As I am sure you are aware the reason your ebay shop gains sales much quicker is because of ebays massive user base as well as ebay being a trusted site with search engines meaning an ebay listing can be visible within hours. But all this comes at a price with hefty ebay fees so although you can get sale quicker you don’t earn as much profit.

So the obvious answer is to use ebays massive user base yet drive those users to your own online shop to gain maximum profits. This can be done but in order to keep within ebays rules you have to be careful and clever about it.

The first method is to send out business cards and flyers to your ebay customers within their parcels with your site name and maybe a little incentive 10% or 15% off or free delivery depending on your product type. This will drive customers to your site instead of back to ebay.

The next method you can use is email marketing, add all your ebay customers emails to your mailing list and send out your site address and your latest promotions to them. Make sure to add an ‘unsubscribe’ link to the emails so you’re not constantly contacting old customers who aren’t interested in hearing from you. This is completely within ebays rules as once an ebay user has purchased from you, you are free to email them.

Using both of these methods you can easily start to direct customers to your online shop from ebay make the most of those ebay sales.

Tips: Always sell products cheaper on your online store than your ebay store. If you sell cheaper on ebay then there is no incentive for customers to use your online store. If you have to sell cheap on ebay because of your competitors don’t sell the same products on your online store as your ebay store. Choose a couple of products to sell on ebay for example if you sell costume jewelery take four or more items which represent your full range well; a necklace, earrings, a bracelet and a ring. Then when you sell one send out a link to your customer with the rest of the matching set and give them a discount code and a link to your online shop again make sure your online store seems much cheaper than ebay.

Content is everything you add to a website when you have finished the design: Text, product images and videos.

But why is content so important?

There are a few reasons why content is so important the first one starts when you first develop a new website. A lot of people think if you want a good website you come to a design company like us and we create something amazing for you. Well this is true but before we can start we need you to compile some content and the more the better. Images and text are a really good start write down as much information about who you are and what you do as you can. Take pictures of your products and write about them the more content you can create the better the design will be as we can then start to design the site around your content and not the other way around. A great example of fantastic content is on the apple website. The design is very simple but the product information and images are great making it one of the best looking online shops about. Click here to visit Apple

The next reason content is king is because of search engines, search engines love content and the more you have the better. This is because the search engine will rank you for a lot more keywords if you have lots more content. If you sell cowboy boots online and your write a 10 word description for each product with the title maybe “women’s brown and black cowboy boots” and the sizes available. You will be put in the search engines for “black and brown cowboy boots” and “women’s cowboy boots” both massive marketplaces with hundreds of products available. Now imagine if instead of a 10 word you wrote a 100 word description talking about the materials and where they are from, how the boot was made, and even what jeans they go well with. You would be put in the search engines for lots more keyword and thus make your product more easily accessible.

Bringing us to the final reason content is king… Because it increases sale. It’s true, when you are selling online you need to add as much information about your products as possible this way you answer most customers questions and reassure them your products are the right ones for them. Internet users generally want to ‘buy now’ they don’t want to email you or call to get an answer on a simple question and most of the time if they a not 100% sure they will just go to the next website that probably sells the exact same product and possibly for a bit more but what they have done is answered those niggling questions within their content.

So there we are three reasons why content is king when it comes to creating a worth while online business.

Well it all depends on your products and the cost to deliver them but if you want to use a free delivery offer to drive your average sales value up then just follow these simple steps:
First off you need to know your current average order value this is what the average person spends on your online shop. With the ecommerce packages we provide, our stats will tell you this but if your ecommerce package doesn’t tell you then just add up all your orders and divide them by the number of orders you have… so if you have ten orders then add them up and divide that number by ten.

Once you know your average order value you need to add on 10-15% to find your free delivery figure. For example if it’s £100 then this will make your free delivery figure £110.
In this example the idea is that the average customer will have an order value of around £100 if your shipping is £5 then this will make their total £105 but then if you offer free delivery on order over £110 they will probably spend an extra £5 and get something else to save on the delivery. This is because the average internet users hates delivery charges as to them they are a wasted expense they don’t get anything for it. So they would rather spend a bit more and get a bit more with free delivery.
Once you have implemented this you should keep track off your average order value it should increase but don’t be tempted to increase the free delivery charge too much instead offer other incentives like a free gift or voucher code or 15% off the next purchase etc. This will keep pushing the average order value up without effecting your current customers.