Top Five Tips for Selling Your Product Online

Okay, so you've got a great product, it fills that gap in the market and all your friends, colleagues (and hopefully Bank Manager) are convinced it's a sure thing. You are sure that your business is ready to rake in the profits it deserves through the miracle and wonder of Internet e-commerce. So just throw up a website (in blue), attach your PayPal account and you're on your way. Well aren't you?

Let me be frank here, there are a multitude of issues you are about to encounter, each one of them as important as the next. Making the right choices at this stage is paramount to your products success and the key to allowing your product to fulfill its potential. So here are a few tips to set you on your way to e-commerce success,

1. High quality website design with strong navigation
   Clean, uncluttered design allows your customers the visual space to find a product with ease (if amongst other products)
   
   Simple well-categorised navigation offers the customer an easy shopping journey with no hesitant moments of "oh, where do I go from here?". Keep the website simple to use and always have a route back to the home page or to the main category from where the customer has come (breadcrumbs navigation is great for this).
2. Use strong original images. 
   Too many websites are let down by the use of inferior, poorly lit or out of focus product images. Give your customers the opportunity to view the entirety of the product they are buying from at least three angles, if not more. If possible (and there is a ton of widgets and code out there) make your images enlargeable for large-scale viewing. We all want to see what we are paying for and if given the option we will buy products we are confident we understand completely.
3. Pick the right keywords
   We all want to rank first in Google for the big keywords that dominate our industry markets, but let's face it most of us don't have $1 million SEO budgets and a marketing teams of 100 staff at our beck and all. So target the attainable keyword phrases that may command less traffic but which will get you the level of traffic you need to make your product viable online.
4. Promote confidence in your Brand
   We are all the same, and we have all heard a hundred tales of users being ripped off online by unscrupulous sellers, so make it easy for your potential customers. Offer easy to find and to understand return policies, clear customer service contact details (phone, fax and email) and help your customers feel safe in their purchase. Having a service rating functionality to allow your customers to share their experiences with your company is also a great idea, but beware as sometimes customers do not always give you are fair hearing if things don't go perfectly and issues are not rectified immediately, for whatever reason.
5. Always offer related products
   I don't know about you, but I've forgotten the amount of times I've bought a product on a website and then immediately seen an associated product, whether it is directly related to the original purchase (like a top to match the jacket you want) or simply by category (a book by the same author or of the same genre). If you can offer a discount or a saving by purchasing more than one item you'd be amazed how often that will lead to a double or triple purchase.