Online selling is fast becoming the new norm for many businesses nowadays and has become increasingly capable of satisfying complex customer demands. Ecommerce website options such as Amazon and eBay are constantly spending millions of dollars to keep their services online up-to-date in order to meet customers’ needs more efficiently and also to grow sales.
But the online world is not just for multi-billion dollar tech giants, it’s an intricately connected environment in which even small businesses and individuals can also sell their products or services. And with the current availability of online platforms, marketing options, resources and social networking sites, there is no doubt that even budding entrepreneurs can make it big in the ecommerce environment.
Why Do Businesses Find it Difficult to Go Digital?
Not every business owner might be financially capable of building or maintaining an online ecommerce website. Especially during the initial days of building up a brand, it could be difficult to invest in an online website due to several factors.
Or imagine if a traditional brick-and-mortar business owner who was affected by the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, wants to start selling products online. He or she might be quite perplexed after coming across tough internet jargon and intimidating terms such as domain registration, web hosting, digital marketing, and search engine optimization (or even GoDaddy).
The business owner will then start thinking that managing a website along with trying to sell the products might be a challenge and could hinder the smooth flow of both. Or would feel that investing time and money in a website will take them off their actual aim which is to actually sell their products.
Unfortunately, this is one of the most common scenarios in the digital world that leads to several individuals and small business owners abandoning their hopes of selling online.
If you are one such business owner, then don’t worry, there are several different ways to sell your products and services online – and not all of them require an advanced ecommerce website.
How To Sell Online Without a ecommerce Website
Selling online is a great way to expand your product’s visibility and it is one of the best ways for a brand to seamlessly get their products to a larger audience. Moreover, businesses do not have to rent out physical stores or hire employees, which makes online selling more affordable and easy to manage. Here are two best and most relevant ways in which you can sell your products online even without a website.
Sell Products Online Using Marketplaces
Marketplaces are some of the most widely used and revenue generating platforms for people selling their products. Not just because you don’t have a website, one of the other greatest reasons you should sell on online marketplaces is the already established consumers they have.
Ecommerce sites such as Amazon and eBay are some of the most trusted platforms among the online buying community and combined they have over 500 million active monthly visitors. This will help you reach out to more audiences than on any other platform, and once you start getting positive customer reviews and better ratings, you will be able to add more customers to your loyal customer base.
Even if in the future you decide to hire a digital marketing agency and build a website for your brand, you can still connect your website to these online marketplaces. It can be an excellent way to generate leads for your website and can help in driving more traffic to your new ecommerce website.
Sell Products Online Using Social Media
All of us are already familiar with Social media. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are not just sites where you can post your vacation photos or converse with your buddies, these platforms are great alternatives to selling products online without a website. Also, most readers will already be aware of how social media sites work, and therefore it would be much easier for them to get started with selling their products.
This process of buying and selling on social media is also known as social commerce and it covers the entire shopping experience – from product discovery to the checkout – the complete process takes place on a social media platform itself. Another great benefit of using social media to sell products is that you can also promote your brand on the same platform by regularly posting appealing product posters, offers and informative videos. This will improve brand awareness and will help your brand reach out to more audiences.
Also, ever since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic there happens to be a tremendous increase in social media influencers with thousands of followers on different social platforms. Businesses especially beauty or fashion related can leverage the help of these influencers in promoting their products. Similar influencer marketing strategies can also be utilized for service-oriented businesses such as restaurants or even saloons to attract the local public through short videos known as reels.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that you can sell online even without an ecommerce website, but having a well-designed, Google ranking website will definitely give you more credibility and leads. Because we all know that shopping on the Internet can make people cynical, it could be due to increased cyber threats or spam activities.
Having a highly interactive ecommerce website that offers secure payment options will increase the likelihood of people buying from you. Also, all the above mentioned platforms can be easily integrated into your ecommerce website, which would actually make it much easier for you to manage everything under one roof. There are several agencies doing web design in Toronto that can help you create great websites for your business without leaving a deep hole in your pockets. Make the best use of such agencies and begin your business online journey today.
