eBay Stores and e-Commerce Website Choices - Build It In-House or Hire a Professional?
When you have made the decision to get your products online
via eBay and/or your own eCommerce website, what is the next step?
First Question: Build it in-house or hire a professional?
Yes, you can build your companies eBay store and website with
talent already existing within your organization Ebay.
Website design is taught at most high schools or community
colleges these days so, chances are good that your employee pool may have
budding web designer talent. Are you ready to trust your company marketing and
image to that in house talent is the real question?
eBay provides numerous tools and a great deal of information
for anyone to accomplish the task of getting a store up and running. The question
is... does eBay provide these tips and tricks to help you as a business or to
help their business? Obviously, if you are a seasoned business professional you
will soon realize that a company such as eBay does nothing without a reason.
eBay Stores
Most of eBay's teaching tools and to a certain extent, eBay's
entire growth strategy is based upon making the process of setting up an eBay
selling account and consequently an eBay store easy for home based businesses.
eBay wants mom & pop to go garage sale shopping with an eye towards making
a few extra bucks for the cookie jar. To that end they want to get mom &
pop up and running with an eBay store as soon as possible (and funneling fees
into eBay).
Just because eBay has based a majority of their marketing
focus on home based businesses does not mean that an eBay store is not a
valuable asset for any established brick and mortar retailer or other
"real" business concern. eBay is simply going after the largest
number of potential users of their products. Unfortunately this also leads to
numerous eBay store failures...
These home based eBay store owners do not have the prior
background, sources or resources to take advantage of the world wide marketing
giant and revenue producer now known as eBay. Therefore, while getting your
company eBay store up and running may seem to be an easy in-house task for any
intern, or kid just out of college with a great computer science degree... the
real nuts & bolts set up and operation of an eBay store or e-commerce solution
or both in tandem (the best option) is better left to professionals who work
with eBay and e-commerce each and every day. If you are reading this because
you are interested in moving your business more into an Internet sales based
program you should consider the wisdom of hiring eBay and Internet marketing
professionals to help you and your company get a head start toward those goals.
Still Thinking About Doing it yourself?
Building an online business requires ability in several
completely different arenas: graphic design, programming, database development,
Web design, copywriting, photography, and online marketing. This is just a
short list of what is required to start from scratch or to add Internet
marketing to your sales operation. If you have these skills in-house or if you
plan on learning them yourself, please take this advice to heart.
Make a list of your employees' available skills as well as
which skills they can learn. When you have a choice between learning a skill
that will directly translate into making more money for your company or
learning a skill that will let you do cool stuff on the Web, make a careful
choice. Decide how much time you really want to devote to learning and doing
things that really don't help you sell more products. Do you want to be an
online retailer, or do you want to be a Web developer? The highest and best use
of your available time & resources probably isn't learning the ins and outs
of XHTML, but taking care of customers, finding new products, and promoting
your business.
Making it Happen
Anything you can do yourself on a website design or to a eBay
Store can be delegated or outsourced. You can hire eBay Stores Certified design
professionals to design your eBay store from the ground up, create a custom
logo, develop a corporate identity with unique colors and fonts, build your
store product database, take product photos, write sales copy, perform search
engine optimization on your site, custom-build XHTML templates that do almost
anything you want them to do, and even manage your orders and perform customer
service. It all depends on your budget.
After you've decided that you need help, you have lots of
choices to make. The first decision is the size of your budget, which
determines who you can hire. You can find prices for "building a eBay
Store" that range anywhere from $300 to $5,000 and up. You can get a
bargain using offshore designers (working anywhere from eastern Europe to
India), college kids, or even professional designers moonlighting out of their
basement. If you want a more "professional" experience, expect to pay
up to $15,000 for a complete branding, marketing, and design package from
top-drawer eBay store and Internet marketing firm. Both your web e-commerce
site and your eBay store should present your branding and image as you expect
them to. Getting the eBay image and your website image to mesh almost
seamlessly is your goal, this can be quite difficult for even experienced web
designers.
Using a CMS or Content Management System type of website
design can significantly reduce your web design costs. There are a huge amount
of new and exciting options available for web development, do not think you
must use a "hand coded" html site to get your branding and image in
front of the public. Some companies are even using simple blogging platforms
like Wordpress or Typepad as the basis for corporate websites. These blogging
platforms are very inexpensive to set up and the software is free. These CMS or
Blogging platforms may also be used in conjunction with an eBay store or a with
an eCommerce plug in (or both) to craft a unique Internet marketing funnel for
your company.
You get what you pay for...
eBay store designs can run between $2,000 to $5,000 from a
qualified eBay Stores designer. eCommerce website designs sometimes run in the
tens of thousands of dollars with continual maintenance costs and webmaster
fees. If your budget makes you choose between the two options, an eBay store is
the more economical and faster route to success when managed correctly.
Subsequently an off eBay eCommerce site can be developed for your best selling
items. This allows you to use the power of eBay for marketing and SEO purposes
while saving eBay fees on sales made through your own eCommerce website.
The best part of an eBay stores set up is that once it is
installed as you want it, you have very few outside maintenance costs. Your
company will have complete control of the products presentation (with the use
of a template) and the inventory management is a simple to learn affair on
eBay. Advanced tools are available to help with the management of large
inventories and to help you create a listing just as you would within a word
processing program or text editor.
When you get a quality eBay Stores design, sometimes the
results are more than just superficial. Qualified designers improve the
shopping experience, which can dramatically increase sales from your existing
traffic by increasing your conversion rate. Also, many designs, when set up
correctly improve the way your site looks to search-engine spiders, too! (This
is the power of an eBay stores "me" page and other exclusive features
and benefits of eBay stores packages).
After you determine what parts of the store building process
you can do and what you can't do or would rather not do, you're ready to look
for some help with the heavy lifting ebay. First, you have to decide what type of
vendor you want to work with because there's a big difference between working
with a freelancer or independent consultant and working with a large design
company or eBay Stores certified design specialists StoresDesigner.
eBay Stores certified design specialists - eBay Stores
Designer
eBay Stores certified design specialists (certified eBay
stores designers) provide the best overall experience. Your company will get
the personalized attention it deserves and you will know that the design is
based upon eBay marketing principles. Look at the portfolios of these certified
eBay stores designers and decide which firm best represents your companies'
image. Stay away from home based eBay stores designers with frilly eBay
templates and flashy bouncing mouse pointers. You should be looking more for a
corporate image that sells product and more importantly, cross sells more
products for your company.
Look at the online stores you frequent in your daily life,
think about the type of image and features you would like to emulate for your
eBay store. Look at the designer's portfolios and or ask them if the features
you think are most valuable are available in their design packages? Some eBay
stores designers can deliver very advanced packages designed to promote more
than one primary product at a time. If you are looking for growth in your Internet
sales segment, these are the designers to contract with. Talk with several
designers to find the one you are most comfortable with and the one who you
think will represent the image of your company best with an online design. If
the same designer can also develop your off eBay website e-commerce design, you
should place that designer high on your list of candidates.
Having a web presence for your company which flows from eBay
to your own website with the same "look and feel" is very important.
Your goal should be to make your customers feel confident in your products and
your company. If you (and your design company) have made an effort to create a
nearly seamless shopping experience between eBay and your own e-commerce
website, the confidence of the buyer will increase and your conversion rate
will as well. Drawing eBay shoppers to your website from within eBay is not
only possible, but very probable with a eBay store design done correctly.
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