How To Improve Your Business Sales And Still Maintain Your Margins With Ebay

Many people use Ebay as an effective tool in which to sell their products, this can be done either through standard Ebay channels or through signing up to an Ebay store account. If you are selling multiple items an Ebay store is defiantly the way to go as they offer:

• 3 packages, basic, premium and anchor
• Own web address
• Track support – (track your store activities)
• Email marketing (number of emails dependent on package)
• Custom header logo
• Promotion boxes on store

By using Ebay to sell your items you have access to 180 million customers worldwide something you would struggle to do with your own e-commerce site.

Many businesses choose to have both their own e-commerce site and use an Ebay store to maximise their sales across the board.

When choosing Ebay to sell your products there are several things you must remember in order for you to effectively sell your product and maintain a healthy level of margin on your product.

Re-search your product and market

First check to see if anyone else is selling the same product as you and if so what price are they asking for, what are their postal charges and how do they write about the product. This will give you a good indication of what the average selling price for your product is, what the competition is and how you can improve your chances of selling your product. Ebay is a great resource for researching products so use it.

Charges to keep in mind

There are obviously cost implications to selling on Ebay, as you cannot access so many customers worldwide for free. The charges to take into consideration when costing your products are as follows:

Listing fee – This is a charge by Ebay to you for listing your item. The cost varies depending on the number of photos used, the design layout, extra titles, buy it now price etc… You will be told this fee before you list your item.

Final valuation fee – This is a fee charged by Ebay to you on the total amount of the sale (excluding postage). This fee depends upon which store option you have but is usually a percentage of the total sale, it’s maximum is 10%, you will also be told of this fee before you list.

Ebay store charge – You must take this into account, as it is a monthly charge and will impact upon your profits.

Paypal fee – There are many payment options on ebay such as personal cheque, bankers draft and Paypal. Paypal is an effective way of taking credit and debit card payments. The payments are stored in your Paypal account and you can transfer them to your bank account. The fee charged depends upon how much your monthly sales are and is worked out as a percentage of each payment into your account. The maximum charge is 3.4%.

Postage and packaging – Make sure your postage and packaging costs are as exact as possible as this makes you more attractive to potential customers, be sure to include costs for bubble wrap, boxes used etc…. The post Office online have a great little tool for Ebay users, you can type in the weight and size of your item and it will give you a costing of the postage, then just factor in the packaging and there you have your postage costs.

By working out the exact costing to you by using Ebay you can sell your product at an attractive price but be precise on the profits made of each item. Many Ebay sellers don’t factor in the above costs and just sell their product at a price lower than their competitors, however when they check their Ebay account at the end of the month they receive the shock that their products have not made as much money as originally thought and sometimes at a loss.

Ebay has produced several millionaire sellers but in order for you to get started on the right footing please remember your costs.

High Numbers Of Visitors Does Not Always Mean A Successful Business

Imagine having a website where you are seeing an increase of visitors, month by month, due to all the hard work that you or an SEO company / consultancy were doing for you, yet you barely saw an increase in sales or conversions. Do you blame the SEO work because you haven’t made any more sales or sign ups or do you take a look at the reason your website isn’t converting like it should?

Some would say a difficult question which is difficult to answer, but if you are in this scenario you simply can not afford to bury your head in the sand and ignore the problem, you have to study every last piece of statistical or analytical data to hand and try to identify the problem.

Every client wants to see an increase in traffic from the engines, this is one of the main reasons we are called to speak to companies in our local area. Most of the time we can quite happily agree to help them increase their traffic, but we will always make sure their website is in perfect working order, in terms of optimisation and usability, else increasing their traffic is very unlikely to have any impact on the successfulness of their business.

If you were running a shop on the high street, the equivalent would be opening later to capture extra shoppers, but only employing one person to man the tills, therefore frustrating your customers so much that they walk off due to the wait, or charging far more than your neighbour who only opens in the morning, as they will simply wait until the morning in order to save their money.

Assuming your website is in perfect working order, you can normally identify why you are not seeing an increase in converting business, and we have listed some of these reasons below:

Prices Too High – Website A is selling Product AAA for £20, you are selling it for £30. The customer can find this out with out much hassle, so even if they land on your site, the likelihood is they already know that the product can be purchased elsewhere for much less money, hence even though they found your site, they will not be buying from you. You need to make sure your prices are competitive and match most others, as on the Internet you can see 50 shops in an hour, which is much harder to do on the high street.

Over Complicated Ordering Procedure – Some websites ask you for more information than you would need to get a passport just to buy a product, and visitors do not like this. Sometimes making them register is the worst thing you can do, even if you want their information to retain the client. It is a hard balance to strike but it is vital that you let the customer do what they need to do with out making things look complicated and over thought out.

Not Offering A Wide Enough Stock – We live in a consumer world where people expect to be able to get the product they want, when and how they want it. The increase in searches for specific products has seen a sharp rise over the past few years, which means the consumer is now doing more research, rather than just know they want Product Something, they know now they probably want Product AAA. Try to stock all of the products people are searching and finding you by, so keep an eye on the analytics for your site and make sure you are matching their needs.

Navigational Issues – If people can not find an easy way to sign up or place the order, they will get frustrated and move on to somewhere else. You might have the best service in the world or the cheapest priced product to be found, but in this day and age, people are busy and they will not wait. That is why it is so important to make sure your customers can do what they need to do easily, efficiently and quickly, so make sure you run tests with many friends and family to ensure your website is easy for the user to do what they need to do.

Lack Of Information – Some websites give to much information, that is very true, but the majority just do not give enough information to allow the consumer the choice as to whether they should buy your product or sign up to your service. Try to make sure you provide as much information as you are physically able to, which will not only help your visitors but will also help your site in the engines, as content is king in the eyes of the major search engines.

Using Facebook To Send You Traffic For Your Website

Facebook has taken over the internet over the past few years, quickly becoming the leading social networking site and attracting interest from some of the major internet businesses and investors. It has a phenomenal user data base, covering all ages from all countries, with a regular cliental that only most websites can dream of, everyone seems to either use or know about Facebook.

Many webmasters are now realising the potential that Facebook can offer them, but not many know the best ways to utilise Facebook to attract traffic and attention for your website, and we have listed the most common and arguably the best techniques below.

Start A Group

Facebook allows users to create, join and participate in Groups, about anything you can possibly imagine. We have an SEO group where users all talk about SEO and Web Design and we even encourage other companies who do the same as us to join, as people talking about what the industry we are in can offer is always a good thing, even if it leads to a good debate about the latest methods.

No matter what your business does, you will find a group that covers that particular niche, even if you have to be a little more general about it. You should also start your own group as the more people that see you talking about what your business or website does the better.

Facebook CPC Advertising

Many webmasters over look the Cost Per Click advertising on Facebook, with many being to busy to try it or just think its not for them. For some businesses it can be the perfect route to their ideal target audience.

The system is really very sophisticated. Many Facebook users are often surprised at how the adverts on the left hand side are about something they are actually interested. This is all down to the technology behind the system, because when you start your CPC advertising with them, you can select your target age range, location, interests, job and many more.

This is why the adverts are so ideally targeted and the main reason a CPC can really work for a business that would appeal to the Facebook audience. These days, Facebook is not just for young adults, all ages are now using it, with different jobs, income levels, education and interests, so collectively, its worth a shot at small campaign.

Notes / Posts

One of the new features is for Facebook to take an RSS feed of your latest news or blog posts and automatically add them to your Facebook profile, group and interested audience. Not many people are really utilising this, you can even do it manually, but the fact you can now import the posts / notes directly and automatically from an RSS feed saves you time and means your latest posts are always on your Facebook pages.

Spread The Word

If you have lots of friends, colleagues or just generally people you have added, they are an audience, and who knows if they really know what you do or what your business does. Update your status on a regular basis to show the world how well you are doing or to advertise a new deal or product you may have.

If you do not tell people, even the ones you think should probably know, then you could be missing a trick, a very basic trick!

Clear Web Services Begin Work With JSF Driving School

Clear Web Services, based in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, are proud to announce a new long term partnership with Lydney based JSF Driving School, who are an established driving instructor covering the Forest of Dean, Gloucester, Cheltenham and South Wales.

JSF Driving School is a local, independent, family run business offering a quality service at competitive rates to clients throughout Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire.

With many years of instructional experience, Jim established JSF Driving School in 2006. His success and reputation has allowed JSF to build a team of Instructors who are passionate about teaching to a high standard, covering test centres in Gloucester, Monmouth and Cheltenham.

Learners can try JSF with their no obligation FREE First Hour*, so that you can check them and the car out! You can then pay as you go, or get discounts by block booking. Recommend them to friends or family, and our LOYALTY BONUS SCHEME provides even further discounts. Intensive courses are also available.

Clear Web Services Managing Director Ian Spencer commented:

“We were approached by Sharn Franghiadi from JSF to offer an initial review of the website. Once we had completed the review and sent over our free guide, we then arranged a meeting.”

And went on to say,

“It is clear that JSF are a personal driving school, offering a large regional coverage so it is a pleasure to being working with them to help improve conversion rates and to expand the areas of coverage this company are looking to achieve.”

Clear Web Services offers SEO Services and Web Design in the Forest of Dean, serving Coleford, Lydney, Cinderford, Clearwell and many other areas in the Forest. We also cover Gloucester, South Wales, including Chepstow and Monmouth and Hereford, in particular Ross on Wye.