How to sell on the web

These days you can sell just about anything on the internet. Sell your products, sell your services, sell yourself. The internet can be an easy and cost effective way to generate sales, leads or land a new job. Whatever it is you are trying to sell online, there is a good chance a buyer is just a few clicks away.

Selling one or just a few items

If you only need to sell a few products online and don't want or need to invest too much then you can create a simple HTML website and use one of two popular ecommerce solutions we recommend.

The first simple ecommerce tool we recommend is Google Checkout, it is easy to use and FREE to integrate. You only pay a processing fee when a visitor purchases from your website. Google has created what is probably the most cost effective and easiest shopping cart solution to integrate with any website.

You can copy and paste in code for buttons linked to your Google account and collect online payments by credit cards or debits. Payments are then automatically transferred to your bank account or handled according to your particular settings. The best part of Google Checkout is scalability, you can choose to integrate a full shopping cart with multiple items and options and there is no extra software to install pay for.

The second payment processing option we recommend is Paypal. We recommend Paypal because of the many internet users who are already familiar with it from using it on ebay. Paypal offers free standard accounts similar to Google Checkout. They also offer a business account which enables clients to accept offline payments and provides an interface to manually enter credit card information.

Selling many items

If you plan on selling many items and would like a more advanced system which offers more features such as sales reporting, customer management, and bulk product uploads then you will need an ecommerce website or shopping cart software. There are literally hundreds of solutions. Many are free while some of the more advanced platforms can run into the tens of thousands and require hosting and maintenance fees.

A free shopping cart solution such as Oscommerce, or Magento are advanced enough to handle most ecommerce functions. Both applications are widely used for running small to mid-sized ecommerce operations. Features include multiple category levels, sales reporting, visitor tracking, newsletter marketing modules & much more.

Shopping carts must be integrated with a payment gateway. Most will connect to either Paypal or Google Checkout. A popular payment gateway for processing online payments using a shopping cart is eprocessing networks, there are many other gateways, you should speak with your website developer for help deciding the best solution for your particular website needs.

Online Marketing

Once you have setup your shopping cart you will need to market your website so that your site is found by potential buyers. Two main areas you will need to focus on are search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

Search engine optimization is a constant, long term initiative that aims to bring your website to the front pages of major search engines such as Google and Yahoo for the terms and keywords relevant to your products or services.

Search engine marketing involves practices such as listing your website in product databases, directories and purchasing ad space in various website properties. Search engine marketing is aimed at getting short term results while search engine optimization is focused on steady long term placement advancement and retention.

Getting Started

If you are new to selling online then you would benefit from working with someone who has some experience selling from the web. It is not uncommon for ecommerce website owners to fail their first time, there are many valuable lessons to be learned in failing, however if you can learn from others you will have a better chance of succeeding.

Of course, the key to selling your products online is in having great products at competitive prices. You can place on the first page of everything but you won't sell anything online if your products do not offer value to your customers.

Sell from the web experts can help you sell on the web. Our ecommerce solutions are feature packed and our internet consultants are ecommerce veterans.

Contact an internet consultant to learn how you can sell your particular products on the web.