Free Delivery (No Shipping Fees) Always Win

Simplicity is king. Whenever you are faced with a choice, always choose the simpler option. This is especially true when it comes to consumers.

Adding a shipping fee to your online shop is not simple. Your customers are forced to worry about the additional unknown cost. Each time they look at the price of your product, the back of their head is asking ‘but you haven’t calculate in the shipping cost yet. It’s not as cheap as it seems’.

That’s no good. Some of your customers may just abandon their shopping cart and forget about it.

The best solution is, as the title suggested, give free delivery. Tell your customers upfront and on the main page: ‘There are no additional cost, no shipping fee, no hidden charges’. Now, what prices your customers see are what they will get. Tension and stress dissolved and they can just go about their shopping without worry.

That only translates to more sales for you. How simpler can it get?

Components of an E-commence

For those of you who thinks online commerce is a difficult business to get into, do not worry. Like all businesses, it is can be broken down into smaller and simpler components. Once you list down the components, you’ll soon realise that it is not as complex as it seems.

Let’s get to it!

1. The Products/Services. Goes without saying, without products or services, there will be nothing to sell and therefore, no reason for an online commerce.
2. The Engine. The core of the business. An online platform where the products are displayed, manages and maintained.
3. The Payment Gateway. The engine where money are transacted from the Buyer to the Seller.
4. The Shipping. Products has to be shipped to your customer’s hands. This component is not required if you are offering a service where your customer has to come to your shop to receive it.
5. Customer Satisfaction. Closing the commerce loop. Tracking your customer’s level of satisfaction for all your products/services gives you an idea what to improve.

And that’s it. Just 5 components to get your e-commerce up and running. What do you think? It really isn’t that difficult right?

In the coming weeks, we’ll delve deeper into each of these components. Stay tuned!

Price Anchor

Besides setting your price at a very attractive price point, there is one more trick many large retail stores use. It’s called Price Anchorage.

Ever heard of a conversation such as this: “Normally our standard price is $300, but today we have a special promotion price of $199”. Wow! What a good price don’t you think?!

Actually, no. We would feel the price is attractive because we just anchored what we thought was the original price at $300. We got anchored by the price.

Now, it doesn’t matter if the original price is truly $300 or not, what matters is you felt the price is cheaper. And that’s what we can implement on our online store too.

Always anchor your price when situation permits. Always put a higher price, let your customer see it, and then show them the lower price. For example:

Normal Price: $300
Current Price: $199!!

Effective, don’t you think?

Lower Your Price the Smart Way

It is common knowledge that the more you lower your price, the higher the purchase rate will be. But the million dollar question is, how to lower your price?

Lowering prices is a good way of ensuring online sales, but the secret is to lower the price to a point where you get the maximum impact.

Consider this: $10.60 and $10.50. Would the 10 cents entice you to buy? How about $50.10 and $50.00? Does it make a difference?

Now, let’s take a look at this. $20.00 and $19.99 Notice how much more effective it is. Just by lowering a single cent you affect the buying decision by so much more. In fact, lowering 1 cent to any other price point will never achieve such an impact.

That, dear reader, is the most impactful way to lower your price. Just take your price you prefer to sell your product at and lower it by 1 cent. Ensure that the front number is changed because of it. Numbers such as $59.99, $15.99, $9.99 or even $0.99.

Minimal reduction in price, maximum impact.

Why not worldwide?

All businesses sell something. If it’s not services, then it’s products. Guess what? Both can be sold online.

Which begs the questions: If you are already selling locally (or the luckier one amongst you, nationwide), why not sell them world wide?

The difference? If you are selling products, you got to ship it to your customers. If you are are selling services, your customer will come to your shop instead.

How do they pay? The most used payment method online are Credit Cards and Bank transfers.

That’s about it. While it is true that there are many things to setup before you can sell online. But really, it is a matter of asking yourself this simple question: Why not sell online and exponentially increase your customer base from nationwide to worldwide.

The obligatory Hello World post

Hi everyone,

Selling stuff online doesn't have to be hard. While sometimes the IT behind the entire process is overwhelming, this blog, Selling Stuff Online will take care of that for you. We'll discuss and learn together the art of selling online.

So if you haven't already, follow us. Join us as we push forward towards an exciting world of e-commerce!