Sell it online by Nick Martin

1. SellitOnline
Nick Martin
eBusiness Advisor
www.investni.com
NickMartin
eBusinessAdvisor
InvestNI

2. Introduction
• International online sales opportunity for NI Businesses
• Over 3.2bn global internet users at the end of 2015
• UK online retail sales hit £133bn in 2016,
• Global online shoppers will grow 50% by 2018
Selling Online
www.investni.com

3. Where do customers buy online?
Products CustomersPhone Email

4. eCommerce Landscape
eCommerce
Products
Platform Shipping
Marketplaces Marketing
Online
Payments
Mobile Analytics Staffing
Returns

5. Will Your Products Sell Online?
• Not all products lend themselves to being
directly sold online
• Research what other sellers are doing
• Approach with an open mind
• Try, test measure.

6. Understanding Costs
• Selling Online can be expensive
• Many costs to consider:
– Product Cost
– Advertising Cost e.g. PPC Advertising
– Marketplace Fees (could be 10-17% Gross)
– Packing Materials
– Staff Costs (Packing, Customer Service)
– Damages/Returns/Fraud
– Payment Processing Fees
– Technology Costs.

7. Products
• To sell your products online you will need:
– Great Product Images
– Original Product Descriptions
– SKU Number
– Barcodes (UPC, EAN etc)
– An idea of pricing for the particular sales channel
– Product shipping costs.

8. Marketplaces
• Great Place to Start Selling:
– Amazon UK - £6.3 Billion Sales in 2016
– eBay UK - $1.3bn of the company’s revenues in
2016
• Massive opportunities for NI businesses to sell
into UK Mainland and Ireland.

9. Marketplace Selling - eBay
• Getting Started on eBay:
– Don’t assume your products wont sell on eBay
– You need to understand how eBay works before
trying to sell on it
– eBay is generally slightly easier to start selling
– Create an account
– Setup PayPal
– Buy some products and get positive feedback
– Start Selling.

10. Marketplace Selling - eBay
• Factors influencing how listing appear on eBay:
– Seller performance (feedback, defects, cases etc)
– Product Title
– Speed of dispatch (usually under 2 days)
– Free Shipping Option
– Express 24 Hour Shipping Option
– How many items you have sold (seller reputation).

11. Marketplace Selling - eBay
• eBay - Tips:
– Research competitors
– Start with a reasonable number of products
– Product Titles are very important
– Pricing is crucial
– Images need to be really good
– Customer Service is key – understand the rules.

12. N.I. Businesses on eBay

13. Marketplace Selling - Amazon
• Selling on Amazon UK:
– Relatively easy to setup Amazon
– More proof required around identity of seller
– Products need to have barcode numbers
– Products listed in a catalogue rather than individual
listings
– Basic and Pro selling accounts available
– Very strict customer service rules (Replying, refunds
etc)
– Amazon processes payment.

14. Marketplace Selling - Amazon
• Factors influencing products on Amazon:
– Seller performance (speed of dispatch, cases etc)
– Price of product
– Volume of sales
– Amount of available stock
– If you are using FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon)
– Product titling (if you have control over this),
mostly you are listed against the catalogue.

15. Selling Internationally on
Marketplaces
• Great Way to Access International Markets
• eBay / Amazon:
– Passive: Allow shipping to a region
– Active: country specific marketplace listings
• Many Other International Marketplaces:
– https://selling-online-
overseas.export.great.gov.uk/markets/ .

16. Selling Internationally on
Marketplaces
– Considerations for Selling Internationally
• Translation of Listings
• International Couriers
• Global Shipping Programme (eBay)
• Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)
• Answering of questions in buyers language
• Returns (Regional Variation who pays)
• VAT:
https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/exporting-
eu-countries .

17. Do You Still Need an Ecommerce
Website?
• Yes - absolutely
• Do not spend too much on the website
• Budgeting for eCommerce:
– Cost of website build/setup
– Cost of maintenance of website
– Cost of Internal staff costs to maintain
– Cost of marketing.

18. Ecommerce website features
• Customers don’t want to think – follow the
design standards
• Search Facility
• Well organised product hierarchy
• Mobile responsive
• Recognised payment processor.

19. eCommerce Websites
Design
SearchProducts
Payment
Processor
SSL
Mobile
Cyber
Security
Content
Reviews
Trust
Indicators
Functionality
Speed
Customer
Info
Checkout
Security
Backups
Integration
Payments
Hosting
Domain
names
Sales
Analytics
Conversion
Order Size
Cross/Up
Sell

20. Your Website
• Hosted Platform
– Still can be setup by a web developer
– Costs from around £25/month
– Wide range of features including limited multichannel,
courier integration
– Updates and backups done automatically
– Large range of templates to choose from (mobile ready)
– Relatively quick and easy to setup
– Proven ecommerce model
– A great first ecommerce website choice.

21. Hosted Platform - Shopify

22. Your Website
• Own Platform
– Usually setup by a developer using either an open
source of proprietary system e.g. Magento
(developers very rarely write complete systems
from scratch)
– Very customisable with almost limitless
integration possibilities
– Usually more costly than a hosted solution, typical
entry level costs are £3-5K.

23. Multi Channel

24. Multi-Channel
• What is multi-channel?
• Plan for multi-channel from the outset
Multi Channel
Software
Orders / Listings/ Shipping / Inventory / Customers

25. Multi Channel Features
• Synchronisation:
– Inventory Across Platforms
– Orders Centralised
– Product data (customised for each platform)
– Integration with accounts (e.g. Sage Xero)
– Courier integration (Shipping labels, tracking
number)

26. Multi Channel Costs
• Multi-Channel software is a requirement for
selling online in volume
• Setup can be quite complex
• Costs vary significantly. The average cost is
around £60-100/month for a small company.

27. Marketing
• Understand your strategy and goals
• Plan and resource your marketing
• Marketing Tactics:
– Paid online advertising a big sales driver e.g.
Adwords, Facebook Advertising, Bing
– SEO, email marketing, social media
• Measure your ROI on Marketing.

28. Questions