Amazon

MORE EXPENSIVE

Listing Fee: Low for high volume

Commissions: High rate of 15%

Better for high volume / High rotation items

eBay

CHEAPER

Listing Fee: Low for individual listings

Commissions: Lower rate of 8%

Better for High price / Low rotation items

While drop shipping can be used in many different ways on the web, sites like Amazon and eBay make the process even easier. Each site allows users to create accounts and upload auctions. This means that you have access to a safe, world wide marketplace with a large pre-existing user base.

Amazon and eBay also offer advanced search options that help you find best selling products. This option can help you determine the price, availability and popularity of the products you wish to sell. In some instances a site like these may even offer help in advertising your products.

These sites can also help build your small businesses reputation. Since both use a form of user ratings, where customers rate your performance, a consistently good rating will help your business grow in popularity and increase your profits. While drop shipping can be used to earn money, it can also be used as the start of a business that will later grow.

In ecommerce, drop shipping consists of selling a physical product online, but getting your supplier to send the item to the customer for you (which you have bought from them at wholesale price). Many of our clients who use Cascade also employ drop shippers. The software system works in exactly the same way, except that the orders are handled by a different company, and despatched from a different location to that of the person managing the website/Amazon/eBay/Play listings.

The advantage of drop shipping is that you can run an online business without having to own a warehouse, or actually having to ship the goods yourself. Of course there are rates involved because you have to pay the drop shipper, but sometimes this can pay off if you can get decent rates- especially for start up companies who want to avoid making an investment in stock and storage space.

However be warned, not all wholesale providers are genuine. Search engines are peppered with fake wholesale sites who pretend to be a dispenser, but are actually just a middleman who charge falsely inflated rates and get between you and the real supplier.

Everybody knows that being too involved in the design and build of your website (usually from the same computer too) means that you can become blind to usability issues, different types of rendering, or the aspects of design that might jump out to a customer straight away as being undesirable.

So to get fresh eyes for your site you could try standing behind someone as they browse the website, try a different monitor or a slower connection, or even try certain types of software that track and record user movements and experiences on your site.

Allow customers to reach management- people will be driven away if they can’t pick up the phone and speak to someone who can help them directly.

Security logos- this is a simply tool to encourage trust from your customers

Say who buys. Traditional testimonials work, or try “Who just bought”.

SEO is now considered compulsory for the success of any ecommerce website. This is because sites which have no SEO are basically invisible to Google, and may as well not be there! Furthermore, with the exception of ecommerce sites in niche areas, it is not feasible to launch a website in a competitive industry without professional SEO. This is because search engines are constantly changing their set ups so you need update continuously; a long, laborious and complex process. If it was easy to get to page 1 we’d all be there! For information on how we can help you with your SEO please ring 0113 380 1741 and we would be happy to help.

Twitter is a free social networking service that allows its users to send and read updates, or “tweets” up to 140 characters in length sent out by its users. These short updates about every day experiences are short, usually witty or informative sentences. Many have seen the potential for posting interesting notes about their business whilst occasionally peppering their posts with outbound links to external pages for promotional purposes.

To most Twitter is considered a revolutionary tool, cool, useful and at the very least entertaining. Twitter is particularly valuable to ecommerce, for building brand exposure, web presence, and is significantly useful for businesses with eBay, Amazon and Play integration. Online sellers can use the service to communicate with customers, respond to enquiries and advertise products that they are selling through their eBay, Amazon and Play selling platform.