convenient to browse and buy at times when retail locations are not traditionally open. Online shopping can save time for both the buyer and retailer, reducing phone calls about availability, specifications, hours of operation or other information easily found on company and product pages.
Shoppers are spending more time researching online than ever before. Sixty-four percent of buyers spend 10 minutes or more researching before buying. They are online searching for products your business might sell. By having your items listed in an online store improve your chances of selling to online customers you would have never been able to reach with traditional marketing actions. This could draw local buyers to your business or entice them to call. Best of all, with an ONLINE STORE your always selling. An online store is open 24/7/365 with virtually none of the overheads of running your own hosted online shop or selling at markets.
As much as we resist change the buyer’s decision-making process has changed dramatically in recent years. Buyers are conducting extensive research online before ever speaking to a sales person. Buyers are also making more direct purchases online and via their smartphone, never stepping foot into traditional brick-and-mortar locations.
To capture a piece of the pie, businesses need to adapt as their customers are. Shoppers are more than happy to stay home and research and complete their purchase online as long as the barriers to online shopping have been subverted, i.e. security risks, paying for shipping, etc. Many don’t want to drive to a store, wander around in search of what they need and then interact with a cashier to finish the purchase process. In fact, according to an eConsultancy survey, 60% of people like knowing they don’t have to shop in a crowded mall or store and 51% prefer to shop from the comfort of home.
THE KEY TO YOUR SUCCESS
The effective and appropriate use of both offline and online store to create a solution that better satisfies your buyers’ needs and shopping methods, is the key to marketing in the future. Getting started with an online store is very manageable and affordable on CRAFTERS ONLINE MARKET.
Crafters Online Market addressed most of the issues that prevented informal and formal retailers in the past to go online:
- Hosting Services & Monthly Cost
- Development Cost – Site & Shop Development
- Branding & Design
- Site Maintenance
- Technical Issues
- Shop Maintenance
- Online Marketing
- Content Writing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Delivery Issues
- Payment and Delivery Application for site owners
With an online store on Crafter’s Online Market platform you don’t have to be concerned of the above, in fact you will only have to access your dashboard, manage products and secure that your products are delivered to your customer and getting paid by us.
STARTUP COST
You can start your own ONLINE STORE on CRAFTER’S ONLINE MARKET for as little as R250 per month (an added R180 registration fee the first month). Vendors get access to their own Frontend Manager Dashboard – the smartest ecommerce frontend vendor store/shop manager. From here products can be uploaded, changed, deleted with description, details and variations. Customers can leave request and engage directly with a specific vendor. Should you find you need assistance you can directly talk to Crafters Online Market support staff via the dashboard. Most of the online issues will be handle by us, while you get to focus on your shop and delivery.
If this isn’t enough, Crafters Market Online will do direct marketing from the webpage to their Facebook Shop page. As a store holder you also get to share your products from either the webpage or the Facebook shop page to where ever you want. That gives you no less than 4 platforms to start your online marketing from.
The number of online platforms has spiked in recent years. It’s not hard to see why entrepreneurs are drawn to these. The future is online shopping and the sooner you start the better.
If you see the added value an online store on Crafters Market Online can bring to your marketing strategy, kindly register on the site, or alternatively for more info contact us at vendors@craftersonlinemarket.co.za.
